The Master Bedroom

So, back in March I asked for help in deciding what color to paint our master bedroom. I appreciate every one's input SO much, I cannot even say how much it helped me. After reviewing what everyone said it became quite clear to me that our master bedroom was meant to be green. I don't know how I missed that. Anyway... I was completely hooked on the idea of luxurious red sheets, so I went with green walls, and 600 thread count red sheets--lovely! Pictures never do justice to paint colors, it's quite annoying. Anyway, the color that I chose was from Ace Hardware, Royal Interiors, by Ace, in Palmetto. It is a lovely shade of green that heads just a bit towards celery when the sun is shining on it, but fades into a greeny-taupe in the evening shade. Perfect for being cheerful during the day, but restful at night. My favorite thing about this paint is that it is a neutral in the room. You may not normally think of green as being a neutral, but it totally works as one in this space.
Since it was a lighter but deep color, I decided to do all the walls in the same color. I like accent walls in theory, and in other people's homes, but I've never managed to be okay with them in my home, for some reason I have this unquenchable urge to "finish" the room when an accent wall is painted. I have no explanation for this other than perhaps a touch of freakish OCD.


The other thing I'm loving about having this room finished is the white molding. The house came with this horrible orange plastic stuff, which looks TERRIBLE with color-painted walls. Normally if I have the choice, I prefer wood over paint, but this stuff is SO not cool. So, I've been painting the molding as I go along, and wow, it makes the house feel so nice to not have that nasty orange wood looking molding! It's just a horrible job to paint it. I'm not a very good painter, so that doesn't help. Anyway, the room, oddly enough feels so much bigger now that the walls and moldings are painted. It's really a great space now, and I am loving it. As Frank likes to say when he walks in the room, "Wow, it's so RESTFUL in here!" I know he's making fun of me, but I just don't care, because it actually IS restful.

The walls were looking a little bare, but I didn't want to spend money on canned, mass-produced art (I'm kicking my soapbox away, so I will not climb on it and preach to you about that subject today), and I can't afford custom art, so I had to come up with my own to fill the spaces. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I cannot draw a picture to save my life, but words, I love. I'm all about meaningful words and phrases. However, the last thing that would work for us is cheese ball love quotes in our master bedroom. We are NOT "Come away with me, and be my love, and let's suck each other's faces and grow old together" mushy-gooshy-squooshy folks. Not that there's anything wrong with that... It's just not us. So, I spent a lot of time thinking about, looking for, and pondering what quote/poem whatever would work for us.


I ended up finding two different ones that I liked, and I couldn't decide which one to use. I finally decided on using both of them because I had two spaces available, and because one of them has long time meaning for us, and the other is an awesome quote by Bruce Lee. My personal rule, as of now, is that if you find a Bruce Lee quote that works for your decoration, IT. MUST. BE. USED. It's a Bruce Lee quote!! You can't NOT use it! That would be an outrage, people! So, here's my awesome Bruce Lee Quote, slapped up on this frame. If you're an actual artist, you should probably avert thine eyes, right about now.


This wooden frame and backing was $3.99 on clearance at craft warehouse.
Isn't that a great quote?! Yes, thank you, I thought so myself. :-)


And the next one I had to use for a few reasons.


#1. "Carpe Diem Baby!" has been a line we've passed back and forth at each other from the time we started dating. It started as a chorus to a song that came out right around the time we started dating, and it just sort of became one of those things we'd say to each other whenever the situation fit, and as often as possible. So, it work for us, without being mooshy-gooshy-squooshy.


2. We both are huge fans of Roman History.


#3. I personally love ancient poetry.


This is the end of the poem, the first part is all about how the Roman God Jupiter may not grant you any more days, and I didn't care about that part--we have no place for Roman Gods in our home. But, I love the end of the poem, which has a lot of personal meaning to me, as I've almost always got my eyes on the future, and I quite often forget to appreciate the moments. As it is in Latin, I'm hoping I split the poem in the right place, haha! Frank and I worked on this one together to get it to be as accurate as possible. We wanted it to look like the ancient Roman graffiti. Anyway, I originally started out thinking it would look cooler in Greek, so I translated it to Greek, which was a learning experience, but it didn't look quite like what I wanted, so we went with Latin, and did our best to form the letters as they did back in that day.


Roughly translated, it states:


Be wise, strain your wine, and since life is brief, put aside far reaching hopes. Even while we speak, precious time has passed. Pluck the day, putting as little trust in tomorrow as possible.

That frame was $15 clearance antiqued wood, and I used a scrap piece of heavy cotton canvas from one of my aunts, stapled and glued to the back. Then, textured with a few different cream shades, and since my painting skills don't reach to making something appear to be carved in stone, as most Roman graffiti was, we decided to use a dark, coordinating paint instead. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. There is a typo in it--for some reason I kept misspelling one of the words, and of course ended up painting it the wrong way. 9 million meaningless points to the person who can spot the typo. :-) Part of me desperately wants to seize the painting down from the wall and fix it, and the other part of me kind of likes the typo. Ha! It's not like Mr. Quintus Horatius Flaccus will be marching into our bedroom and complaining that we misspelled his poem.


And so, that's good enough for now. I have one other thing I'm working on for this room, but it's going to have to wait... it's not doing what I want it to do, and I had to put it away because I was so annoyed I was ready to light it on fire. But, I think I've worked out how to fix it, I just gotta find a few minutes to do it! Anyway, that will have to have it's own post if I ever get it to cooperate--it should be pretty cool.


And Chatty, someday I shall have a zebra striped reading chair in there--I'm waiting for the right one to come along for me to re-upholster. :-)


Thanks again to everyone for their input! Have a great Memorial Day weekend!