"It really tied the room together"

So while I like to make my blog thoughtful—I don’t dare say “philosophical”—this week is pure frivolity. And beauty. And pictures!

Josh and I have been going through a major furniture rearrangement on our second floor. We decided that since we so rarely have guests stay with us, we’re moving the guest bed from the biggest bedroom in the house (we occupy the second-biggest bedroom because that’s where the master bathroom fit) to the smallest bedroom in the house. The double bed looks kind of silly and oversized in there, but realistically, our cat Pansy is the only one will use it 360 days out of the year.

 

 

We also put the bed in here in a strange placement, because Josh didn’t want the head of the bed to go under our wall-mounted shelves, in case they should fall in the night and crush the face of our guest, on one of the four nights of the year we have a guest. Or our dear Pansy. We’ve had a close call before (see description below). So I agreed, and now the headboard is in the middle of the room, not against a wall, and carefully positioned to not block the window. It looks weird, but I’m not going to dwell on it.

 

The big bedroom is becoming our playroom/office/homeschool room, since we’re in talks about homeschooling Rye. But that’s for another episode. I think a playroom/office is a pretty bad combination, because if I need to get something done, like writing a story, it should not be in the same room with Rye playing. That’s why I currently get 98% of my work done while he’s napping. But then again, who actually does work in their office? Isn’t that really more of an area where you just dump paperwork and other stuff you don’t feel like dealing with? My current “office” is a desk in our foyer. It works, but the lighting is bad, so I usually unplug my computer and go to the dining room. But having an upstairs office will be nice for those times I am working while Rye’s awake but Josh is here to play with him. Plus that room gets good light and feels kind of spacious.

Except for when I'm writing this, because we are only half-moved in. Or rather, all the furniture coming in is in, and the stuff that needs to come out is only half out. And the reason the move is half-finished is because of the little things—like Josh wanting to spackle some holes where his giant CD rack fell off the wall. (And now those CDs are in laundry baskets in our basement, also waiting to be dealt with.) He also wants to sort all papers that were stacked on his desk before just shoving them back on top like we all do. And that’s honorable, but not something I can help with.

 

 

 

We also had a bookshelf with tons of photos still in their little boxes from the places we had them printed. I’m thinking I’ll go through them, finally, and put them in books, and toss those that aren’t worthy of being placed in books, which is probably 75 percent of them. So that should save us a lot of room too.

And now to the fun part of this whole room-switching discussion: I get to buy a new rug! And the best part, is that it is a rug for a “playroom/office/homeschool room,” in an upstairs level that few people will see. Which means I can go wild! I love looking at rugs. We only own three in our house right now, but you can guess that the two that were purchased since we remodeled our house 6 years ago were very, very carefully chosen. I love color, but I have learned how to show restraint when we moved to our “grown-up house.” Plus Josh really cares about home design and to a slightly lesser extent, décor, so I have to take his opinions into account when making these big decisions. And an 8x10 rug is a big decision! But I’ve been given carte blanch, except with price, considering this is a playroom.

I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve logged in about 8 hours of online rug viewing so far. And I don’t regret it. But since I can’t buy all of these rugs, I thought I would use this blog to show off some of the beautiful rugs I have found.

First, I wanted to go colorful. And I don’t mean in some rainbow kids rug or one with giant crayon pictures on it. Josh and I are not those kind of parents. We let Rye eat with our normal flatware on our ceramic plates. When he gets the hang of drinking from a cup that doesn’t have a sippy top, we’ll probably give him glass jelly jars for a year and then move him up to the real thing.

But back to rugs. One of the first colorful, acceptable rugs that I came across was this one:

 

 

 

 

This is about as kid-themed as I'm willing to go. But then the more I thought about it, I felt like this was more appropriate for a kid's bedroom, so I moved on.

Then I found these amazingly beautiful hand-woven cotton rugs by Safavieh. I fell in love with about 6 of them, but these were my two leading favorites:

 

 

   They're actually rag rugs, like those ones people used to keep by their kitchen sinks or in the laundry room, but these are made with a zillion different colors. I'm almost weeping at their beauty. My hesitation is that cotton is not the easiest to clean, but I can rationalize that by the thought that they are so busy with the colors, that any spot on them that you clean up will quickly disappear once you walk out of the room--you'll never find it again. I'm also a big sucker for chevron. And I don't feel like it's trendy--it's timeless.

   Then I started looking at other rugs by Safavieh, and decided this is a company I really like. Because they also had some gorgeous Ikat designs, such as this:

   This one is not overly Ikat, and the colors are still kind of muted. If my first floor rug was ready to be replaced, I'd definitely consider this as a possible replacement. But then I thought about how the upstairs room was such an opportunity to go crazy, and I decided this one was too safe. Another two that kind of fell into that category were these:

   The chevron is a little muted, but I'm not so sure it could hide stains. And then this second one, which is sort of a wood-block design, is also gorgeous, but not really wild.

   Then there are the ones that I would buy if I lived in an all-female house, like this gorgeous number:

  Not to mention all of the prettier-colored chevrons out there, like coral, a current favorite color.

  And I really, really loved this one, but I didn't think it fit our house. But I would absolutely buy it if I lived in an old church that had been converted to a house. Yes, I think that would be totally cool. 

  So there you have it, an idea of some of the things I find beautiful these days. If only I didn't love seeing my wood floors so much (or could afford $1,000 per rug), then they could all be mine.

   So which one did I go with? I thought about waiting until the room is put back together and showing a picture of it all together for the big reveal, but I would be annoyed if someone did that to me. Have you made your guess? Alright, I'll tell you: the blue chevron. It was on sale and kind of a steal, and seemingly stain-proof via distraction, and very thick and heavy which is good for little knees and sound absorption.  I'm hoping it's as beautiful in person as it is on the website.

   And that Josh will let me repaint the room if I decide that needs a more vivacious color too.

   And that he'll help me repaint because painting sucks.