Dressed to the nines

It's been a loooong time coming but here it is: the (also pretty looong) story of my new dresser and how it doesn't go in my bedroom AT ALL. But how I love it anyway.

It all started with this lovely butterfly mirror from Anthropologie that my brother and sister-in-law gave me for my birthday (I think we all know who actually chose it though, wink wink Valérie).

I'm sure you'll agree that I needed the perfect place to display it. Well I didn't have the perfect place, so I needed a new piece of furniture. I just know this makes total sense to some of you.

Until recently, my bedroom looked like this: 

 

Light with lots of storage, but as one commenter put it on my Room for colour contest entry: "This room looks nice, but it looks like a kid's room, but in a nice way". That got me thinking. Not only did I need a pretty piece of furniture for my mirror, it also had to have a bit of character. I didn't mind losing some storage space since we have this great big wardrobe on the other wall:

And any excuse is a good excuse to have a good clear out and tidy up and take 4 bags of clothes to the red cross in my opinion.

So I started looking around on my favourite website (www.leboncoin.fr) and after several weeks this is what I found: 

I love love love it. Ok so the wood is a little orange-y and it's not in great condition, but come spring I will be outside with my sander and my paintbrushes and a nice woodstain to make it look brand new again. 

In the meantime I've spruced up the drawers with yellow wallpaper left from my secretary project to make it functional.

I started by giving it a very thourough scrubbing down and preventive woodworm treatment (loooong story, more about that some other time, I'm not ready to talk about it yet...)

I like that  the wallpaper gives it a 70's feel and a bit of a modern touch. You can see the damaged wood in this photo. The whole thing needs sanding down and restaining. Or possibly just a coat of beeswax? We'll see about that in a couple of months when it's warm enough for me to work outside.

Anyone know what those patterns in the wood are called? I couldn't find anything similar online.

Ok, on to the very important question of what is going to be placed on top of and above the dresser. I'm not a huge fan of marble and this colour doesn't do much for the room or the dresser itself so I wanted to liven things up with some serious colour.

Enter this 5 Euro round magnetic canvas that I painted bright orange. It was perfect to use the Flower push pins that my auntie Christine got me for my birthday (see how I'm making good use of these presents, doesn't that make you want to spoil me rotten this Christmas?). 

Then I decided it would be nice to hang something sentimental on the wall but without making any more holes, since it's getting a to be a bit much... Enter our anniversary cards and my new obsession: washi tape!! 

Please note that I have written Boyfriend TWO cards, while I have only received one from him... oh well, we have had five anniversaries in total so I suppose this means we both suck at writing cards. The ones I wrote are from Freya's Etsy shop which is full of very very sweet things indeed.

I tried all the plants in the house before finally settling for the first one I had chosen. What else is new?

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted on display here. I moved a lot of things around. I raided the house. I tried things out and hated them. I moved everything back.

Then I realised the wall display was out of balance. Eek. And the colours were too much. I had made another child's room!! What's wrong with me??

So this is the final arrangement. For now.  I'm not happy with the placement of the plates, but there's no way I'm making any more holes in that wall.

See the little bunny ring holder? Another lovely present from my auntie. Money well spent Christine!

The little pink box next to the mirror is a jewellery box that my Mama made for me at her pottery class when I was about 6 or 7. I'm really happy that I dug it out and am now using it again!

The bunny and fox print is a very personal gift from me to Boyfriend. We have this joke that he's my fox and I'm his bunny. I had our nicknames printed above the animal heads. Not many people come into our room so there's not a big chance of us being embarrassed about it. Now that I've blogged about it though...oh well, now that I'm paying 5 beans a month for extra storage space on this blog I figured since it's costing me it might as well be entertaining for my readers, right? Does any of this makes sense? I'm currently working my way through my second grog of the evening, it's helping my cold, I can feel it...