Olive green recup'

While we were still in the process of  buying our house, the vendors generously allowed us in to start some decorating - sounds crazy, but it worked, given the drawn-out French system. Ben and I chose pale cream walls throughout, as the house is dark in the traditional heat-reducing way, but we did decide to paint the walls of the brighter bedrooms in actual colours - hence our bedroom has pale green walls, which was pretty much Ben's choice.

When we moved our furniture in I put all our old blue-themed bedroom accessories into the green bedroom, and spent the next few years disappointed with the room: nothing seemed right, and I felt cross that I hadn't stood up for blue. A few years later, I decided that the answer was to give up on blue and buy (yes, buy) some green duvet covers and use all our other green accessories - I have adored the room ever since!

To me, the two duvet covers I bought back in 2008 are still 'new', and I am still very fond of them as they set me off on the discovery that this house was going to work well for us. This one is partly bamboo fibre, too, so it's green in two senses, and very comfortable. However, it suffered a mishap this summer when some guests got a peroxide-containing product onto the pillowcases and the lower half of the duvet itself, so it's been out of action while I hunted for green cold water dye in enough quantity. As you may be able to see, I dyed the pillow cases solid colours, and dip-dyed the duvet cover so that the intact top part retained its pleasant two-tone stripe, while the bleached lower part gets increasingly olive, neatly covering up the pale patches.

It's all worked swimmingly, and the olive green goes ever so nicely with the walls and the two édredons whose enormous, feather-filled weight are keeping us warm this winter.

This bed owes a lot to blogging friends - the lavender heart in the first photo was made by Dandelion Beck in Australia, the French-ticking heart bag on the bed head is a Lululiz creation and the way to tuck in a French duvet was taught to me by Penny at Violet White!

I told you about the eiderdowns the very day I got them, but here's a find I haven't shared with you before - last year I was lucky enough to find two embroidered draw-string bags, one in France, the other in Edinburgh.

This is the Edinbrough one, and, as it contains green, it's allowed in the bedroom and is now holding my handkerchiefs from the handle of my bedside drawer. Although green is Ben's favourite colour, not mine, I now find our green bedroom incredibly refreshing and peaceful. I had to make my peace with what we had (green) and not try to force it into something we didn't have (blue). A valuable lesson!

 

What Son 2 and I have to make peace with today is that we are both ill. I've just taken some ibuprofen to go with this morning's paracetamol and I'm feeling rather better now! What a relief - but it's a day of racking coughs and tissues thrown onto the fire, and I'm grateful for a cosy house and good medical care, and a warm dog snuggled up next to one, or both, of us.