fantasy decorating: the bedroom

When we moved into our apartment, I knew right away that I wanted to do brown and grey-ish blue in the bedroom. I'm a big fan of painting one wall a bold color, so I planned on painting a grey-ish blue wall with brown accents throughout the room. It was a good plan, but from the beginning got off to a bad start. Glidden was giving away free quarts of paint through their website, so I was excited to be able to do that feature wall for free. Choosing a color through a website though, as a I found out, is a bad idea. The color, "steel blue", was sent to me, and I put it up on the wall.

Glidden steel blue

Honestly, I knew I didn't like it as soon as it went up on the wall. Especially at night, it looked more periwinkle purple-blue than grey blue like I was going for, something like this:

Glidden Dusty Miller

I also always wanted a duvet cover that incorporated those colors in an interesting print, but I never found something I liked. In fact we're on our second duvet cover, and I'm still not entirely happy with it.I've been thinking about painting over the periwinkle wall for the past few months. We have about seven months left in our apartment, but I really couldn't stand looking at it anymore. Because I really didn't want to put more money into the room though, I went with some paint I already had, a (boring) beige. The good part is I won't have to paint over it again before we leave (everything needs to be returned to neutral when we leave), the bad part? Boring, boring, boring.

Glidden whispering wheat-pretty close to the new color

In my fantasy decorating situation, I would have my blue-grey wall, and a room, interesting duvet included, to go along with it. Reality? The budget around this time of the semester, as anyone else living on student loans that are deposited in September and January knows, is limited (especially with Christmas shopping  right around the corner).

So I'm required to do some internet window shopping. I found this super fun site, olioboard.com, that allows me to do just that, so I put together a little fantasy bedroom, free of charge!

This is the bedroom I want! Greys and blues, pops of color, dark chocolate woods, and an interesting but classy bed spread that ties in the colors of the room. This fantasy room even includes a tv in the bedroom (for Will), and a little sitting area for putting on shoes or reading a book, and, of course, a bed for our kitty, Mango. The "reality" bedroom is going to stay how it is, boring or not, until we move (that is, unless I come up with a super cheap way to make it more fun). For now I will have fun window shopping, though :-)