One of my favorite blogs, Emily A. Clark, had a reader participation event today on the theme of foyers.  I sent her a picture of mine, and my foyer (previous post here) was included with a number of other lovely foyers.  (Don't read anything into that, anyone who sent one in was included.)

One thing that kind of jumped out at me was mine was one of about three that had a lot of color in it.  Which is funny, one of my struggles with decorating is using (and toning down) color.  A lot of my inspiration pictures have muted, sophisticated use of color. But when I buy stuff, I find myself buying bright! happy! cheerful! colorful! things, instead of classic and sophisticated stuff. 

For example, here's my inspiration picture for my dining room:

(image via Simply Seleta)

And here's what it actually looks like:

I had a hard time finding an inexepensive wallpaper like the one lining the inspiration picture shelves.  I did find a few fabrics that were similar but the aqua tone was wrong.  Then I found the Robert Allan fabric (Kiki Pinata)

and immediately loved it, it had both red and aqua in it....but note that its a bold, colorful fabric with a large repeat.  Note that the inspiration fabric is muted with a small repeat.  Even looking around my living room/dining room right now, every single fabric I've used has a large scale.  All of the tchotchkes I own are also fairly large (as tchotchkes go.)

I guess I should just accept that my style is on the casual side.  Stop fighting my natural inclination to make things cheery :-)

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In other news, yesterday Grandma bought a SUPER FANTASTIC TOY that is quite the hit.  It was so much fun that the 4 yr old literally brought it to bed and fell asleep while playing with it.

Is that the best crane you've ever seen, or what?