What happens in the bedroom...

It's time for a confessional: I need some help. I no longer adore my bedroom.

Don't get me wrong. For goodness sake, I really like my furniture, and I have no desire right now to repaint my room. (Heck, I wasn't even supposed to paint it in the first place!) But I've tired of the colors & the accents & the room arrangement. Here are a couple glimpses (& sorry for the poor lighting in the first one!):

If you can see it, I have a lot of orange in this room. Orange & white & minty teal. While has been inspiring as well as relaxing for the past six months, it is almost spring now & certainly time for a change! I've been sneaking around on design blogs & favorite-ing items on Etsy. I think the final straw was seeing Amy Butler's book, full of creative, colorful fabric uses.

So where does this leave me? Well, I think the color scheme is going to be a little more monochromatic. Lots of flavors of green & blue. I'm in love with these and these prints from Amy Butler, my favs of which are below.

So tonight I'll be dreaming of quilted throws, pillow covers, green plants, and a mix of blue & green accents. Sweet dreams to you too!

Orange + Pyrex = love

As my sister knows oh-so-well (often from "I can't concentrate at work" e-mails), I dearly seeing the color orange & Pyrex are combined into one sturdy, functional, beautiful bowl. I love the pop of color in my kitchen, particularly now in the winter when everything just seems to feel blah and completely over itself. Since I rent, the look of my kitchen is pretty inflexible, and with lots of white 80s cabinets & a weird shade of creamy pink on the walls, I don't have a lot of options, people! Thus, I believe, the fixation on color for serving bowls & other kitchen accessories.

The question is, where to find these? There seems to be a dearth of thrift stores in this part of the country--the only one nearby provides only a few treasures. So for the most part, I have to get my fix online. Few days have gone by in the past several months when I haven't spent at least a minute putting "orange, pyrex" or some permutation into the search box of Etsy, Ebay, or Shop Goodwill. So imagine my joy when I found this on Etsy last night:

Sorry, people. I already snapped it up! It'll go so well with this smaller Pyrex I found (surprisingly!) at the nearby thrift store.

A little break never hurt anyone!

A week ago, I hopped a plane to Florida for a (sunny vacation) conference for work. It was the best kind of trip--intellectually stimulating presentations & conversations with vendors, visually stimulating verdant surroundings, and physically stimulating with warm weather for running & walking.

In addition, I celebrated my birthday with an afternoon trip to Epcot. (And don’t even ask...a woman never tells her age.) A few nauseating rides & a trip around the world later, I returned to my hotel, rejuvenated and even feeling that I could face the rest of the New England winter. The following are a couple of my favs.