Bold Rug...now what?

My friend Diana has a beautiful floral rug in her bedroom as a jumping off point.  She wants to incorporate color and potentially pattern but the question is, how do I do it without it looking too busy?  Can I still incorporate color and pattern in the bedding if I already have a patterned rug on the floor.

Yes, I say!  Yes, you can.  It is all about a happy medium.  I struggle with this whenever I look at rugs but truthfully in my opinion you need to view your rug as a neutral base.  That's not to say you don't want to coordinate and pay attention to the fact that your rug needs to mesh with the rest of the things in your room but just that you don't need to worry so much about incorporating things to be totally matchy matchy.  Now that I've totally confused everyone, I think it is easier to demonstrate with pictures.  These rooms have a lot going on but yet feel totally cohesive in my opinion.

All images from here.

Nursery Inspiration

I know, I know.  I've been totally slacking on the blog front lately!  I'm working on getting my creative juices flowing so I can start working on the nursery.  This weekend we moved everything out of the guest room and into the basement to make room for baby.  I've pretty much settled on Arrowhead Lake from Behr for the color of the walls (with white trim).

I sampled it this weekend and both my husband and I really like it in there.  I like that it doesn't scream baby and could easily be sophisticated for a grown up bedroom.  I actually got the inspiration from the latest Wisteria catalog that I got (by the way, if you haven't looked at it closely, you need to because I want everything in there!).

That's about as far as I've gotten - a paint color and a cleared out room.  Next step is getting my husband to paint...

I have been looking at lots of ideas on Pinterest, of course.  It's overwhelming now that it is actually my turn to do this to try to pick everything and make a decision on what direction I'm going to go in with the room.

Here are some of my inspiration pics:

All images from here.