One Room Challenge Week II

If this is your first time visiting my site, welcome! For the next 5 weeks I’m participating in the One Room Challenge & I highly recommend you get caught up to speed, see my hideous before photos, & learn more about the ORC challenge by checking out last week’s post here.

For my ORC I’m designing our great room & breakfast nook. They are both in need of cosmetic updates only, no major face lifts, so I was compelled to refresh two spaces to make me worthy of taking on the challenge <insert fist pound emoji here>.

Last week I couldn’t drum up any before photos of the breakfast nook, so I’m delighted I finally unearthed a photo of the sad before! Legs everywhere, blah yellow paint, and our tile is an abysmal shade of coral. In this photo you don’t see the dated heart wrenching sadness that is our tile. Alas, we are keeping it. If we retiled here, we would have to retile in three other spaces (including our great room). We hope to move soon and it doesn’t increase the value of our home enough to pull the trigger. This lady is a perfectionist and loves fine things but I’m practical above all else so sa la vie. Thankfully Pottery Barn has created my awesome sauce solve, this hubba hubba 8’ jute rug. It came yesterday, it is divine, and the first inkling of hope for the nook.

I’ve had a vision for the breakfast nook and this weekend, like a phoenix rising, I found my vision realized on Pinterest:

Googling the photo (so I could know what genius to credit - it's by Meg Braff, I should have known, I am such a huge fan), I delightfully found it attached to this article on House Beautiful

Tropical perfection by Amanda Lindroth

I excitedly resonate with all 12 signs, but #6, associated with my breakfast-nook-white-whale, and is the essence of my aesthetic:

“6. Even though you don't have palm trees swaying in your backyard, they're growing inside.”

Mic drop.

We are in Michigan, it is barely spring, and we have palm trees inside year round, an oddly awesome validation to create your Palm Beach oasis in your home, wherever you may be, if you ask me.

That’s all this week. You may find it lacking but please keep in mind I’ve been obsessing about that inspiration photo in an unhealthy way. The tablescape alone…