When I’m stressed, or just daydreaming, my mind always goes to interior design, specifically in my own house. A couple weeks ago I went on a field trip with Interior Design II to find inspiration for our project this semester, the lobby of a dorm on campus. It was SO hard for me to pay attention to what would work in the Penn Lobby and not just focus on what I wanted in my own home! We went to a hotel called The Nines in Portland, and it was gorgeous! I was super inspired by one of their dining areas! Here are a few pics before I go on:
I at first fell CRAZY in love with the canning jars sitting on re-claimed wood shelves along the wall. I loved the variety of colors, orange, yellow, green, purple, brown, grey. I have never considered myself to be a big purple fan…actually…I’ve never liked purple, but I LOVED this purple! I loved it combined with all the other colors. I also loved all the textures! This dinning area was super elegant yet still very cozy!
I want to do something similar to this in my dinning room. I would like to only have one wall of reclaimed wood shelves (built by my loving husband 🙂 ) that not only serves as decoration, but serves as storage! I plan on canning a lot this summer (which I’m sure I’ll blog about a little later) so this is not only gorgeous but functional!
My dining table at the time was strictly green and yellow, just like my kitchen, a “happy fruit” theme of lemons, limes, pears and apples. So, it didn’t quite fit the new look I’m trying to go for, however my dishes were already perfect for this theme. I love my dishes, they are perfect for every-day use and elegant enough for special occasions! At Fred Meyer I found, on super sale, some great eggplant and cream, chunky plaid place mats and napkins. I got 4 of each for around $10 total and saved more than I spent! The place-mats have one purple square that has the texture of a dish cloth, kind of waffle-y. I love that it mixes things up a bit. I already had yellow napkins and they also go perfectly with my purple place-mats. I have dark, olive green glasses, another of the many colors I found in the dinning room at The Nines. When Jake and I were in California, visiting his grandparents, we went garage sale-ing and there I found 4 super cute purple bottles, and 6 amazing vintage, orange, glass plates.
Today I set them all up, and LOVED the result! All I need to do now, is can away and get Jake to make me some shelves when we move into our new apartment! Maybe work on getting a different dinning set as well…
Daffodils that Jake picked for me, from the side of the road, on our 4 year dating anniversary 🙂
I found this at a lighting store on our Portland field trip and thought it would go really well with the rest of the design for the dinning room. Of course it is thousands of dollars, but I still really liked the amber and the frosted glass.
That’s all for now 🙂 but I’m sure I’ll have plenty to show later!
<– the process
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