How I Decorate a Room: Part 1.

I originally entitled this post "How to Decorate a Room". But then I had nightmares of people reading thinking, "Who does she think she is telling me how to decorate?" So I changed it... to how I, Abby Jean Thomason, decorate a room. You can do it like this if you want. Or don't. See if I care. (Kidding, kidding...)

I'm in the beginning stages of decorating my room so I thought I'd give you updates along the way. If it happens to turn out well, then we can go back and reference these posts for the future. If not, we can forget they ever happened. That's the great thing about the internet. You don't even have to waste paper on a bad idea.

Anyway, here's where I'm at right now...

1. I started with a wall color. I didn't really get to choose this wall color. It was already in the room. I suppose I could have chosen a wall color. But I didn't want to spend the money or take the time to paint it myself. So this wall color will do. We'll call it... brown-ish... brown. Brownish brown it is. (Price - free.) (This is the only "before" picture that I own of the room. I forgot to take one, so this'll do...)

2. I picked some bedding that would go with the wall color. I scoured the internet for months and months trying to find the right bedding (and when I say months and months, I mean weeks, but whatev.) Until I was walking through Target one day, and came across this rich purple quilt. It was beautiful. (Price - $99 for a queen size quilt. A big of a splurge, but I bought a quilt from them my freshman year of college, 7 years ago, and it still looks great. So I feel like this is an investment piece.)

3. I picked a color scheme. Sometimes we can get into ruts when it comes to colors. And there is this really cool website called Design Seeds that's all over Pinterest that gives you some different ideas. You can search by color, by theme, or just peruse all of the options. I love this site. It helped me arive at this color scheme. Harvested Tones is its name. I don't know if I'll use much light pink, but I figure this is a starting point. (Price - free.)

4. I bought a few items that went along with the color scheme. Mainly pillows. Pillows can be expensive. I told myself I was allowed 1 splurge pillow. I got a mustardy/gold ruffly pillow from Target for $25 because I loved it. Then I bought two green pillows from TJ Maxx for $20 ($10 each, that is), which is a good deal for pillows. (Price - $45 for three pillows.)

5. Now I'm in the process of evaluating all that I already have, and seeing how I can cost effectively (aka frugally/cheaply/poorly) fill in the gaps to make a complete room. Now comes the fun part. The creative part. The part where people say, "Wow. I really like your *insert item here*!" And you respond, "Thanks, it only cost me $2.83 to make." Get excited folks, more posts to come on that later. (Price - TBD.)

6. I made a Pinterest board to keep track of it all. Oh Pinterest... how you make my creative heart sing.