And if your style were a label who would it be...

Okay -

So I have some new goals for the new school year and one of them is to get through this "project" of making my house look better. As I mentioned before I started on the master bath. Here are my before and after photos. I know, I know, it doesn't actually look like I did all that much, I agree - but using the camera did help me see things I had been ignoring or not paying attention to for quite a while. This bathroom used to be Restoration Hardware "Celery" and I changed it to this peppier Winter Ice Blue last winter. I think it was a vast improvement, but alas, I do not have the before photos of the previous color. The Celery thing was hip for a while but I found it boring and bordering on a greeny ho-hum gray. I just can't have boring colors in my house.

Sometimes I go into someone's house who has used all sedate grays or browns or beige or taupe and I think "geez, what is wrong with me, I should grow up and use more of these sedate colors in my decorating...so mature of them...so very Calvin Klein of them...so very....hmmm...well...uhmmm...so very boring really. Scratch that, I'll stick to my colorful house, even if it is slightly more immature















and Christian Lacroix 'y' .







Because let's be honest - I admire Mr. Klein so very much but....would you rather wear this?



or this?











I mean sure, if you're going to a PTO meeting, you're way better off with the Calvin Klein, ditto a business meeting...but I don't spend a lot of time in PTO meetings OR business meetings either one, so I'd opt for the flouncing red any day.


But I digress...the before:

this is fine...it's the inside of the shower - you can see where I got all 'restoration hardware' and 'pottery barn-ish' with spelling out "bath" on the wall. I'm very over it, but I need something really great to go on that wall instead - I found the perfect painting at a gallery last week but I'm trying to resist spending money on art right now so "bath" it shall remain until I figure out something else. (the photos don't do them justice, but how much do you love these Henry Stinson paintings for that wall...I know...perfect!)


























































Anyway - when we round the corner of the tub we find a bigger problem:

Here I actually found a painting I really liked last year for the other wall. It used to say in pottery barn letters "relax" (I guess I was trying to remind myself what I was suppose to be doing while I was taking that long hot bath) I took the letters down but since I had paid full pottery barn prices for them, I really didn't want to just get rid of them, so I propped them in the window. That looks retarded! But I didn't even really realize it until I saw it in the photo.


And here is a totally cluttered sink area which is doing me no favors in the looks department either:












And look at those photos propped up on that shelf above the toilet. That just looks like more clutter. I have several photos of us on vacation in Mexico in this bathroom, because that was kind of my theme for the whole bathroom - relaxation, vacation and blue like the ocean with a re-occuring beach/water theme in the paintings. But those look really dumb up there.














This isn't too bad, but it just needs to be tidier.























So with some minor changes, putting things away, moving some photos and getting rid of those letters in the window, I think it looks much better.











By the way, I love this Brian Boner painting of this little boy.












































(this photo is a smidge darker than the others, but doesn't that whole window thing look a TON better)






























Now if I could just afford the Stinson....