Color Splash!

Almost a year and a half ago, Jemar and I were having a conversation with his sister (Alena) and brother-in-law (Byron). We hadn't found a house yet, but for some reason we were talking about the design of our future house. In at least one of the rooms, I wanted to do dark walls with light colored trim. Alena and Byron both agreed that it would look modern and elegant. Jemar HATED it. "The walls will be too dark. It will look too somber. I wouldn't even like one wall in a dark color".

Fast forward to 2010. We knew we wanted the "nursery" to have shades of green and brown but we weren't sure about the wall colors. We didn't want to use green walls because that's the color of our master bedroom, so we held off painting for a while and instead focused on choosing a crib set.

A while ago, I asked you to vote on your favorite bedding sets? Remember? Well I failed to mention that I have this terrible habit of asking people their opinions and then choosing something completely different. I never plan to do this...........but it frequently happens. My apologies :(

Anywho, I was about to order the sage and brown bedding set that so many of you loved and it just wasn't clicking. So I looked some more and randomly found this bedding set that cost 50% less and was completely different than what we thought we wanted. I saw it, showed it to Jemar and in less than 10 minutes, I had ordered it. YIKES!

(I just realized this is one LONG post. Hang with me. There are pretty pictures at the end....)

When it arrived, I opened it with some trepidation. But I should have had more faith in our combined style, it was absolutely perfect and it looked just like us. With the perfect bedding set in our possession, we had to decide on a paint color.

Jemar wanted tan or cream (so typical) and I wanted chocolate brown. I finally wore him down and we decided on a brown accent wall with the rest of the room bright white. The Saturday before Easter we went to Sherwin Williams and prepared for painting bliss.

We started with the brown accent wall and the more I painted, the more I fell in love. When I finished, I knew I wanted all four walls brown, there was only one thing in my way - Jemar. And so friends, I took advice from My Big Fat Greek Wedding - "The man may be the head of the house but the woman is the neck and the neck can make the head turn any direction she wants". After planting a few seeds and giving him some time to realize he loved the color too, I went back to the store for another gallon of brown paint to complete my vision. 1.5 years later, I feel completely vindicated. The room is fabulous! It says, "Hi, I have style. Oh, and a baby sleeps here too". As for Jemar, last night he told me, "I still love that room. It looks great."

Monkey has a sophisticated place to lay his head, now on to the finishing touches! Let me know what you think.


This is the before picture, back when it was our second guest room.












The bedding! The houndstooth pattern is so fierce in person.












An aerial view of the crib and changing table. That brown just pops against the white trim and carpet.











Finally, the reason the room doesn't look dark even with the brown walls. This (almost) wall of windows brings in so much light.

PS - Don't you love the stuffed monkey my parents bought?