Adding color to the bedroom.

Dennis and I have been slowly but surely adding goodies to the house to make it more cozy and warm, but our tiny little bedroom was feeling a bit boring as of late so I decided to add some colorful touches. While we were in Portland a friend of mine told me to check out Bolt, a charming little fabric boutique she used to work at. So for one of the days Dennis and I separated and while he went to a game shop to play cards with his brother I went off in search of Bolt. The neighborhood it was in was absolutely amazing, and if we ever decide to move to Portland we are living. Right. There. Unfortunately I have no pictures, but all along Alberta Street there was one crafty shop after another. A yarn shop named Close Knit right nextdoor to Bolt, then a music store that had a wall of ukuleles and even a banjolele (WANT!), a co-op market, a little art store called Collage that had everything I love, an open sewing studio/machine shop called Modern Domestic, a place called Make House that had silk screening classes and such, the list goes on, all in a span of three blocks. Anywho, long story short it was magical and I had just enough fun money to get a couple treasures, including a couple yards of this amazing cotton voile:

I saw it and instantly fell in love with the plaid, and then I touched it and it was so silky-soft I knew it was what I needed to make pillowcases so I snagged a couple yards. I was in a boutique in Berkeley when I got the idea to make some, because they had some nice ones from India that I loved but they were a whopping $36 a piece! Sheesh. I think I ranted about pillow prices in this post, and I feel the same way about pillowcases. Seriously people, it took a yard of fabric and 10 minutes of sewing to make two pillowcases! I just used an existing case as a template, measured a 19 x 58 inch rectangle (which is from selvage to selvage), folded it in half, sewed up the sides and zig-zag stitched over the cut edges to keep them from fraying, and just left the soft selvage as the edging. I'm extremely happy with them!

So cozy, and they add so much warmth to the room. I'll show off a picture of the whole room once it's completely done, but I still have some more to do.
Also a couple weeks ago I found this on Pinterest and I knew I had to do a version of it in our room since I had a bunch of photos that didn't fit into some recent scrapbook pages and we had a huge blank wall above the bed. A few tack nails, some baker's twine, and two packages of tiny red clothespins later and voila!

Even Dennis had to admit this was pretty awesome. It's so nice having our favorite pictures up, and we can change them very easily as we get new ones. And thanks to my dad I have a fancy new camera lens to use this year (which is what I used to take these pictures). It's a 50mm with a 1.8 f-stop. Yummy depth of field, and I've been taking more pictures than ever now! Thanks Dad!