Makely

Let's Make Life Awesome

How to Add Color to a Room Without Painting the Walls {Part V: Accessories}

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In the excitement of being outdoors to finish the playscape and the front yard landscaping, I couldn’t bring myself to spend the hours on my computer that I normally do each day.  It’s really hard to be stuck inside all day when nature calls.  Okay, not nature calling like THAT, but you know what I mean.

I postponed (in my mind, but didn’t tell you guys) the last post in my series on Adding Color to a Room Without Painting the Walls.  I wanted to post them all back to back, but then the gorgeous Texas weather came along, and it just didn’t happen.  So here we are again.

If you think of your furniture and textiles as the clothing that dresses your room, you need to think of your accessories as the perfect necklace or a great pair of earrings.  Just like in your own wardrobe, the “jewelry” in your room should add unique character and charm while not detracting from the overall appearance.

“Okay, Lindsay.  That sounds all well and good, but how do I make it happen?”

This is the fun part!  One easy way to add color is to create a great gallery wall, like the wall Rhoda at Southern Hospitality created.  I love her mix of neutrals with the aqua bird cage and the painting above it.  Those pieces really do the talking and let the neutral pieces take the backseat.  It allows you to fill the wall and not be overwhelmed with color.

Another way to add color to a room is through your lighting choices.  Traditionally, lamps and fixtures will be silver, gold, black or white?  Why not red?  Or green?  Or blue?

Crate and Barrel Zing Lamp

Don’t want to buy a new lamp?  Try spray paint!  A lacquer or high gloss spray paint might change your life.

If you are particularly married to your silver lamp, why not give it a new shade?  Try Cost Plus/World Market for some really interesting patterns, textures, and colors.   Occasionally, Target will even have an interesting shade or two, like this scrolly yellow version.

If you need some personality to your end table (and no, your husband’s empty PBR can doesn’t count), why not pick up some junky statuettes at garage sales or the dollar store and hit them with a can of lacquer?  There’s a great old post at Apartment Therapy about this.

Of course, there’s always the tride and true brightly colored picture frame.  Even if you don’t hang a dozen of them all on top of each other, you could always add a few to your fireplace mantle or console table behind the couch.  Remember, not every picture frame needs to be neutral!

What ways to you like to add color to your room through your table top accessories?  Talk to me, Goose.

My Secret Shame

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I’ve known you guys for a little over three years now.  I think it’s finally time to introduce you to my secret shame.

BAM!  That’s the overgrown landscaping in the front of my house.  It was originally installed by the builder, and I swear that they just randomly put in whatever was on sale at the nursery that day.  It was just plain ugly.

And then on top of the randomness, a morning glory started growing and completely overtook a bi-color iris.  Once a week, I’d try to pull this thing out by its root, and each week it would come back even more powerful.  I’m pretty sure that this one vine could have taken over the entire world if I would have let it.

For all of our DIY prowess, my husband and I hate working in the yard.  It’s hot!  And there’s dirt.  And one time I saw a spider with a sack of eggs on her back, and it sent me over the edge.   So, our landscape overtook our front beds like a wild kingdom.

Last summer, we decided that enough was enough.  We had a landscaper pull out of the plants in our beds, till the soil (which is clay, by the way) and add in some landscape fill.  If you might remember, we were in a mega drought last summer, and he advised that we not replace the plants until we started getting some rain again.

Fast forward to last month (yes, we left the beds completely empty for about 9 months).  I started doing tons of research online and in different books dedicated to landscaping in our region.  I measured the beds and made a plan of exactly what types of plants I wanted to put in what location.  And then, I started digging and planting.

Do you spy my dog?

Over the course of two weeks, I visited local nuseries five different times.  I wanted to only buy a few plants at a time so that I didn’t overwhelm myself by trying to do it all in one day.

I started off by putting in the two sky pencil trees that flank the front window.  Then came the three Oso Easy Peachy Cream rose bushes under the window.

I added a dwarf mock orange, three drawf yaupon hollys, and a stalked bulbine frutescens.  Look at me throwing these names about!  Am I fooling you into thinking that I know what I’m talking about?

On each side of the column on the front of our house, I planted a crossvine.  I am absolutely obsessed with these vines!  I’ve seen them growing sporadically on the stone fence that surrounds a nearby neighborhood, and I am just so in love with them.  In March, they are covered with gorgeous, trumpet-shaped tangerine blooms.  The rest of the year, they are hardy and semi-evergreen.

In the long part of the bed, I snaked an array of dwarf mock orange shrubs.  I used the curves in the snake to showcase groupings of annual color, which are zinnias (orange, yellow and white) and impatients (red).  I love the mix of the lighter shades of the blooms on my perennials combined with the hot shades in my annuals.

In the mini bed in between our sidewalk and wall to the garage, I put in four Louisiana Irises, two Wonder Flowers, a dwarf mock orange and another crossvine under my Texas Star obelisk.  I’m really not sure how those irises are going to do, but I thought I’d give them a shot.

I also found what may be my favorite plant EVER to put in a pot by my front door.  It’s called a shrimp plant.  Doesn’t its blooms look just like shrimp?

I’m proud to announce that I survived the dirt and didn’t see a single spider while I was putting in tons of plants.  I did, however, see tons of earthworms, which is awesome (as I understand it).  I’m really excited to see how this landscape design grows in over the next few years.

I am now doing whatever I can to keep these plants alive.  I’m watering them every morning, and when they are well established, I’ll switch to three times a week.  I’ve fed them and marked on my calendar when it’s time to feed them again.  I’ve mulched them and am pulling any weeks that poke through.

Now, I need your advice!  I would reckon that 99% of you know more about gardening and maintaining beds than I do.  Do you have any more tips for me or suggestions on other things I should be doing?  And please don’t let that answer be that I shouldn’t have planted a certain species.  That will make me cry!