the essential dorm decorating guide for moms

July 26, 2018 adrienne robideaux

Photo by Obed Hernández on Unsplash edited in Canva.

You know you are a design dork when your daughter says her future college roommates are planning on a pink and light blue color palette for their dorm room and your immediate response is “As in the Pantone colors of the year 2016?” instead of “Sounds great, Honey. Let’s go shopping.” I’m just saying that may have happened to me last week and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t judge.

Everyone is getting on the dorm room decorating band wagon these days. Dorm room decorating – like other forms of trend decorating – is big business. Target has its back to school section, of course, as do teen standbys like Urban Outfitters and PB Teen, but even more traditionally full service furniture and décor sources are getting in the mix. This month’s Better Homes and Gardens has a small feature about dorm décor from the 1962 at the very back. For better or for worse, we’ve come a long way in what is available to decorate dorm rooms. Planning ahead and “matching” with dorm mates is a thing now. There are even dedicated dorm décor websites (check out Dormify and Room 422). It’s all I can do not to pull out one of those, “In my day, we…” Honestly. Anyone else just go to Bed Bath and Beyond, buy some twin XL sheets, and call it a day?

shared kids' room (semi) final reveal (one room challenge week 6)

May 10, 2018 adrienne robideaux

And so we come to the end of another One Room Challenge. Or do we?

shared kids' bedroom (one room challenge week 5)

May 3, 2018 adrienne robideaux

Five weeks down and one week to go in this shared kids’ room decorating project. The kids are excited to finally move into their new bedroom but Mom and Dad have quite the list left to accomplish.

small home office ideas (modern southern bungalow week 27)

April 24, 2018 adrienne robideaux

We are at the point in our remodel project where I can’t believe it will still take two months (fingers crossed) before we can move back into the house. At the same time, the outside of the house still hasn’t been painted, the tile is still incomplete, the floors unfinished, the cabinets still in process. So, yeah. How will it possibly be done in two months?

the search for sectionals (modern southern bungalow week 21)

March 20, 2018 adrienne robideaux

We have floors! Ok, we have partial floors. The upstairs floors have been installed and the downstairs floors are in process. We also received confirmation this week that our wall tile for both the kitchen and master shower will be here on Thursday. It feels like things are getting closer even though we still have 14 weeks to go assuming all goes well. Please cross all your fingers and toes. We are so ready to get out of the apartment.

This week, while we waited for flooring and tile, we began looking at furnishings. I know what you are thinking. Fourteen weeks is a long time. But furniture, even from a big box store, is very rarely available the day that you want it. Many furniture stores are really show rooms, where one can try out pieces but not walk out with them. Even a basic table can take 6-8 weeks for delivery. Sofas can take up to 12 weeks for delivery.

clean your purse, clean your life (a.k.a. how to declutter your life)

December 14, 2017 adrienne robideaux

This is my actual purse, people. It isn't pretty.

Someone once said to me (or I read somewhere or there is some famous saying that I can’t seem to put my google on) that the state of your purse is parallel to the state of your brain. In other words, if your purse is a mess, your mind is probably a bit scattered too.

Now before those of you who ascribe to the “mess breeds creativity” school start throwing things at me, I am not saying that a messy purse is a sign of a basket case. (Breakfast Club anyone?) I’m just saying that for most of us...

how to make a reading nook

December 7, 2017 adrienne robideaux

Sources (a couple of these links are affiliate links and I thank you in advance for using them!): alligator, canopy, use your words, frame, lamp, book cart, set of classics, soft basket, rug, faux shearling floor cushion, green pillow, red mod pillow.

It’s raining and cold outside today and all I want to do is curl up with a blanket and a good book. Do you remember the last time you actually did that? Me either. As much as I’m very squarely in the camp to stop the glorification of busy, I’m still guilty of completely over scheduling myself at all times. Don’t get me started on the over-programming that is our lives these days. I could write am entire blog series on my thoughts about over scheduling our kids, and of course, I continue to do it myself. “She really wants to play soccer and take karate and be in scouts and do book club and yoga. How can I make her chose when she’s just exploring her options?” It’s a sickness, I’m sure.

foolproof kid-clutter management

November 23, 2017 adrienne robideaux

How do you stay on top of picking up after your kids? Do you fight the good fight Every. Single. Day? When you walk into a room is there always kid stuff on the floor? You know the things I’m talking about. Socks and books and toys seem to just fall off of your kids where ever they are and you are so over asking your kids to pick up after themselves. Good storage fine and all, but what about the stuff that doesn’t end up in its cute little identified storage space?

kid stuff storage 101

November 16, 2017 adrienne robideaux

Image by Carson Arias via Unsplash. Edited by yours truly.

The clutter of kids is unfathomable. The doll accessories, the Legos, the stuffed animals (oh, goodness, the stuffed animals!), the clothing, the school papers, the sports gear, the art projects… It’s enough to drive any parent mad. If only there was some way to contain the chaos.

Before you get all excited, I don’t have *the* magic answer here. My kids leave their socks in the middle of the floor and walk over them 30 times just like your kids. I do, however, have some tips to lessen the load. And let me get right to it by saying that my number one tip isn’t a decorating tip at all, but rather a way of life instilled in my husband by my mother-in-law that actually works: the old circular file is your best friend.

modern southern bungalow: the girl who cried remodel

October 6, 2017 adrienne robideaux

It is One Room Challenge time, which of course means I’m back on this website. Some of you (Hi, Mom!) have been hearing about our impending remodel for what seems like ever. This time last year, I redid the girls’ room on the cheap because we were soon to be starting a remodel and just needed a temporary fix. This time two years ago, I converted a ridiculous add-on in the back of the house into a family room because we were soon to be starting a remodel and just needed a temporary fix. You all know about the boy who cried wolf so I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

Welcome. let's chat.

Today is #dayofthegirl , a day created by the UN to celebrate the strength of girls and acknowledge the barriers girls face in all over the world. Yesterday in our #girlscout meeting, we made pins to wear today and we worked thru the @wagggs_world curriculum around International Day of the Girl and gender equality. I can best sum up the girls’ discussion by quoting one of the girls: “Mind blown.” (Imagine this with full 8yo drama quotient and hand motions. It was rich.) 👧🏾👧🏼👧🏽👧🏿👧🏻 I wrote a big, long caption about the importance of this day in a global context but the fact of the matter is that my 8yo daughter, who proudly wore a pin last night to dinner (swipe left), won’t wear her pin to school today because she thinks the boys will make fun of her. “They expect me to like certain things and act a certain way, Mom.” Full stop. 👧🏽👧🏻👧🏾👧🏿👧🏼 I’m angry. And I’m incredibly sad. And I’m sharing that here because real life. 👧🏻👧🏽👧🏿👧🏼👧🏾 I get that kids will be kids and the boys in question certainly don’t have an intent to exclude girls simply because they are girls. Or if they do have that intent it’s because both genders think the other stinks at this age. I get that my daughter’s insecurities are her own, her assumptions about what may happen are her own, and I’m sure I’ve contributed to both by being a loud mouth feminist. But y’all. Our kids - our daughters and our sons - deserve better than this. They deserve better than to continue to live within the confines of worn out stereotypes of gender roles. I’m open to ideas. How are we going to change this? #bethechange

I don’t typically celebrate “wins”. To be clear, it’s not that I object to public acknowledgment of success, just that it’s more my nature to move on to the next thing once (if ever) something is complete. It’s also possible that my idea of a win has always been substantially larger than getting dinner on the table. Hence the parenthetical in the previous sentence. 🌮🥟🥞 Today, however, I want to acknowledge some wins and I want to do so publicly so that those of you reading this who are like me, who have what others call “high expectations” (virgos and type As anyone?), and who beat yourselves up over the incomplete items on the list instead of noticing the things that you actually did (and that probably weren’t even on the list to begin with) - YES ! I'm talking to you! You might possibly recognize yourself. (Also that was certainly a run-on sentence. Let’s move on.) 🏅🏆🎖 Today, I said yes to yoga with a fellow mom who I don’t know well, which was uncomfortable on more than one front. And it turned out to be amazing. Health and well-being win. 🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️ Today, I intended to join in with One Room Challenge for the 5th time. I sat down and wrote a blog post about why I was participating only to find in the writing that I no longer felt the need to participate. So I didn’t. And on top of that, I didn’t feel that the time writing was time wasted. Down with busy for the sake of busy win. 🏡🏡🏡 Today, my son lost his campaign for representative of his third grade classroom. He came home in tears. But we talked, and he went from never trying anything new again to never trying things with voting to maybe trying things with voting in a couple of years. He ended the day in smiles. I’m not going to lie. There may have been an ice cream sandwich involved. Parenting win. ✅✅✅ Today, I got real dinner on the table, with vegetables and everything, for the third day in a row, despite soccer and music lessons and whatever else. And my kids ate it. And we talked while we ate dinner. Normal, right? I’m going with a win. 🥗🍝🍪 So there it is. The little things have big impact. Tell me, if you’ve made it this far, what was your win today? #ryhsyinnercircle

Thirteen years married to this guy today. Pretty damn lucky. #adventureisoutthere

Getting ready for a secret garden dinner... 🗝🌺🌸🗝 (thank goodness for Pinterest) #girlscouts

Real life. Something we see very little on social media. Your house is not clean 24-7. You’ve probably got a list of projects you want to finish that’s a mile long. 🏡 I’ve been thinking about what it means to have a house that is “done”. The reality is, a house is never done as much as it is done for now. That perfectly styled photo isn’t what the space looks like on a day to day basis. So in keeping with the idea that real life doesn’t always look pretty, here are a couple of photos of G’s room for this week’s blog post and photos of the same room this morning as he lives in it, dirty socks on the floor and all. 🏡 Your house is great. It’s home. Live in it. Love it. And if you need a little help with that last part, let’s talk. #animalcrackerkids #kidsroomideas #boysroom

There are a lot more important things going on in the world right now than updates on my house (um, midterm elections, the explosion of @designmom ‘s recent twitter thread, the appointment of a Supreme Court justice, and hurricanes just to name a few), but I’m working on an update all the same because we could all use some levity right about now. Also people have asked. And it’s possible that some of those people think I’ve fallen off the face of the Internet universe. Spoiler alert: the house is done but not done. Blog post coming soon. In the meantime, this might still be my favorite room in the house. #acsmodernsouthernbungalow #animalcrackerkids #kidsbathroom #wallpaper

And here we are.... lots to come in my 46th year. Some small, some big. Some wholly unexpected. Thanks for all the birthday wishes today friends and family. I’m a lucky woman.