{via}

I’ve wanted to paint our master bedroom since the first of the year. Selecting a wall color is always a challenge for me and I lean on my friends for votes when it comes to the finalists once the samples are in place on the wall.  I’m really skilled when it comes to second guessing my own decisions.  So after discussing dark paint vs. light with nearly everyone, I decided to go with a darker paint and that resulted in narrowing it down to 3 colors that I really liked, but which one would win the beauty contest?  After discussion and a visual assessment, my friend Carla voted for the color I thought I liked best.  Confirmation with Mr. B and we now have Benjamin Moore’s Alexandria Beige on our walls, and most importantly, we love it.

Before…the room was painted a Martha Stewart/Green Tea color…you can see the botanic pics above the headboard.  They were a little tired and faded.

Inspiration…

{Atlanta Home [left] ~ House Beautiful [right]}

After deciding on a paint color for the walls I felt it was important to think about replacing the botanic prints that had been hanging above the bed for the past 20 years.

Sidebar:  I bought Mr. B a bird feeder for Father’s Day.  I know that sounds like it might be an odd choice but we love watching their antics, they’ve been very entertaining.  Since birds have become such a delightful pastime for us, I decided to search for some antique bird prints for the existing frames.  Not like we spend hours watching them but it is fun to go to the kitchen sink for a glass of water and see them carrying on.

…and Squirrel Nutkin visits regularly…

Back to replacing the botanic prints above the bed {focus, Karen}…I lucked out, an online store I had purchased my guest bathroom botanic plates from sent me an email indicating they were having a sale and I was able to buy 4 Dresser, hand colored plates of beautiful birds of Europe.  Trillium Antique Prints offers a wide variety of antique plates from historic books.  In the case of my birds, when I received the bird prints, they had included the description pages from the book that they were taken from.

{tumblr – Persephone’s Box}

Here’s the room with the new paint color and the bird-plates.  I’m still working on finding pillow shams and a quilt to use at the base of the bed.  The blue and white came from storage.  We had purchased the Pottery Barn shams and quilt when he was working in Northern California.  The jury is out on whether this is the best look for the room.

I apologize for the darkness of the photograph.  It’s not the brightest of rooms in the house and my new white shades seem to throw a bit of glare in the picture.  You get the jest of it though, right?

The bergere chair is covered in a bee fabric, I hope to find a pillow for that chair.

The lamp shades for our swing arm lamps are from Target.  They are part of the Threshold line and very affordable.  The shade is a white linen-look and I really like them.

Thanks for stopping by.  The room is a work in progress, but then isn’t that the way with a home?  

We leave for Austin tomorrow morning to babysit Olivia!  I’ll be back in time for a post next week.  Enjoy the rest of your week and have a wonderful fall weekend. ♥ Karen