Decorating with Humor

I found a few things a few weeks ago. They’re, um, quite bright, yes? But they were kind of cute and I thought with a little bit of good old fashioned spray paint and a few plants they could fit in on the shelves in the living room.

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So this is how the right shelf looks as of today…

… and here’s the left shelf. What do you think?

I’m up to four shelves done now… I’ll take this as good progress. The terrarium thing has worked out pretty well, although I’ve had to replace a plant or two here and there. Sticking with plants that do well in indirect light has been key. And it only took me a few weeks to figure it out! Look, even more progress!

I think the swan is looking a little bit more classy in her coat of white (please don’t look too closely or you’ll see all the spots I missed that glow just a touch blue!)

And how about these little vases?

I’m trying not to think about them as brainless beauties, but rather as lovely ladies with awesome hats. But the bad seed has been planted I’m afraid.

These three little plants—two in the vases and one as the lovely lady’s hat—are all the air plants from Brimfield. One is already blooming, and the two pictured here are getting ready to flower in the next few weeks.

I used to have a pair of these peacocks, but the baby managed to get a hold of one of them and then smash it to smithereens within the two seconds we had her eyes off of her. I may or may not have held on to the pieces for a few weeks thinking that maybe somehow it would magically be glued together again when I came down for my morning coffee.

I really hope these plants do well. This curly spiral leafed Begonia is something else!

But I have to admit my favorite part is this…

Yeah, definitely my favorite.

Terrariums are popping up everywhere these days, and I’ve enjoyed figuring out how to pull in a few more on the shelves. The thing is, there are only so many glass jars and vases that I felt I could fit in, so finding these goofy little containers seemed like a fun way to fill more space and add more plants.

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Linked to these fine and fun DIY sites ::

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The Bookshelves

A while ago, and I’m not saying exactly when, the Christmas villages that my Mom put up for us were finally taken off of my shelves and boxed up and put away.

Which left them a bit, uh, empty and looking a bit uncared for, possibly dusty… Possibly.

That window seat is quite popular in our house; it’s almost everyone’s favorite place to sit. The good thing about it is that while you’re there taking in the view, watching the ships sailing past, you can’t actually see the shelves. Of course this means I was able to ignore them a bit longer than I should. We started filling the shelves up with random bits of things that couldn’t find their home, and I knew that unless I came up with something, they were bound to stay the catch-all place for little bits of junk that would drive me to distraction.

The thing is, I’m miserable at decorating. I’ve never had the knack for it like some people do. Although I’m comfortable creating color schemes and painting walls, it’s really hard work for me to pull objects together or even have a vision of where I want it all to go. I know when it’s not right or I don’t like it, but I’m not good at figuring out what I’d like better. If you’d ask me what my style is, I’d refer you to my friend Heather (Hi Heather!!), because I really don’t have any idea what it’s called. Maybe Too-Tired-To-Clean-Up-The-Legos Transitional? How about Post-Modernist Meets Dust-Bunny?

Here’s what I decided to do. Well, I say “decided” but really, this is a project that’s in progress… so maybe I should say “I’m deciding” since it’s all subject to change should I come up with a better idea. I know that I do not want something so busy that it detracts or competes with the view out the window. I don’t want it to be too littered with tchotckies, since I’m afraid that not only will it get too busy, but it will become a little-kids-with-curious-fingers magnet area. I think that I’d like to keep it simple and monochromatic, with bits of natural color and textural contrast thrown in here and there. I’d like to keep it calm and focused. I thought I could use some of the big (and small) glass containers I have lying around, as well as some of the stones we have from our local beaches (they’re beautiful… and free!) and see where that got me. With all that glass and all those rocks, I thought it might be nice to jump on the terrarium bandwagon as well.

So! All that thinking, and a little bit of gathering, now I have…

The left bookcase…

The right bookcase…

I have no idea what all the plants in the big terrarium (which used to be a pretty awesome fish bowl) are, but they looked pretty nice at one of our local garden shops. I hope they all get along now that they have to play so closely together. The plant/moss in the little jars are hyper local terrariums, directly gathered from my backyard.

I only have the bottom sections of the shelves done so they’re both still pretty empty, but at least it’s a start, right? I need to rearrange a few things, get some more rocks and natural materials to work with, but now I have some idea of how to move forward.

What do you think?