chloe’s new bedroom: chapter one.

Tony and I have been discussing ideas for decorating Chloe’s new bedroom after the big move. Neither of us are huge fans of “themed” rooms, like a Tinkerbell room or a Hello Kitty room (although I did have a Sesame Street room and a Little Mermaid room as a kid and loved them both!). I just feel like Chloe would outgrow something like that too quickly, plus I prefer the look of colors and patterns that aren’t necessarily part of a set.

Here is an example of what we DON'T want:

Image found on Google.

I asked Chloe once what her dream room would look like, and she said “pink and purple”. That immediately brought an image to mind of a bedroom that a fairy princess had barfed all over. Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme. But pink and purple are two of the most girly-girl colors out there, and the thought of combining them both in the same room just made my head hurt. We know Chloe will love whatever we come up with, and won’t be upset if it isn’t “pink and purple”, so we’re not too worried. (Sidenote: This is a girl who wants to be underwear for Halloween. I’m think she’s down for just about anything!)

I was googling kid's bedrooms online the other day to get some inspiration, and came across this adorable color scheme of lavender, white, and celery green on WeeDecor:

The room pictured is obviously a nursery, but I thought maybe I could find similar colors for Chloe’s room. I searched every store I could think of (and even a few I’d never heard of) for this color scheme, to no avail. The only shade of purple I kept coming across was more of a pinky-purple shade, which is the exact opposite of what we want.

I started getting really tired of looking at bedspread after bedspread, and decided maybe I’d start with some fun curtains and work from there. Ever since reading about Sherry’s DIY no-sew curtains here, I was really excited to try it out. So I found a fabric store online (I also tried JoAnne’s but I didn’t love any of the patterns), and started browsing, with no particular color scheme in mind.

That’s when I came across this super-fun-but-not-over-the-top-girly pattern (how’s that for a description?):

I immediately fell in love with the color scheme. Its fun, it has the pink Chloe wanted, plus a punch of bright green that I think keeps things from looking too fairy-princess-barfy. A win-win for everyone, especially Tony, who’s been trying to avoid the curse of too-much-pink since Chloe was born!

Next, instead of jumping back into my quest for comforters, I decided to first look for accent pillows. This was tricky because I knew I wanted a pattern, but I didn’t want anything that looked too crazy next to the curtains. Since we don’t know what the room will look like yet, I’m really hoping the bed is not on the same wall as the window, otherwise I may have to rethink a few things.

The green color in the future-curtains is called chartreuse, so I went to Etsy and typed in “chartreuse throw pillows”. I searched through quite a few, but ultimately decided on these pillows:

I just love the green color and the fun, bold pattern. The fact that Chloe will have patterned curtains and patterned throw pillows pretty much made my mind up that the comforter should be a solid color, most likely pink. I searched all over for solid pink comforters in the right shade. I wanted something that was salmon or coral pink, and not something that was too fuschia. Seemed easy enough, but this was actually a hard task! I finally found a new duvet cover on eBay from Pottery Barn Teens that seems like it could be the color I’m looking for. It's kind of hard to tell from this picture, since it's all packaged up, but here you go:

I also found a pretty fairly priced down comforter on overstock.com to go inside the duvet cover. It doesn’t include pillow shams, which is a bummer. But really, what 5-year-old needs pillow shams? Most of Chloe’s pillows end up on the floor anyways. Plus, there will be accent pillows.

The only thing we haven’t found yet is sheets, but we’re thinking of choosing sheets that match the lighter pink color in curtains. Or if that’s too much pink-on-pink action (hey, get your minds out of the gutter!), we could just get white or off-white sheets.

Eventually we’d also like to make a DIY fabric headboard, as shown here but haven’t decided what color that should be yet. Maybe some more green? I’m really lovin’ green right now, if you can’t tell!

We’ve also been thinking about different wall colors to tie it altogether, but we’re not too worried about that yet since we may not even be able to paint the walls at our first place.

And just to give you a better idea of the whole room, here it is altogether:

I think Chloe’s room will look awesome when it’s finished. Tony says he thinks he’ll like it, so I just have to make sure he’s fully on-board before I order anything.

And of course, I’ll have to make sure it’s Chloe approved!