Grown-up Bed Upgrades

In addition to our new headboard (tutorial here and here), I also upgraded a few other pieces of our bedroom for the make-over.

As a refresher, here's the before:

Really, there are so many different colors going on. My bed was red, as you can see from the pillow cases and the red comforter.  Sak had a twin bed in blue, which is where the blue pillow case came from.  I changed out the red sheets since the queen pockets weren't deep enough to cover the pillow-top mattress, so the green sheets are king sized.  Originally the sheets were all in the olive green color, but I didn't like how slippery the microfiber was so I changed the fitted sheet to a dark green jersey sheet instead. 

My Star Wars pillow was given to me as my 7th grade summer camp comfort item - and though I change the pillow form out every couple of years, the pillowcase is to me as the blue blanket is to Linus.  So grown up, I know.

*Hugs tightly*

First up, I dug up the rest of the pillow cases that the duvet came with.  I covered one pillow with the embroidered pillow case...

...and bought some huge 25" x 25" pillows from Ross for the big square cases.  The big pillows were $9.99 each, which was much cheaper than the $30 plain ones I was thinking of getting from Joann's (even with the 50% off coupon).  Plus they are already patterned, so if I ever want to change to blue and brown colors, I'll be all set!

Second, I bought a simple white sheet set in a queen sized made with deep pockets (also from Ross, for $23.99. If you can't tell I buy nearly everything there).  It fits so much better than the normal queen sheets, and are much neater looking than the king sheets! I put our everyday pillows in the white cases so we don't snag/mess up the pretty embroidered ones.

I can already see my mom rolling her eyes at me though - white sheets?! For slobs that eat in bed? Or get bloody noses? It will spell disaster.

But that's what bleach is for, eh? (I say this even though I hate the smell of bleach and don't own any.) I really like our new sheets so far - they make me feel like I'm on vacation in a hotel or something! 

Anyway, I kept the red comforter not because it matches, but because it is always freezing cold and we would die without it.  Since you can't see it anyway, I think this is totally okay.

Of course, our bed doesn't always look like "a store display", as Sak stated, eyebrow raised.  It typically looks like this:

Sak is a single-super-flat pillow only type of guy, while I oscillate between three different types of pillows.  Normal fluffy pillow, contoured memory foam pillow, and soul-comforting Star Wars pillow. I'm sure this says something about the type of people we are, but I am not trained in the arts of pillow-analyzing.

As for the rest of furniture, we have mini MALM nightstands on either side of the bed now.  

Retailing $50 from IKEA, we got the first one from the IKEA clearance section for $30 (it was a retired display model), and the second one from Craigslist for $20.  The lamp (a Target model) came from Goodwill for $7, and all the books are from the library, where you can see we are reading fluff again instead of literary veggies. Well, I guess sci-fi fluff sounds funny, so pulp fiction?

Anyway, I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  True, it's a little "vanilla" compared to the normal things I like, but I'll still get to save the fun bedding for when guests come over!

Star Wars, Pokemon, and Hamtaro! Gotta love it.

I'm going to stick to the design idea that a bedroom should be a calming, relaxing place. I'll save the visual zoo for the other rooms of the house.

Now if only I could finish the other three walls of this room...

What kind of mood does your bedroom have? And what does your type of pillow say about you?