Pillows, Please.

If you can't tell from my last couple of posts, I'm obsessed with decorating my house and getting it to that "homey/comfy/I love living here" place that I want it to be.  I've told myself that I have to focus on one area at a time.  I can't get in the mindset to decorate everything at once because then I'll go crazy and be like "BUY ALL THE THINGS!" and then I'll bankrupt us on Pier One curtains and One Kings Lane knick knacks.  So.  One thing at a time.

Right now, since I've solved the entertainment center dilemma and turned the crates into a functional piece that I love, I've moved on......to throw pillows and curtains for my living room.

I showed you all in my post yesterday what I was lacking in each room.  In my living room, it's personality.  It feels to me like we just moved in and I haven't done anything to the room except slap down a rug around our existing furniture. So it's my goal to add some character.  First step, find some throw pillows and curtains.

Throw pillows

Can I just say something that I feel needs to be said first?  WHY ARE PILLOWS AND CURTAINS AND RUGS AND ANYTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH HOME DECOR SO EXPENSIVE??!?!  $25 for a pillow.  Excuse me?  Rugs are $150 or more, or you're getting a piece of crap.  Lovely.  It's like the general market wants us all to have ugly houses or give up our first born if we want to have our houses look put together.  Harrumph.  I'm done now.

I'm a little bit stumped when it comes to throw pillows in my living room.  It's not like I can just pick three or four pillows that go together and slap them on my couch.  You see, I have a very, very patterned area rug.

I could totally pick out a color in the rug, buy two throw pillows in that color and call it a day.  But I don't want to do that.  I want to be able to mix patterns like a boss.  So far, I'm not very good at it.  I'm learning....slowly.

The other issue with this rug is that all the colors, other than the chocolate brown outline of the paisley swirls are all some funky looking colors.

The problem with funky colors, in my opinion, is that I can't just look at that, say "Oh.  That's coral." and go to Google to search "coral throw pillows" that will perfectly match this rug.  This is a problem.  And even if I did know the exact color, when you type "steel blue pillow" into Google, a million different shades of steel blue pops up.  Basically, I have a picture of my rug on my phone and when I see a pillow that I think might be one of these colors, I whip out the picture and hold it up to said pillow to see if they're a match.  Most of the time I'm wrong.

But I did find a few good options at Pier One last night.  Normally I don't even step foot in that store.  Mainly because I want everything in it and I don't have the fundage to support that want.  After striking out on throw pillows in other stores, I thought I might risk it.

While in the store, I played around with different pillow combinations (all while Avery yelled "WHY ARE WE LOOKING AT PILLOWS?!? MY BABY DOLL NEEDS TO PEE!").

So, I did find this pillow.

Pier One, $24.95.  Not bad.  I liked the orangey-rust-coraly color of the pattern.  Plus, it's a pattern, but it's subtle.  I did the "hold my iPhone picture up" test and it passed, I thought.  It was enough of a contrast from the pattern of the rug, but also had similar colors.  Plus, it was really freaking soft.  So I bought it. 

With this, I can go a couple of different directions, I think. 

I can get several pillows that are all in that specific shade of rust/burnt orange/clay

I like this option.  At least I know that all the pillows match.  But it's a little more monochromatic than I was wanting.  I really want to utilize the variety of colors in my rug.  But this is most definitely the "safe" option.  (clay colored solid pillow, $23.96, Pier One)

My favorite color in the rug is the little chartreuse/lime green swirls.  There's not very many of them, but I think they're so bold and colorful.  Ideally, I'd pick that to be one of the colors that I bring out into the pillows.  So the other night (you know, at 12:30 am when my stupid brain wouldn't shut off and let me sleep), I went on Etsy and searched "chartreuse throw pillows."  And this popped up.

$49.98, Etsy.  I want it.  I need it.  It's chartreuse.  It's whimsical.  It's Mary Poppins inspired.  I WANT it.  But it's $50.  That's a little too pricey in my book for a throw pillow.  Especially a cream colored throw pillow that little Avery hands will be all over.  But gosh, do I ever want it.

So, just for pretend, like I'm actually going to buy the pillow, let's see what we could do with it.

I LOVE times a million this combination of pillows.  It's so feminine.  I love the colors and the patterns and the way they all kind of flow from one to the other.  But this combination does not match my rug at. all.  *sniff* (grey, coral and chartreuse patterned pillow cover, $45, Etsy)

I think, to pull of this look with my rug, I need a solid color pillow to anchor the two patterns,  but how do I find a solid color that will compliment the clay color in the pillow on the left and the chartreuse and teal in the pillow on the right?  I can't.

It just doesn't work all together.  Goodbye, fun, beautiful pillow.  Maybe one day.

Here's an option that I'm kind of digging.  It's got the chocolate brown solid color, the patterned pillow I already bought and then a zigzag pattern that seems to have a lot of the colors I'm looking for:  chocolate brown, clay, cream, chartreuse.  The blue isn't the right blue, but I'm not really hung up on that I don't think.  This is definitely going in the "strong possibilities" category (chocolate brown pillow, $23.96, Pier One; zigzag pillow cover, $20, Etsy).

Or, I could mix the options together, just picking out two of the colors in the rug:  chocolate brown and clay/burnt orange (someone find a name for this color so I can stop calling it clay/burnt orange).

I'm kind of digging this too.  (Plaid pillow, $17, One Kings Lane)

Well.  I went into this blog post with the intention of talking about throw pillows AND curtains.  Now that I've bored you to death with every throw pillow out there, I think I'll stop now.

Until I find an actual combination I'm happy with, I guess the cheese stands alone: