Summer Nights

Anyone who knows me from back in “the day” knows my obsession with bedding. As a young teen, I poured over the Laura Ashley catalog, decorating bedrooms of future imaginary children. (Lots of ticking stripes…)  During summers in college, I worked in the home department of the Ralph Lauren outlet. I learned how to fold blankets, towels and comforters. I obsessed over pattern names and tracking down discontinued favorites at West Point Pepperell/Stevens stores across the southeast. Constance sheets and a Garden Gate sham (which you’ll see in a sec…) were my biggest scores.

And when I got my first apartment, I changed my bedding constantly. We’re talking the whole nine—dust ruffle, shams, the works. I even had red flannel Christmas bedding. Sexy, no?

In recent years, I’ve cooled my jets a bit. Or maybe I’ve just refocused my efforts. But since last summer when we traded in our ceiling fan for a chandelier and used a dinky table fan wedged onto a shelf in the closet for air, I knew that when the temps heated back up, our bedding would have to adjust.

Here’s what we had–which I love and will definitely be making a return in the fall.

The brown quatrefoil duvet and shams are from Dillards. The floral sham is the afformentioned Garden Gate RL sham, also from Dillard’s, now that I think about it, circa 2000. The down comforter says “seasonless,” but it’s really not. And I’ll use any excuse to pimp out the plate wall.

Another view:

So, I’d been eager to switch things up, but then when I saw Amanda’s master bedroom via Urban Grace, I knew what I wanted to do.

How much do you want to wake up every morning in this bedroom? That giant window is so amazing. I don’t think I’d ever close the curtains.

Well, I don’t have the window or the giant floorplan, and our brown accent wall and green headboard ain’t goin’ nowhere, but the bed? The bed I can do.

I decided to go with ivory over white because our dust ruffle is ivory and, along with shotgunning Bud Lights and eating at Waffle House, I believe my wild and crazy impulse dust ruffle changing days are behind me. Also, fabric I had picked out several months ago for a bedroom chair is ivory too. I bought really ridiculously soft, no-name sheets, a King blanket (even though our bed is a Queen, I’ve found it better to go big so you have enough fabric to tuck securely despite the fact that my husband is an untucker), and the throw pillow (Ralph Lauren AND ticking stripe–dreams do come true!) at Homegoods. I already had the matelasse shams and coverlet, so hooray for hoarding!

As for the bedroom chair, it was my grandmother’s (drink!) and had some nondescript cream damask on it, which was stained.

I found a 1 yard remnant of this fab ikat (? I like to throw around big decorator words for bonus points.) for 10 bucks at Lewis & Sheron. I had originally seen it in October during the dining room chair fabric hunt for $30 a yard and it made its way to the bargain bin by the time I came back for it in February-ish.

And I used the same recovering strategy I used on our dining room chairs. This was a little trickier because of the curved front, but I managed to stick the front folds where the arm of the chair meets the seat.

A moment of Keeping It Real: 6 days out of 7 this chair is covered in clothes, 85% of which are not mine.

And finally, to solve the fan issue, I picked up this antiqued bronze Hunter table fan at Target and a $15 plant stand to set it on.

It does the job, but it’s still May.

What about you? Do you change up your bedding with the seasons? Other decor like throw pillows and stuff? Well-uh-well-uh-well-uh–huh? Tell me more, tell me more.