Jazzin' up our bedroom

For a couple years, I was part of our school's jazz band. I don't have many recollections of that time, like which songs we played, where we performed or even who was in it. But I do remember one lesson we were given about improvising. Since blues scales are pentatonic (consisting of 5 notes per octage) instead of septatonic (which is more common, and thus had been drilled into our heads for most of our lives), we would often throw in a note or two which didn't necessary fit into our key. In our head, these were mistakes. Our conductors advise was to keep hitting that mistake, until we made it seem like it fit.

It felt weird at first, repeatedly hitting a wrong note. We had to overcome our instincts to quickly back off the errant sound, and push it forward with intention.

And that's the key (pun only half-intended): intentionality.

The thought came to me this weekend, as I was doing some home decor tweaking. It occurred to me that all the green pieces in my living room worked... but were never actually part of our original colour palette. In fact, the pillows that lead me down the 1970s path didn't include any green. I just kept insisting that green worked... until it did.

(Thank you to my in-laws for stealing this chair out of my
brother-in-law's bedroom when he wasn't home)

Walking though Ikea the other day (oh ya, we finally have an Ikea here. So much time wasted in their mini-self-contained houses.  592 square feet of bliss!), I came to the realization that I hate our bedroom. It was falling out of favour with me every day for the last month and a half (that is the downfall to having a clean house -- you can actually see the decor), but that Friday I just snapped. I couldn't live with it ANY LONGER!

I swapped out pillowcases. I sewed some curtains. I just couldn't make the room look anything but country. And I'm not country. There was the obvious solution -- remove the gifted-to-us-as-a-joke-but-ended-up-in-our-bedroom-because-it-matched-even-though-it's-broken wicker chair. But that still didn't help the make-do-bedside-tables that we bought three and a half years ago. Dark stained bambo and water hyacinth drawers sound tropical... but looks country.

In case I haven't said it, I'm not country. I'm retro. I'm mid-century. I'm clean lines. I am NOT country.

I tried to see what they would look like if I covered the baskets with fabric. My mother tried her best to contain her sneer of disapproval, and to be honest, it did look less country... but just as campy.

I tried to find boxes (either in a colourful leather, or a wood which we could paint), and nothing fit their bizarre size.

I had offers left right and centre for dressers to replace our family's cast-offs and hand-me-downs (which we decided not to replace in the end, since we didn't have the heart or desire to get rid of them), but no one could solve my bedside table conundrum. It looked like I was going to be stuck with them.

I would have to learn to love them; take their blaring wrong note and incorporate it into my key. I had to make them look intentional.

Five minutes on the Ikea website later, I did it. I found lamps that will help tie everything together. I know it will take a few more months to pull it all together (especially since "redoing the bedroom" was not anywhere on my to-do list before this weekend), and the lamps are the most expensive part of this project. Now, even though that wicker chair is still sitting in the corner, and that lavender and mint toss cushion still reminds me of the 90s, I don't walk into my bedroom and get hit with a wave of disappointment; I get hit with a wave of excitement. All the bits and pieces may not make sense right now, but I can pull them all together. And isn't that what jazz was all about?