Interior Decoratin' 101

So we moved into this cottage in July and proceeded to re-decorate like mad. It was just like one of those home improvement shows where every weekend was filled with ripping up floors, bringing the beige walls up to white, adding color, scouring Craigslist and junkyards, and spending more time in Ikea than I'm willing to admit. As the way of large projects normally goes, we got the place up to a certain level and then stopped, convinced the last few details could be knocked out easily in no time.

Fast forward a few months and those little details still remained unattended to, but the pressure of hosting Thanksgiving here was the fire under the pants we needed to finally get things done. I knocked out some curtains, Aaron wired the outside lights to a dimmer, and then we worked on the pretty things.

First, our centerpiece

The original idea was to get a piñata but none looked very good. A mad dash to every mexi-mart on 24th Street quickly lead us to favor a fuzzy ceramic sculpture, and I fought hard for the bull (you should see his balls). He's actually a piggy bank, but the thought of breaking him open for a few cents makes me sad, so I may just tape his hole shut (or stuff his balls in there).

Then came the big project: what to do with our silver wall. The way our house is laid out we have a slanted ceiling that leads up to one gigantic wall in the living room. We wanted it to be spectacular, so we chose to paint it silver with the idea that, at some point, we'd overlay a design of some sort. The design has morphed and changed over time, but with the deadline drawing near we had to pick something. So here it is:

And here it is with the rest of our living room:

If you notice, the hunter and dog are actually me and Paco

Ze birds

Aaron installing (a misleading picture since I actually did most of the installation)

Aaron has a laser cutter at his shop so we found images (and posed, when necessary), traced the outlines in CorelDraw, got the paper, and voila! Cool wall mural for $16. And that's this lesson from Interior Decoratin' 101.