Redecorating PART 1: Furniture, Furnishings and Fluorescence

So I moved into a new house back in my hometown while I'm still going to college in another city. I thought I would share my whole process of decorating my room in a few steps.

Step 1: Decide on a central theme/color scheme
This is important to having a unified room. It is especially important if you have an ensuite bathroom.  With multiple rooms, you want something that ties the place together.  For my room, I decided on a sea/beach theme. I was at a crossroads between beach or nautical but ultimately decided on a beach theme because I wanted to incorporate turquoise and sky blues in my color scheme.

Still very messy.

Step 2: Get the big furniture
I had previous furniture so I didn't buy anything else. I may buy a desk and nightstand in the future but for now all I have is my bed and dresser.  It's also important to arrange it in a way that suits your liking and maximizes the space. My room isn't very big but it was important for me that the bed was arranged lengthwise since the footboard would close off the room. They were green and I didn't want to go through the process of repainting the furniture but I think it suits the room.

The bedding was only $47 and it came with the comforter, four pillow cases and two small pillows. 

Step 3: Find the right furnishings
This is probably the most important part to personalizing your room.  Adding small things here and there help to convey your theme. For me, it was about a three day shopping spree finding things to decorate my room and bathroom. I went to Kohl's, Kirkland's (check out my previous posts for that), Burlington Coat Factory where I got my amazing bedspread, and ROSS where I bought hangers and new pillows.

Check out my paint swatches. I'm thinking the one on the top. 

Step 4: Small details
Little things (or not so little things) put the final cherry on top of a perfect room. This means changinck out my paint swatches. I'm thinking the one on the top. The lightbulbs I had before gave off a warm tone which didn't go well with the blue tones of my room so I changed to cfl bulbs with natural lighting. They were the coolest (cool as in color) ones on the warm-cool spectrum, plus they are more energy efficient.

 See how changing from incandescent to cfl lightbulbs make a difference? 

What's left? This is obviously a work in progress. I have only been here a few days and I am satisfied with what I have accomplished so far. I am hoping to have the bathroom and shower room painted with shades of blue before I leave. I also wanted hardwood floors but I don't think that is going to happen anytime soon. I also want the walls in my main room painted grey and the trim painted white. I have to get paintings ordered to put on my bare walls and hopefully a desk and nightstand. I also want to change the curtains in my room. And you can't see it in my photos but to the right of the sink in a linen closet. The way the floorplan is, the doors run into each other so I plan to take out the door and put in a pressure rod and curtain.

December 28, 2013: There's No Place Like Home

"Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting place was." -Jodi Picoult

          Getting to go abroad for the semester was one the greatest and scariest things I have ever done.  I loved that I got to go study in the UK at such a internationally flavoured university. You could walk up the stairwells of the library and hear phone conversations in 3 different languages. As interesting as it was to study abroad, the experience of being on my own for the first time, magnified by living in a different country has given me a greater appreciation for the stability and familiarity of home. For the first 18 years of your life, you take for granted the house you live in, the parents who feed and love you, the friends you've known for years and the routine you've crafted for yourself.  When you leave for the first time, it feels as if the world is suddenly upside down.  The things in your life that have been constants for your entire life are suddenly not there. 
   
          The reality starts to settle in when you have your first fever and suddenly you have to set reminders on your phone to self-medicate with Advil because your mother isn't there. You don't realize how much she means to you until you are thousands of miles away because before you were a college student, she was always there for you. And now, she is replaced by words from an email and pixels from a webcam.

          After staying in Boston for a night, I was ready to head home.  After a total of about 4 hours and one final boarding pass printout, one final security checkpoint and one final plane boarding, I was off to DFW.  I saw my mom and my brother greeting me at the airport. I hadn't seen their faces in nearly four months! It was so glad to be back home and get reoriented with my home. Was my bathroom sink always that low? Were the lights always that bright? Anyways, that was the conclusion of my semester abroad and subsequent two weeks around Europe. There were highs and lows to this trip but everything is a learning experience and I definitely became a wiser person after this.  To end it with a cliche: there's no place like home.

P.S. If you have read my entire travel diary, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to listen to my story. Whether you know me personally or not, whether you clicked on a link that I advertised for found this my mistake, thank you. I know these are not uploaded in real time and these last posts are six weeks overdue but I really do appreciate everyone reading. I don't care if there's two or two hundred of you all. As long as there is an audience, there is a blogger.