Top of the morning to you!
I had a fabulous 8 hours of sleep last night! Wheeeeee. No nicky nicky nine door antics. This is progress.
My Vegan Overnight Oat Parfait was killer this morning. I feel like I haven’t had one in forever!!! Her Mix-A-Lot has been getting all of my love and adoration lately.
Carob, Cacao, & PB Vegan Overnight Oat Parfait
Ingredients:
- Carob Vegan Overnight Oats (1/2 cup oats, 1.5 tbsp chia seeds, 1.25 cups almond milk, 1.5 tbsp carob powder)
- Peanut Butter Banana Soft Serve (1 frozen banana processed with 1 tbsp peanut butter)
- 1/4 cup Rice Crisp cereal (for layering)
- Cacao nibs (for layering)
- Carob powder, for garnish
- Homemade raw chocolate, for garnish
- Unsweet. coconut, for garnish
Directions: Make the carob Vegan overnight oats by whisking the ingredients together in a small bowl and leaving in fridge overnight or for 1-2 hours. In the morning, Make the PB Banana Soft Serve. Layer the soft serve with the VOO, cacao nibs, and rice crisp. Sprinkle with carob powder and coconut. Add two chunks of homemade chocolate and enjoy!
This was incredible! I love, love, love the rice crisp added as a layer in the middle. Same with the cacao nibs. So crunchy!
My Simple Decorating Trick: Pick a colour scheme!
Ok, so last night I promised you some decorating footage!
On Sunday, I realized that Eric and I still had gift cards that were given to us for wedding gifts almost 2 years ago! We had gift cards to William Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Winners, and Crate & Barrel. I asked Eric to come with me and he said he ‘trusted me’ to do it alone. aka…he hates shopping! So I tackled it myself like a champ. One of my favourite things to do is decorate, so I didn’t mind.
We finished renovating and painting the family room in Fall 2009. And then we left it. No decor, no colour, nothing on the walls. We were scared.
It occurred to me that the reason why we never ‘finish’ decorating rooms is because we never develop a colour scheme to guide us.
I thought the colour scheme of chocolate, lime, and lemon would look awesome together (with yellow and green being the accent pieces). I picked those colours because there is a lot of chocolate already in the room (couch, wood, bricks) and I picked yellow and green because there are some engagement pictures I want to blow up that have yellow and green in them. The room naturally has lots of green in it with the large windows and the trees in he backyard too.
Now that I had three colours in mind, it automatically narrowed down a ton of options. I didn’t feel overwhelmed as I usually do when looking for home decor. I just scanned the stores for those three colours and it was so much easier!
One great way to add accent colours is with fun and bright pillows…
The two pillows on the right are from Crate and Barrel and the one on the left is from Wal-mart.
I got 6 so far and might pick up another 2 or 3 as I see fit.
I love how something as simple as pillows can transform a room!
Then I bought some accent pieces to add to the room…
This lime green pot is from Winners and the faux fruit are from Pottery barn.
Love this sculpted piece from Winners.
Also both from Winners!
The lemon tree is from Pottery Barn (sorry the pic is blurry!)
Right now all of that stuff above is on the fireplace because we don’t have any family room furniture aside from the couch and the Ikea coffee table.
My plan for the fireplace is to remove the large picture on top and add a print with the accent colours to give it more of a pop of colour. Maybe one of our wedding or travel pictures would work there?
I would love to purchase a nice coffee table, corner chest, and small table, but that won’t be for a while. I drooled at all of Crate and Barrel’s furniture…they have some gorgeous things in there.
What I am focusing on right now:
1) Prints for walls (see below)
2) Coffee table
3) Decorative Curtains
Something is definitely still missing to pull this room together!
We will also eventually be putting hardwood on the floors and removing the carpet.
I want to do prints of a few of our engagement pictures. I am going to pick some with the most vibrant green backgrounds. Luckily we have a lot of engagement pictures with bright green in the background so it works perfectly! I am going to do one huge one and 2 smaller ones.
I also want to hang curtains, but I find it so difficult to figure out what would look good!
Ideas?
I really dislike the hunter green blinds that are up right now. I would like to keep them up though because they were custom made and they are good when you need to block out the light. I would just like something to cover them up.
I also haven’t showed you the other side of the room with a fireplace. I will do that in another post.
Today’s question: Do you have a favourite room right now in your living space? Do you have a favourite colour scheme or colours that you are drawn to for home decor?
I am also looking for a colour scheme for the entry way and eventually dining room. Right now we have Biscuit by Sherwin Williams on the walls of the entry way, but that is it.
I’ve got a busy day of work and I am going to squeeze in a run at some point. See you later and enjoy your day!
No colors right now, but when I was a teenager my parents let me paint my room “Teal Zeal,” and someday I want a teal+cream color scheme! Then I’d throw in some blue accents.
Your breakfast looks amazing! :D
LOVE the decorating. Also enjoy seeing all of your updates. I’m so so sick of renting and never developing a style. Not worth it yet! That VOO looks ridiculous. I’m on my way over. Just caught up on all of your posts from this last week. Delicious eats as always :) xo
Your livingroom is lovely Angela! I really like the combo of those three colors. Ours are a russet red, some deep green, cream, and brown. Hmm, that sounds Christmasy, but I promise it’s not.
Kitchen has mostly golds and reds.
Cute topic!
Your living room looks great so far! I tend to go with similar colors: blues, greens, and browns.
Hi Angela! I love the lime green accents you added!
Last week you were talking about canvas prints for your kitchen, and I wanted to mention that you could make your own. Canvas’ are always on sale at Michael’s and with a some mod-podge and your fave photos you can make your own. Here’s the link… http://momspark.net/need-art-try-mod-podge/
Thanks for the mention, Jodi! I love my mod podge art and it was way easy.
The room looks great! Those are actually the colors of our family room too – greens, browns, and we also have some blues!
ahhh, i would love to have that much natural light in my house! beautiful!
It looks great so far!
I always think curtains are the hardest to pick, as well. They feel so permanent, I think.
Do you realize how fantastic your breakfast looks!?! WOW!
I’m thinking of doing a Canadiana theme in my home office with earthy colours.
Looks great!! I love the lime and yellow pops of colour against the chocolate. My favourite room colour-wise in my house is the living room. All but 1 wall (which is a half wall) are a shade of light blue, and the half wall is a brighter, more intense blue right behind our TV. it sort of separates the living room from the dining room and makes that whole side of the house look less narrow. I’ve decorated it with some bright flower prints (Wal Mart specials!), and black leather couches with bright pink, blue and yellow pillows. I like my colours!
And PS, as per usual, your bfast is making me drool!
Love the living room! You could hang up bamboo shades to cover up the green blinds. Hang them a little higher than the top of the window and then add curtain panels? Young House Love has a great post about curtain and window how-tos!
Agreed! Bamboo shades over (or replacing) the green blinds would look perfect in that room! Set it off by flanking the windows with long panels and the room will look all polished and complete! Ditto Mel below suggesting white. With your wall and furniture colors and the wood accents, and now that you have those adorable white pillows, I think white panels would look awesome. It would look so earthy, yet light and clean and ethereal! Kind of like the living room at a zen spa!
Alternatively, if you wanted something super clean and simple, you could replace the green blinds with gorgeous white roman shades, and then you wouldn’t be covering the beautiful wood molding around the windows.
I like that green…it looks good
The Young House Love idea of billowy white floor to ceiling curtains would look great in there and I think they can be pretty inexpensive (Ikea?).
Wow that parfait looks amazing! Hard to believe it is breakfast :) I can’t wait until I have a home of my own to decorate, looks like so much fun.
you should put a mirror above the fireplace! always makes the room look bigger and brighter
You could add a shear light curtain over the hunter green blinds. It will still let light in if you keep the blinds up or covers them if you decide to put them down. It might even lighten the color a bit. You could also add heavier curtains to the side of the windows for some oomph lol
That parfait looks like a fancy dessert.
I love that color scheme. Greens and browns are my favorite. And I agree with the above commenter. A mirror would look great there.
Love your ideas and LOVE the colour scheme! I was actually going to use the same colour scheme in our upstairs kitchen/sitting room! We have beige walls with chocolate brown furniture and I liked the idea of a fresh green to add some colour but changed my mind at the last minute and we’ve decided to go with slate toned colours that would match the pillows that came with the couch. Of course, we haven’t actually done any of that yet…
My favourite room in the house is actually the bathroom. My boyfriend actually choose all the colours and furniture in the house as it was being renovated before I moved in but he did a darned good job. The bathroom is pretty dramatic, it’s all greys, blacks and sage green. An entire glassed in shower with black tile it’s very much a bachelor bathroom but I plan to add some feminine touches!