Bedroom, all done

Remember the bedroom ? On a good day, it looked something like this.

And on a bad day ? I prefer not to show.

Mostly I managed to fill it up to the rafters with all sorts of stuff. Not that I actually own any rafters, but you get the picture. There's only so many sunburst mirrors and West German pottery vases you can display before it gets too overwhelming. And I passed that point a long time ago.

So over the last couple of month I've been a busy bee - decluttering, cleaning, dusting, repainting, selling crap on ebay, shopping at Ikea... And now I've finally got something to show for my troubles.

Yep, bye bye vintage wardrobes and highboards! I've gone rogue and gave in to the Ikea Pax appeal. 

Sleek, tall, white and 3.5 meters of incredible storage space. Honestly, they were a real pain to transport and assemble - and I could not have done without my incredible patient and determined brother and equally helpful sister-in-law (Thank you so much guys !!!). But they are so worth it !

Of course, getting these cupboards implied moving everything else around. Which gets me to the fun part - rearranging my belongings. It's a never ending story...

I also invested in some additional Tomado shelves. A girl can never have too many of those... 

Some new plants (I'm afraid there have been some casualties to the great bedroom remodel of 2011) and some new additions to my West German pottery collection. As you can see, I'm now also collecting the neutral coloured ones. I'm beyond help on that topic...

Verdict ? Ok, it's less retro and colourful than it used to be. And definitely more grown-up. But I can finally breath in here and get some work done without being distracted by the accumulation of clutter.

Of course, I still got some details to take care of. Don't know if you noticed, but I need to get some window treatments. I'm still debating which kind to choose. In the meantime, I'm just hoping there aren't too many peeping toms in the neighborhood.
I also started painting the trim in black. What a stupid idea ! Turns out I don't like it at all. So now I need to do it all over again - in white. And there's also the window frames and the radiator that need a fresh coat of paint. And I need a new overhead light. And I want to replace all the green and blue binders with white ones... And so on and so forth.

Which brings me to my final part of today's post. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy 2012, full of fun and exciting home projects. Happy decorating and thrifting all around. It's gonna be a good one. I can feel it :-)

Sneak Peek

In between Christmas preparations, cooking and cleaning, I managed to take a couple of not too grainy pictures of the bedroom. Really just a tease, because the rest of the room is still pretty much a complete mess.

As you can see, the new bedroom styling involves lots of Tomado shelving and West German pottery. So far, I'm not straying too far from home.

Oh yes, and I thought I'd give a chance to the whole "neutral and tasteful" vibe that all the cool kids are devoted to nowadays...

Ch-Ch-Changes

Big changes indeed ! Which for the moment mostly involve making a gigantic mess...

... moving out furniture and selling off a whole bunch of stuff on ebay (and still finding the time to flip through Design Sponge at Home ) ...

... and blogging on the coffee table while od'ing on coffee... How 'à propos'.

Yes, you guessed it, I had the brilliant idea to tackle a complete overhaul of my bedroom right before Christmas and the end of year marathon to get all the school projects in.

I'm pleading the temporary insanity card and blaming flipping through too much 'Design Sponge at Home' for all this foolishness.

So how are you guys getting on with your Christmas preparations ?

My home in IKEA FAMILY LIVE magazine

Probably the most exciting news around here for a long time. 'Cos let's face it, I'm kinda in a slump on the whole interior decor/thrifting front. And let's be honest, how excited can you get about finding yet another sunburst mirror ?

Over the past twelve months, I have been contacted by various Ikea editors to see if I was interested in having some photos of my home published in their magazine. Hell, yeah ! 

But talk about things moving slowly. Case in point. The whole thing took over a year to come through...

Anyhow, it's now official. Drum roll please ! I got a two page spread in their Autumn 2011 edition and if you disregard the most horible photo ever taken of me (thank god, they only used a tiny black & white insert!), I'm very happy with how it all turned out. They used both my photos and my actual text. And yes, I really do think that Ikea does amazing textiles. But despite my hint about needing a new sofa, I didn't get any material rewards for my troubles. Not even a gift voucher for some cushions.Cheap bastards...

Ikea ! I still love you though, even if you're an ungrateful mistress.

Mirror, Mirror...

Home projects continue to be slow and far apart.

Being back in school does have its perks though. Like getting an extra day off last week in honor of the "Fête de la Communauté Française", the main funding organism of french-speaking education institutions in Belgium.
Needless to say that when I still worked as a legal secretary for various American and British law firms, we were never granted a holiday on that day...

Why am I mentioning this ? Because I used that unexpected day off (and the beautiful weather) to indulge in my favourite open-air activity : rummaging through the Brussels flea market ! And of course, I didn't leave empty handed.

Lately, I seem to be set on finding mostly sunburst mirrors. After scoring that oval one at a local antiques store (for a mere 10 eur), my trip to the flea market saw me coming back with the very ornate (and probably slightly kitsch), top left specimen. Still at 20 eur, I didn't hit my budget too hard and it actually goes nicely with the four others.

At the rate I'm going that wall should be covered in no time.