moving to the loft

our apartment has a loft which makes for high ceilings, hot afternoons, tons of space, and oh yeah... a loft we NEVER used until a week ago. Trav, in all his "babe i have a great idea" glory, proposed that we move our bedroom upstairs into the loft and make our now bedroom into the office and use the upstairs futon as a couch. I wasn't so sure how I felt about sleeping way up there and more importantly having to walk up a flight of stairs multiple of times a day just to go to the bedroom (husband and I are not stairs people. I fall going down them, he trips going up them, and it's just a worrisome affair). After insisting he would initiate a strict hold-onto-the-rail-at-ALL-times policy, I felt a little better. But he finally won me over when he said we could buy new furniture (from DI, of course), refinish it, and I could decorate any way I want.

Deal!

(we shook hands...it was very official)

Then a couple of days later when we were bored we decided to move our bed upstairs and the futon downstairs (quite a feat). And after an hour of bumping the walls, groaning, Trav getting mad when he noticed I had stopped lifting, and scooting the bed this way and that to get it centered against the wall, voila!

Since then I have been trying to decide how to decorate the new office on a very limited budget and have it look fabulous. The problem is I am so creative that I have way too many ideas (.....). But here's what I have so far.

I went to Hobby Lobby and found so many goodies I loved but only bought a few things (self control, people).

Knobs galore!

(If not for some dresser in the spare room, these Reds will be replacing the boring knobs on my kitchen cupboards! Eeeee)

Love this color combo, most of all.

But navy blue will always be one of my true, true loves.

Bought this M doo-dad to put on a dresser or something in a little vignette.

I love bright vases.

THEN. The Winners!

These awesome pillows were half off and I may or may have not jumped up and down like a little kid when I saw them. Eek!

And then did the same thing when I saw these giant chess pieces! Eeek eek!

So when I got home I put the pillows on the futon and felt this little burst of happiness.

But as you can see the futon is not a pretty color and I couldn't decide what to put over it so I put a teal fitted sheet and put that on for now, but I can't decide if I like it. What do you think??

This is not a very good picture because the lighting in our whole apartment is sucky, but you can get the idea. It woks for now. (PS teal is my new favorite color...)

These are some things I'm thinking about for this office:

painting the inside of cabinets

yellow dresser

carpet squares as inspiration boards

wallpapered closet

hang a huge mural?

curtained cabinet shelves

dresser drawers with carpet and pretty things inside

make your own wall art via Costco super cheap printing and big Michael's frames

fabric magnetic boards

photo extravaganza

covered light switches

wallpapered doors (eee!)

wall papered shelves

I need a chair like this...

love Chevron print and this bright green is surprisingly appealing to me...

love.

LOVE.

So that's it for now. We'll see how this all comes to fit together!