Posts Tagged ‘clothing’

Crossing Disciplines

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Posted by Rebecca, September 14th, 2011

You already know that we unexpectedly painted our powder room a bold charcoal gray. I knew I wanted some bright white floating shelves, so we picked up some inexpensive ones from Target and we’re currently in the midst of hanging them.


Since the gray was a complete compulsive move, I didn’t have much else planned. The room is dark and needs pops of white (which we plan to add more of with the shelves, frames and some crown molding), but I also feel like it needs a fun accent color.

My initial instinct was to go yellow. Gray and yellow are about as hot as brown and blue were 5 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I like the combo and I’m planning to add some yellow to our living/dining rooms, but it seemed a little not me. I’m just not a warm color person and for the amount of bold I want in this bathroom, it would be a little too much yellow for me. Maybe elsewhere yellow, maybe elsewhere.

Last week, I realized how much charcoal colored clothing I own. It has become my standard neutral over the past year or so. You already know about my sweats and flip flops, but I also have a few other pieces, such as my sneakers (from Target)…

A scarf (also from Target)…

A dress (from Loft)…


As well as a pair of cargo pants and numerous shirts.

As I got dressed one morning last week, I started to browse my color-coded shirt selections for something to go with my sneakers and scarf (please excuse the iPhone quality on this one)


I then remembered this outfit I have pinned on Pinterest and have always loved for the aqua scarf and gray tank.

(via Polyvore on Pinterest)

Does Pinterest make anyone else think outside of their normal wardrobe? I’m suddenly more bold in my clothing choices. Such an unexpected perk of joining that site 🙂

So I went for a pale blue shirt to go with my gray scarf.


Then a little light went off in my head. Why don’t I use my Pinterest outfit to inspire my bathroom?

I love the aqua and gray and I even love my take of the light blue and gray, though this other shirt I have is probably more accurate to the Pinterest scarf. 

It has more of a minty green tone to it compared to the light blue shirt, though it’s subtle. 


And so that’s how it began. I figured going with a refreshing, but bright blue tone would incorporate the powder room into the color scheme of the remainder of the house. Otherwise it would scream “hey I’m completely bold and randomly dropped here!”, but I believe it will still be way more dramatic than the rest of the downstairs rooms.I attempted to buy a mirror and some paint this past weekend, but Lowe’s was out of what I had in mind. Hopefully the upcoming weekend will be good to me and I can put this little vision of mine together and show you what I have planned 🙂 

ps- I inititally planned to photograph myself in all of these outfits while standing in the bathroom for some comedic effect, but the thought of changing all of those times before it gets dark out in 20 minutes was just draining. If anyone else would like to stand in their bathroom, in outfits that match their walls, please do so for my entertainment 🙂 And if you’ve ever decided on a color palette while standing in your closet, please share that too!

the walk-in closet reveal

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Posted by Rebecca, December 30th, 2010

This is part of our house that you’ve never seen, that I’ve been wanting to share since I started this blog. Just finding the precious daylight time to photograph it was hard, but I have short work days at work this week and no school, so I finally got a chance to spend some time in there!

Our walk-in closet was the very first project we tackled here since I knew the 10 feet of wire rack the builder provided wasn’t going to cut it for me.  I needed some sense of organization in the house in order to be able to live with the constant chaos in other areas.

I like to be able to get fully dressed in the closet and not have to run and get things from dressers and whatnot, so I knew I needed at least 3 drawers for socks, underwear and tank tops, an area for folded tees, an area for hoodies/sweats, an area for jeans, some long hanging space for dresses, etc and an easily accessible area for my perfume, deodorant headbands and other accessories. Oh and some hanging space for my extensive scarf collection 🙂

Mike was okay with just buying some wire racks for his side and that is what we did in our condo. My side had some cheap Closet Maid stuff that eventually fell apart and he dealt with the wire shelving. So I was insistent on doing it right this time, and doing it right away. I didn’t want to start with a messy closet and have it be something I’d have to tear apart to organize months down the line.

I knew California Closets was very expensive, so we went to Lowe’s and really got lucky. We were able to get this Allen + Roth closet organizer, which had everything I needed.

Once we saw this, Mike was convinced that a closet makeover was a good idea. It is solid wood, the same length as our closet, a nice dark stain and had the perfect combination of hanging/open/closed storage. So we picked up two of these back in the spring. We had a rent a truck, pull some muscles, borrow Mike’s brother to get them off the truck, then open the boxes in the garage and take the pieces upstairs one by one because holy hell, solid wood is heavy.

Mike started with my side and I used one of the spare bedrooms as a closet while he worked on it. Please excuse the in-progress iPhone pictures, I wasn’t really updating this website at the time, nor had I really told anyone about it yet (okay I still haven’t really told anyone about this, I just wait for people to find it :))

Turns out our floor plan wasn’t exactly accurate and our closet was a little shorter than 10 feet long. No problem though, since the organizer was solid wood and we were able to cut it down. But we had literally just moved in, never even used a saw before and had zero confidence. Mike managed to cut down the wood pieces, using our circular saw on the garage floor since we had no work table to put it on, but we didn’t have anything to cut the pipe piece. So the closet project went on hold for a week or so while we borrowed the right tools. Finally we were able to assemble my side.

After a little experience/confidence, Mike’s side seriously took him like an hour.

We had both sides up and were really impressed with how it looked. But we realized it would have looked REALLY great had we painted. So we looked at each other, it was about 7pm on a Saturday, and we ran to Lowe’s for a gallon of paint. It was so spur of the moment that I don’t even remember the color. We fully painted it that night, kicking ourselves that we didn’t paint BEFORE we put it up and instead had to navigate in between all of the openings.

So without further adieu, here’s our DIY walk-in closet 🙂

View from the door, still need a window treatment!

My side, obviously Macky isn’t normally allowed in here since he looks like he’s never seen it before…

Mike’s side, he has less shoes so his side gets the laundry basket and the garbage can.

The best part of Mike’s side, his impressive collection of pants that look like a display at Banana Republic (and I know, because I used to work there :))

Macky modeling our Target storage ottoman that is home to my flip flops in the summer and serves as a place to sit and put on my boots in the winter.

Closer view of my side, we keep a Shark stick vac in the closet and I forgot to move it out of the way. So please ignore the funny purple handle that photo bombed this.

My little accessories area which is currently home to my Target jewelry tree full of my chunky bracelets that don’t fit in my jewelry box, headbands, wristlets, sunglasses, lint roller (essential for a pet owner!), perfume, deodorant and sunblock (essential for the palest person in America). I am planning on revamping this area soon with some hooks and lighting so it’s a little more organized.

The naked window, which has such a pretty view of the backyard. Thankfully the window is small, high and faces the woods!

The side of my closet that is home to my scarves, cardigans/other button ups on top and shirts on the bottom.

We stuck a cheap mirror on the back of the door, which was an absolute necessity!

Here’s the view of our bedroom from the closet. The funniest part of showing people our bedroom is that our walk-in closet is painted, but our actual bedroom isn’t. Baby steps!

We’re very happy with how our closet turned out. I am almost disappointed that it doesn’t look as good in pictures as it does in person! It appears cluttered in these pictures when in reality, there’s so much space and I still have my summer clothes in there!

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