Bookshelf redo

Getting organized and decorating with what you got has me looking all over the house for small upgrades I can make. Like this bookcase in my office. It's from Pier One. I think I probably bought it 8 or so years ago. I'm honestly not ever sure what I thought was so great about it, unless I had a gift card to burn. I'm really hoping that was it because it's small, has red detailing, and a bit too open for my taste. But this is about working with what you have. So looking over the jumbled state of it, I decided some changes needed to happen. 

First, all those French books and flash cards needed to come off. Although I aspire to practice my French daily, I don't, and I need to be realistic about the space those books were hogging up. Au revoir! Down to the basement they went {to hang with all the other books we have no place for}. Next up, removing Vincent's books from the bottom shelves and putting them on his own new bookcases. Then to freshen up those horrible looking Bankers Box magazine boxes, I perused my selection of scrapbook paper. It doesn't go fantastically well or what I would have selected if I were actually shopping, but it works better than the faux wood print any day, hands down. Next I added some storage boxes I had on hand but were hiding downstairs. I have a couple more too that I'm going to use elsewhere. No sense in storing them downstairs when storage that looks like that is supposed to be seen! After pairing down and organizing my magazine collection, it doesn't look half bad. These aren't really shelves meant to be decorative. Being in the magazine industry and a magazine lover, I definitely need to use these shelves for functionally and not decoratively. It's way more streamlined now. Mmm. Just looking at it makes me happy! 

She saw the art her world needed and hung it

One of my most favorite gifts this Christmas was from my sister. These wonderfully inspiring sayings for women. It's a fitting gift not only because 2013 is said to be the era of the feminine, but I'm a work in progress. Isn't that all women? I don't think men continually take stock of their lives the way we do. But back to the art work. My sister gave me five framed prints. I'll have to ask where she got them in case they inspire you too.
To hang the wall collage of prints, I took newspaper from my recycle pile and setting the frame on top, I cut fairly rough shapes of the frame. Then I flipped the frame over, lined the paper up with it, and then using a pen, punched a small hole through the paper where the nail hanger was at. That way I could just use that hole to hammer my nail into the wall once I got my newspaper templates right where I wanted them. I used frog tape on the back so I could adjust the arrangement without to much fuss. It's the best but less exact method to hanging picture collages. I'm in love with the end product.
I still need to paint the walls a deep gray and hang my gallery wire above the collage.

Fifty shades of grey

Ha! I love it when a cultural reference can be worked into a title. This one bearing the name of the much buzzed about book of the same name. Have you read it? I have. It's not for children though, so please keep them away from this book. Unless you want to explain a few things. Things that most likely you can't even answer yourself. It starts out pretty dark and twisty. I picked it up after reading some articles about how it totally goes against the women's movement. I also wanted to read it because the story started out as fan fiction. It's not the best writing and you can plainly see where she gets her material (i.e. Twlight and Pretty Woman, just to name a couple). But enough about books that may or may not have a bit too much ahem ahem. Let's talk paint.

I'm tired of everyday going and sitting in my taupe box I call an office. The color is the builder grade latex paint they slap everywhere that we didn't pay to have painted (i.e. the great room, dining room, and kitchen). It's not a good taupe. It's pretty dark as far as taupes go. If I had to give it a name, I'd call it Uglier Than a Dry Desert with No Water in Sight. I'm pretty sure that's the only way you'd like this color. If you had been trekking through the desert, thirsty, hot, tired, and even hallucinating. Got that?

The gray (I opt for this spelling of the color) craze has taken over and I'm going to jump on the bandwagon. This weekend I went to Home Depot to grab some swatches and a paint sample. After looking at the sample for a while, I decided to go with Behr's Sterling. When I compared it to other colors, it seemed light and airy, almost silvery. The other shades seemed too dark.

Early part of the day

Later part of the day

But that's the thing about picking a color underneath commercial-grade lighting—your light colors are going to seem darker than they really are and the dark colors way darker than they actually appear. Good thing there are paint samples.

Taupe and Sterling in action. See the blueish white I was talking about?

Yesterday I quickly slapped some squares all over the walls in my office. I usually paint a square or so on each wall to see how it plays with the light. When I opened the container, I knew I was in trouble. It looked like a blueish white paint, but I said to myself, "Jessaca, paint dries darker." So I went to lunch and then took stock.

My office apparently gets more natural blue light than I had realized, thereby washing out my silvery gray. It wasn't anywhere near the dramatic color I needed since I want to pair with with splashes of purples and yellows.

See the paint chip with the much darker color on the bottom? I'm going to get sample of that. I think it'll play nicely with natural light. It seemed really dark in the store, but now looking at it on the wall, it's the obvious choice.

Next I'm going to try the bottom right color. It's something like Porpoise. Not a very glamour name.