Room Cleaning

Several months ago I started putting together a 5000-piece Van Gogh "Starry, Starry Night" puzzle. I even created a giant puzzle board with that size puzzle in mind. (Although it will be nice for other, smaller, sizes as well.) And then it sat in my room for months. I have the stars put together and a bit of the streak in the sky, and the edges of course. It's a really great and hard puzzle.

I also have been practically hording my magazines thinking I'll do something with them. And I have looked at them but after that they just sit in a pile at the foot of my bed.

Those two things combined with my bed not ever being made caused me to declutter and clean my room this weekend. I am tired of things just being plopped down and laundry never being folded and then I can't walk around my bed because there is baskets and a puzzle in my way. When cleaning my room I made sure I had the three magazines that I will use (Success, Better Homes and Gardens, and Saveur) and then I recycled the rest of them. There were a lot. I don't know why I was keeping them for so long. I also put my puzzle away. But it took me like ten minutes to put it away because I didn't want to undo the work I'd already done. Therefore I had an idea to put the stars and stripes and moon into envelopes. Each element has it's own envelope and I labeled them so I'd sort of know what was what. I then put the edges on the bottom of the box and separated them from the rest of the puzzle by placing a paper over top of them. They took two layers to get in the box. Next in went the star-envelopes. And lastly, the bags of loose puzzle pieces that I had already sorted by color went into the box. To make sure I, or anyone else, didn't shake the box and made a sign and tied the box with yarn. It's awesome. lol. I did find one puzzle piece I missed on the floor so I put in a plastic bag and put it with the box. I couldn't put it in the box because it was already tied up. But I stapled the bag around the yarn. While all that was being done and I was straightening the rest of my room my comforter and sheets were being washed. I put a little bleach with my comforter to get it to be a crisp white. I had to dry it twice because it's so big. lol. My room looks so put together when my bed is made too.

I decided that I do really like the black and white contrast I have going on in my room. My bedding is white and my headboards are black iron-looking. My book shelves are black and my books on the shelves are covered in white. I have two black end tables in my room which I'm not sure what to do with yet. I like the color scheme so much that I decided to go with it and add my throw pillows back on to my bed with slip covers on them. I keep seeing quilts with a large word fabric and every time I see I love it. So I did some digging and found out that Ikea is the maker and beholder of the fabric. So I went on Saturday to Ikea and braved that maze of a store to the textile department to get my Britten Nummer fabric. I decided to get four yards because My original thought was to have that fabric be the back of a throw quilt. But I decided I could always go back for more later when I'm actually ready to make that quilt. Not all of my throw pillows are going to get a word slipcover. I want a pop of color so at least one will get a colored one. I haven't decided on what color to accent yet. It's either purple or green. I want to pull colors that match my painting above my bed. I think I'm leaning toward a nice rich green color because I like green a lot more. I haven't looked enough into the different colors from Kona to decide on a good color scheme for my quilt. One of those colors will be made into the slipcovers for that accent-accent pillow. lol. For right now I plan on getting a white sheet from the second-hand store and then (after washing it of course) creating a undercover-slipcover for all the pillows so those non-word pillows will still be white. I decided since my pillows are not white to begin with and the word fabric is a bit thin I would whiteify the pillows a bit before the words go on them by adding a white slipcover underneath the real covers. lol. It's maybe more work but I don't really mind. I think it'll make it look nice.