Mood Boards

For MONTHS I have been trying to picture in my mind how "this" rug would go with "those" cushions or what colour I should paint my thrifty lamp so it doesn't clash with everything else but be a nice feature all the same (yep, all the important things in life) and it's been HARD!

I'd heard of Mood Boards and even fell in love with this one from YHL a while back but I'm just not clever enough in photoshop to make one myself.

Then the other morning I read on YHL about Polyvore and Mydeco where you can easily create your own mood boards for free.  I signed up to both to check them out but particularly love polyvore!

Polyvore is an America based site and has links to many of the American homeware stores which I personally think have much nicer things than you can find here (online anyway) however I discovered you can also upload any item you find on the net as well.

And here's my very first effort.  I won't even tell you how long it took me, let's just call it a labour of love!

Family Room Mood Board by karry327 on Polyvore.com

Firstly, I had to work with our existing chocolate coloured lounged. And if you're wondering, that tan thing under the rug is an idea of floor board colour.  My main colour palette is quite neutral, layered with chocolate browns, tans and ivory.  I'm trying to balance out our darker furniture with some lighter textiles.  For colour I've decided to add splashes of red and other smaller pops of colour.  My inspiration is the cushion.  I really love the colours in it and thought it tied everything in together.

Please be kind, it's my first effort but I definitely recommend giving polyvore a go!  It's so nice to see everything all together.  Later I'll show you what I was planning on doing and it so didn't work as nicely as I had pictured in my mind.  

I think I'm hooked!

Pendant lights

I bit the bullet and purchased some pendant lights on ebay tonight!  I lurrrrve them in the pics, here's hoping they look just as good in real life.  'B' loved them straight up too, so major score there!

I figured for only $125 for the 2 including postage we didn't have much to lose should they not be quite right.  Though, everything crossed that they are!

I want to hang them together at different lengths just like the photo below and funnily enough had pictured something like this in my head before seeing the below pic.

Thinking of hanging them in the Living Room (see below layout) to help separate the space from the other areas of the open plan area.  Either that or over the dining table but thinking Living Room for now.

Lastly, being silver, round, modern & textured I'm happy that they're fitting in with our intended colour scheme, overall look we're hoping to achieve as well as helping to balance out all our rather angular furniture.  They should add some nice ambience too!

(Mood Board found at Young House Love) 

As for the remainder of the house, most likely LED downlights.

What type of lighting do you have?  Did you find it difficult choosing?

Decorating ideas and accent colours

I've been putting a lot of thought into decorating our yet to be built house recently!  I think it ties me over when sometimes nothing else seems to be happening with the build.

Aaaaages ago I mentioned to B that I was thinking of Duck Egg Blue as an accent colour in our living / family rooms (one big open plan area).  We have chocolate brown lounges, dining table, dining chairs and basically a bit too much chocolate brown.  Lovely but kinda over did it a few years back.

Here's an example of Duck Egg Blue:

As lovely as our furniture is, if I had my time again or a lovely big budget to work with I'd get at least one of the lounge suites in a creamy / off white colour and have 2 single arm chairs in a complimentary fabric.  I also would have gotten a cream suede covered dining room chair to compliment the dark brown dining table.  Anyhoo, no such luck to the fabbo budget....boo!  So my thoughts are now to balance out the darker furnishings with some lighter colours - namely whites and duck egg blues.


Then I threw a spanner in the works and bought a gorgeous new empire red kitchenaid recently!!!  This made me think that I *should* do my accent colours in red however as much as I love the colour red, it just wasn't the direction I wanted to go in. 

Isn't she lovely?

While perusing one of my absolutely favourite blogs Young House Love recently, I stumbled across exactly the colour scheme I've been looking for on one of their mood boards!!  They've tied in perfectly the chocolate brown, whites, glass, duck egg blue and thrown in a tan kind of colour to tie it all in and add 'layers' and 'depth' (these are my new decorating words ha ha) to the room.  Best part is, B loves it too!  Phew!

I already have some of those gorgeous apothecary jars, bought from Sharnel Dollar Designs about a month ago!

As for my lovely little Kitchenaid, she'll just be a nice pop of colour in the kitchen.  After all, I want everything to compliment each other but not be overly matchy.

So here I am, now trying to find some gorgeous duck egg blue rugs.  They're virtually non-existant here in Australia from my searches so far!  I have however found some gorgeous ones online in the US!  They're quite reasonably priced too so it may actually work out ok to have one shipped here.

Here are some of my favourites so far....

 Apparently this one is classed as grey but certainly looks similar to the colours I'm after...