Ju Ju

Now that you all have seen how we successfully treated the big ol' wall behind our couch I thought it might be fun to let you in on a little secret....Our big, beautiful map panels were not our first attempt at this wall. Nay, a few months ago, we put more than a few holes in that wall in an attempt at a totally different solution that turned out to be...............well, let's see how can I put this......A. DISASTER.

So, way back at the beginning of the year I spotted this wall decor at Target. 

Photo from google search

The "Palm Leaf Fringe Wall Art" or Ju Ju's as I call them were from the Nate Berkus Collection. I loved the texture, shape and pop of black. In my mind I could see a bunch of these ju jus layered atop each other over the couch. So, I did what any smart Target shopper does and I waited for them to go on sale and then loaded a bunch of them in my on-line cart and waited for them to arrive on my doorsteps.

Once they came in we got to installing and the plan was.....are you ready for it?  There was no plan. Literally, my smart self just thought, layer, one on another and go wide and tall and BAM little heart eyes would pop from my eyes.

Wellllll.................

You can't get it right every time right? 

Oy. It wasn't the worst thing I'd ever seen but it wasn't good. The whole concept read as sloppy and just kind of weird. The pieces also seemed to bring a bit of a tribal vibe to the space when mixed with the rug. I don't know, it just did't feel right. So, I took them down one by one, Brent rolled his eyes and we just kind of hit the pause button for a few months. Then, one day I decided to focus less on what to put over the couch and more on what to do with all of my ju ju pieces I had stacked in the corner of my master bedroom. I had a lot of these guys and with a diameter of  20" I needed a big wall to fill them with. 

Insert the large landing wall at the top of the stairs. 

This wall leads you to our master bedroom and is 14' wide. Instead of trying to recreate the original layered vision we decided to go with a traditional grid install. I worked the math (scary!!) and Brent worked the drill and in about 30 minutes we knew the Ju Ju's had found their home. 

Oh mistakes....they sure are brutal, but when you get on the other side, sometimes you just have to laugh and learn, but mostly laugh. 

Unless otherwise noted all photos are my own. 

Christmas Couch

Does anyone else have a room and or roomS in your house that are kind of TBD (to be determined)? For us,  these spaces are either half furnished, completely empty or the catch all for everything in the house without a permanent home. Lucky for us, one Christmas present took one of our TBD rooms from zero to hero in a snap!

You all may remember our upstairs sitting area:

The above image is from Zillow and is what the room looked like when we first toured the house. After buying the house we made a few updates including painting the walls and ceiling, adding a cow hide and jazzing up the built-ins. We will talk more about the built-ins in the coming weeks as I'm working on styling them now. 

For close to one year the room looked like this. Naturally, Luke thought the cow hide was his father (Luke, I am your father...Star Wars style...)

Photo from Instagram.

During that year we often considered the possibilities for this space. We tossed around several ideas including an office,  an upstairs den and a massive walk in closet for me and my shoe collection. While I held up two hands for the closet, those thoughts were not exactly mutual so we ultimately decided on an upstairs den.

This room sits right off the master and is the perfect space for a cozy retreat, but no retreat is complete, at least not here at the Shearer casa without a comfy landing pad, aka…the perfect couch. For us said couch came in the form of the Wyatt sectional from World Market. We'd been eyeing this piece for some time and when it went on sale the day after Christmas we were able to pounce thanks to the Christmas money my Grandmother & PapaJack gave us. 

Photo from Instagram. 

In a flash the couch was purchased and installed in our upstairs den. The couch was in it's new home a hot minute when we found ourselves compelled to hang some curtains. My sister gave us some beautiful curtains as one of our wedding gifts. And for nearly a year they've been sitting in one of our other TBD rooms as we contemplated where to hang them. As soon as the couch became a part of this space, it's as if the stars aligned and we knew the curtains belonged here. So, up they went…

We were on a roll, so while we had our tools out we decided to go ahead and mount our Nate Berkus turtle shell as well. Brent feels about as much love for this shell as he does for Brenta the horse head. Strange really, considering he's a pretty big Ninja Turtles fan. And they say girls are confusing? The shell is almost the same color as the detail in the curtains and just made sense, it needed to hang in this room and I knew Brent would come around when he saw him mounted in all of his glory. To add some dimension to the space we decided to mount the turtle on the curtain rod. Brent, drilled some holes in the back of the shell….

and up he went….

Pretty snazzy right?

This space still has a ways to go. We need pillows, accessories, a coffee table, a lamp, some art and maybe a new ceiling fixture. But man O' man has it come a long way in a flash. The finishing touches for this space will come in time, but it felt good  to pick up the pace, even for just a few days all because of one addition. One couch brought this space from empty and TBD to one of the more completed rooms in our house. BOOM - thank you Grandmother & PapaJack!

Photography by me - Courtney Foster Shearer.