The Process

I work at a Writing Center.  My day is filled with chatting about comma rules, MLA, and the writing process.  The other day, I realized that decorating your home is a lot like the writing process.

Here's the basic writing process:

Brainstorm -> Planning -> Draft- > Revision -> Editing -> Documentation -> Grade

Here's how I think this parallels decorating:

Inspiration -> Mood board -> Try it! -> Fixing what doesn't work -> tweaking -> blogging -> feedback

Okay, okay.  I know that's stretching it, but I'll give you an example.  The bedroom...

Here's what it looked like a year ago:

Stage 1: Inspiration. The room wasn't too bad, but I decided that I wanted to make the room a little more airy after seeing many light and soft colored rooms. Enter 2nd stage: Brainstorming. I started looking through blogs and got the idea to upholster a headboard and paint the furniture.  I made a plan.  Grays, blues, whites, and creams...

Here's the first draft:

Along with a diy headboard, we got little lamps, changed the bedspread (which we already owned), and painted the tables gray.  I also moved the picture.  Enter revision.  I didn't like having one picture above the bedside table and the cream bed skirt didn't match well with the other creams in the room.  So, I changed a few things up once more. 

Draft #2:

We took down the picture, got a new bed skirt (scored at Target for 10 bucks!), and I also made some gray pillow shams with $1 fabric from the thrift store.  Our white winter duvet also helped add a little more softness to the room.  Yet, something was not right. Although I liked the headboard and side tables, the colors were not meshing.  The gray looked too purple and the headboard didn't have a lot of contrast and looked a little blah.  I wanted to change things up a bit, but this time, I wanted to think it through a little more before changing anything.  I realized that the paint color (a buttery cream) was not going to work as well with the light gray as I had thought.  I needed to bring some deeper colors to add more contrast.  When I found this lovely pale brown linen on sale, I knew what to do.  I was back at inspiration and brainstorming.  After some more pondering and planning, I worked on draft #3.  This is my current draft.  

Draft #3:

We simply reupholstered the new fabric to the existing headboard, took the gray shams off the pillows (I'm planning on making some white ones), painted the bedside tables white, and got some new little knobs for them.

I have some more editing to do in this room (such as lamps, pillows, seat covers...etc), but for now, I think I've finally got everything in its order.  I think that the soft brown complements the wall color much better and the white tables give much more of a pop.  I'm excited to keep showing you my drafts!  Here's some more peeks:

I would love any input! I'm embracing the fact that decorating is not done in a day.  I used to get frustrated if everything didn't look just like I planned it to! Just like writing, it's a process that grows and changes the more that work at it.  And frankly, it's never finished :) Yet, I want to enjoy each space that we live in, not because it's perfectly decorated, but because it's us.