Shoe Box Decorating 2: A Practical Shoebox

I mentioned in an earlier post that we couldn't choose the blue/green/brown theme for Whimsy's dorm room because it was the color scheme for big sister. 

And that would be no fun.

After all, we're  already precariously perched on

Me Too Mountain. 

We're going to the same university...
And assigned to the same freshman dorm...
On the same floor, no less.
Creative, aren't we?

There is one major difference though. The Practical One's shoe box room was a size XXL.
She  arrived to college three years ago to discover that she was assigned to a handicapped room.

 (On the third floor... in a dorm with no elevators.... Yeah, seems kind of odd to my way of thinking too, but that's higher education. That's why we pay them the big bucks...)

She is called The Practical One for a reason. She's practical.

.

She chose brown for her comforter. We're big on a solid, dark, colors around here. I'm just thrifty cheap enough to want it to last all four years, and a decent quality dark one has done just that.

Each one of her pillows is reversible and piped in the same brown piping.

A king sized pillow is in a small polka dot with plain blue on the back.

Small pillows have large and small dots.

Because that's a practical way to switch things up a bit.

It needed a splash of color so we found this festive floral for a final pillow.

  It's my favorite.

I'm just oddball enough to drag these outside for a picture. 

Needing to get a life  here...

Here it is in the dorm room.

The pictures are the best I can find.

Day 1 her freshman year.

The desk area

complete with the flowers.

No move in day is complete for The Practical One without flowers.

It's a rule.

 

Just like her mom,

a vase of flowers is her impractical pleasure.

The Duchess found this little white cubby hole thingie online

in Target's juvenile department.

 We wanted to free up surface space on her desk.

It came trimmed in pink, but we just painted the whole thing white.

We made that tufted memo board with our scraps.

I'll yak about it another time.

She has kept the basics since then.

She just adds a little every year.

Her junior year was the first year that she had a nook all to herself.

We added little valances for her windows.

I wanted to make them out of that floral fabric,

 but we didn't have enough.

(Sure wish I had known Miss Frou Frou Britches then...)

So we found brown tab top valances on sale at Target

and dressed them up with what scraps we had left.

 Fabric coverd buttons and a little stripe.

So that's what we've been up to around here. We're working on dorm room #2.

It's similar.

But with a little signature whimsy.