Room for Color outtakes

Hopefully you've already voted for me in Apartment Therapy's Room for Color contest. But maybe you're still wavering. Or maybe you just want to see more of the faaaaabulous photos my brother-in-law took of my living room. I've talked about the various pieces of my living room a lot so in this post I'm going to highlight the newer pieces.

I'll start with my throw pillows and am finally, FINALLY, done with shopping for throw pillows. I bought them from etsy seller labdesigns. She did some fantastic work on these pillows - even the color of the zippers are coordinated. How awesome is that? 

 

This peacock pillow isn't from labdesigns, it's from Target. But it plays nicely with the designer fabrics while keeping things from being too matchy.

Of course, the very newest member of my household is my faux cowhide rug. But first I have to start with the coffee table. See, I've wanted a gold & glass coffee table for a while because the wood one was just too heavy and visually bulky. I searched all over the place at all sorts of price points for a version that also had a shelf underneath and couldn't find one anywhere. I had seen Bossy Color paint one from Ikea gold and it was quite pretty in her living room, but it was the same size as my wood one and I wanted smaller. Plus I was iffy about the floral pattern on the shelf. Would that be goofy in real life? More searching and the best I could come up with was a $1k version that was mirrored, not glass. So I caved. Bought the Ikea one and painted it gold. And I love it. I don't notice how big it is anymore and I use the shelf constantly so I don't have papers piled up on top, which means I can actually put decorative objects up there like my glass platter or some flowers. Or both!

But it was almost too airy now. I needed a rug to ground the space, but I didn't want a rectangle. I wanted to soften the angles of the room and my seating arrangement a bit and a rectangle would have cut off the dining area and the room's small enough as is. So I thought - oooh, cowhide! And then I found this fake one on Overstock for a great price. Done.

I love the mottled look through the glass on top. And somehow the flowers work so much better in gold.

Moving back over to my doorway now. It was still warm the day Karl took these pictures so instead of coats, I have my collection of LL Bean boat and tote bags hanging up. I still have them all here as they're perfect to grab before trips to the market or for bringing stuff into work, but they're covered up by coats.

But they're not new. What's new is over to the right. The doorknob to the powder room.

How freaking pretty is this? It's from Anthropologie, bought on sale, and I adore it. It's the perfect thing to bridge the turquoise of my living room with the green of my powder room. It makes me insanely happy.

All of these items also brought more patterns into the room, made it more of a collage, made it cozier, made it more me.

So if you haven't voted for me yet, what are you waiting for??!!

vote for me!

Every year, Apartment Therapy has a contest called Room for Color. I love it because, hello, I love color! All of the rooms are so inspiring and when I first learned of it, I knew I had to enter my living room. Last year something went wrong with my submission and it didn't go through, but this year I got the confirmation email right away and this morning my room was posted! Woo hoo!

So you have to vote for me. I mean, come on, you're reading my blog! Plus look at this room. Does it not just scream "COLOR!" All you have to do is go to this page and click on the big red button that says "Add to favorites." Easy.

This is the first round of voting and it's done by region. As I write this, there are only two entries in my region (East), but more will be added until the 11/8 and then this round of voting closes on 11/21. Then the top vote-getters in each region then compete against each other.

Ask all of your friends to vote for me as well. Ask all of your relatives and coworkers. Ask strangers on the street. Vote early, vote often. Ha - I kid with that last part. You can only vote for a room once.

Did you miss the link? Here it is again: http://community.apartmenttherapy.com/contests/color/2011/entries/3131

thanks!

rejected

I can't lie - I'm more than a little hurt that my living room didn't make it to Apartment Therapy's Room For Color contest.  I mean, would you reject this?

Of course not.

One of their FAQs is "I received confirmation that you received my entry, why wasn’t my entry posted?"  I never received a confirmation.  So I'm consoling myself with the thought that maybe they just never received my entry.

Though maybe they were confused that my room looks so green in the above shot and so blue in this one:

But that's how my living room rolls.  It changes color based on the amount of light and the type of light.  Sunlight is different from the lightbulbs that came with the house is different from the lightbulbs I've bought is different from dusk is differnent from morning.  And, of course, flash vs. no flash.  My house is a chameleon.

By the way, these pictures look waaaaay different on my monitor in the office than they did on my laptop at home.  So I kind of have no clue what you're seeing.  This next shot is still in the blue family.

But I'll make it through. 

There are things I'd like to fix anyway, like my coffee table.  I want something with a glass top.  And since I'm probably not recovering the orange chair anytime soon, maybe I just need to add some more orange to the room.  Like a pillow for the wicker chair.  I want a new one anyway.

I also need to dress my entryway a little more.

So I'll make the changes and take new pictures and be ready for next year's contest.  I'll enter right away and will make sure I do it correctly and I'm sure I'll be selected.  And win, of course.  I don't even know what the prize is.  I just want the world to love my colorful living room.

That, you know, I want to repaint.  But we'll keep that a secret.

And check out my lamp!  The best thing that came out of this contest - I finally go around to fixing the lamp.  I had to glue the socket a little more and I added some lime green ribbon to the shade, which makes it look SO much better.  The brown trim just yelled out "70's!"  In a bad way.  Now it's all fresh and pretty.  The glue I used shows through the ribbon so I do need to fix it, but I'm not worried.  I have lots of ribbon leftover.

 
Enjoy the pictures and get ready to vote for me - next year. 
 
In the meantime, vote for your favorite rooms here.  But don't vote for this one.  It's too close to my living room.  Yeah, I'm bitter.  Whatevs.  I've accepted it.  I do think my favorite is this bathroom.  That green!  I love it.  I also rather love this purple living room.  I think it best reflects the spirit of this contest.