Wednesday Wandering…

(not to be confused with my Monday Meandering posts where I share whatever is going on, links etc. – you know, the catch-all post! 🙂 )

The last two days have been out of the ordinary to say the least. On Sunday, my 10 year old daughter fell off her bike and broke a few bones in her wrist so is sporting a cast from knuckles to elbow.  Poor thing! She has been a real trooper though and getting used to doing everything with her left hand as the cast will be on for six weeks.

Then on Monday I attended Oprah’s Life Class in Toronto. It was a birthday gift from my sisters and I to our Mom who I thought was Oprah’s biggest fan until the 6500 other people in attendance proved me wrong.  (There was also an earlier show with another 6500 in attendance.)

The topic of the Class which aired on OWN that night was on Forgiveness so I’m hoping my sisters, Mom and Jen can forgive me for changing the meet-up time to slightly later than intended.  Had we been there even an hour earlier, we would have secured a better spot in the line up and had much better seats. 
Yes, that’s how far from the stage we were – Oprah was a little, tiny green speck. But it didn’t matter, as we were all on a Oprah high! (well, it matters a little as Mom was a bit disappointed that we were so far back and we weren’t even in the “cheap seats.” I promise to make it right by taking her to Graceland one day – the next thing on her bucket list!)

Oprah talks about the event with CityLine’s Tracy Moore here.

Anyway, back to decorating!  I consulted with a client recently to provide decorating advice for her bedroom.  While there,  I was able to see the updates she had made to her family room after my visit there about two years prior.

I was happy to see that she took my decorating advice to heart!  My go-to, inexpensive solution to fill large expanses of wall (in this case, a double height ceiling) is black and white photos in Ikea frames. I know you are probably tired of me saying this, but you have to admit that it looks great, right?   Much less expensive than a large piece of original art which would be the next best thing.  (This photo is not styled. This is how it looked on the day I arrived to consult about her bedroom and I quickly snapped a photo.)

She also painted it a beautiful grey-blue colour, bought an ottoman, an area rug the appropriate size for the room, white drapes and bamboo blinds based on my recommendations.  Great job Rosalind!

Here’s how it looked before:

Bye bye boring beige, tiny area rug, clutter and paper blinds!

I kept seeing the photo wall out of the corner of my eye while we were talking and couldn’t believe how it completely transformed her space. She also said “I’m so glad I listened to you and used black frames and not the silver ones I wanted.”  Music to my ears!