Dorm Room Extravaganza

I've been excited to decorate my new dorm room since last spring, and it's finally (somewhat) done! So welcome to the tour. Here we go!

You walk in and the first thing you notice is the gorgeous floral rug beneath your feet. You already feel at home by this fabulous welcome.

Next, you look up to get a full view of the room.

You walk to the middle of the room and turn around, taking in all its beauty. 

Then, you start to notice the little details. The first thing that catches your eye is the multitudes of flowers.

As you notice this last flower in its beautiful button-filled jar, you catch onto the blatant Parisian theme. Maybe it was the giant map of Paris... :P

Or the posters of Place Charles de Gaulle and La Tour Eiffel.

Hey, can you blame me? I'm going there for spring break! :D

Then, you turn around to view our lovely kitchen area.

Alice in Wonderland, anyone?

 As you make the full 360 view of the room, you notice something on the right wall. What could that be? Thread spools perhaps?! 

Amazing, eh? We got the idea from this DIY, but all we did was put the spools over the nails. There was no screwing involved. ( That's what she said ^.^ )  

You turn your head slightly to the left and notice the curtains. Oh the curtains! 

Yes, those are buttons, and yes, I did sew them. It was a very grueling but extremely rewarding project. They turned out ten times better than I imagined. 

After you view these amazing hooks and curtains and are dazed by their brilliance, you begin to stumble towards the door because the creativity of this room is just too much for you. You turn to get just one more glance, and you see the full view of the curtains, in all their brilliance. 

And then you die from a heart attack because you are just too overwhelmed by the beauty.

Haha :)

Bookshelf DIY

So this is the first the many DIYs that I have taken on. I used this DIY, but I changed it a bit to fit my needs.

Materials:
Semi-boring bookshelf
Wallpaper of your liking
Spay adhesive
Scissors

Time required: about 20 minutes

The bookcase that I previously had was perfect for this because the shelves simply lay on pegs and are not permanently connected. The back of the shelf is also cardboard and not wood, which was good for the spray adhesive. I'm not sure how it would act with actual wood.

Before:

My silly cat ( with awkward devil eyes) insisted on helping me.

I found printed paper at Hobby Lobby that was already in sheets, so I didn't have to cut them at all. It worked out that two sheets covered the width of the shelf, so it worked out surprisingly well. I picked paper that was printed like sheet music, and since it was a repeating pattern, it would look like one long piece of music.

This paper was around 50 cents a page, so I bought seven sheets. I figured two for each shelf area and one to have just in case I messed up. 

So first I laid the shelf flat and removed the three pieces. I started from the bottom and sprayed adhesive down in the shape of the paper and carefully placed the paper on top. The tricky part was lining up the paper straight without letting it stick. I repeated this all the way to the top, lining up the paper so the music bars were continuous. When I reached the top I still had about 3 inches that was not covered, so I just cut my last piece of paper and glued it on. I used Elmer's spray adhesive, and it worked perfectly.

After: 

Without the shelves

 And with! 

 

I love the outcome of this DIY and it was really easy. The paper is a bit hard to see with lots of books on the shelf, but it's still great! 

Couch Ridden

As my lovely sickness accelerated in its horribleness, I have been confined to my couch. My go to show when boredom strikes is undoubtedly 30 Rock. No matter how many times I watch the same episodes over and over, the genius of this show is always apparent. There is literally no other show with comedy that can compare to this show. I will be so incredibly sad when this show ends after this upcoming season. Tina Fey is probably the best writer and actor I've seen, and naming her new daughter Penelope definitely makes her even cooler. 

I went to the doctor today and I might have mono. I really hope I don't!

Midnight in Paris

I stayed home from work today because I have a killer cold and I'm too dizzy to really do anything but sit on my couch. So being slightly bored, I hopped onto www.letmewatchthis.ch, which is a great online sharing site with a lot of movies and shows. One of their new movies was Midnight in Paris, starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Carla Bruni, Kathy Bates, and Marion Cotillard. Being currently obsessed with all things French and since I'm going to Paris in March, I loved this movie. The writing was a bit shaky, but the ending made up for it. Here's a synopsis from IMDB:

A romantic comedy about a family traveling to the French capital for business. The party includes a young engaged couple forced to confront the illusion that a life different from their own is better.


Basically, Owen Wilson's character goes back in time to Paris in the 1920s, and meets famous artists and writers of the time. I have no idea how I didn't hear about this movie with all the great actors in it, but it was a good one. You can watch it here.


And, of course, being set in the 20s, the fashion was marvelous. 

The Help

I saw the movie The Help last night after reading the novel, and I would highly recommend both. Here's a brief synopsis from the author's website:

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

It's truly a great book.


As with all movies that are made from books, I go in with apprehension. After living through the Harry Potter movies, I've painfully and slowly learned not to expect all the scenes from the book to be in the movie. This was also true for The Help, but the movie somehow made up for it in its charm and comedy. I loved it, even though some of the funniest parts were not in the book, and it seemed like they very likely could have happened in the story. 


The actors were overall phenomenal. I was a bit surprised and disappointed to see that Emma Stone was playing the main character, considering that most of her movies are sloppy comedies and she was horrible on SNL. However, for this being her first real serious role, she did really well, and I actually liked her as Skeeter. Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer were absolutely amazing in the roles of the other two main characters. Bryce Dallas Howard, who played the antagonist Hilly Holbrook, though skinner than described in the novel, was also fantastic. There was a strange moment at the end where I actually felt sorry for her character, and this caught me off guard because it didn't happen in the book. But my favorite character in the movie was Hilly's mother, Mrs. Walters, played by Sissy Spacek. She was ten times more hilarious in the movie than in the book, and she really stole the show. 


After all the good acting and amazing scenes, the best part of the movie was really the fashion. Set in the 1960's in the South, my sister and I commented on how much we loved the dresses throughout the whole movie. 

Hollywood Movie Costumes and Props

And, of course, the cars were amazing too.

Living Locurto