Guest Room Decorating

Drum roll, please.

This will be my first post with pictures!

This PCS move has made me start thinking about the moving process and all that it entails. We are on the wait list to live on post, and we are going to have a 3 bedroom duplex. It occurred to me that we will need to furnish a guest room for when you all come to visit! And I am hoping that the 3rd bedroom will soon be a nursery! :)

The thought of furnishing a guest room seems to be a daunting task. We have no spare furniture of any sort to put in there, and I want there to be a comfortable room to house our visitors so they don't have to pay to stay after paying to travel to get to Ft. Campbell.

I just so happened to be a part of a conversation a few weeks ago when my step-brother's wife mentioned they had a spare queen-size bed. I was listening to her story, and then I had a light bulb moment. Wait, we could use a queen-size bed! As the gears in my brain started turning, I realized that my plans for a guest room were beginning! Thanks for the bed, guys!

My goal is to furnish this room very frugally but beautifully. Of course.
  
1. Start with what you've got. I racked my brain for a good color scheme, and, realizing that we had a spare king-size down comforter with a grey duvet cover, I had another light bulb moment.  Grey and yellow seems to be the hot trend for decorating as of late. So I thought, grey, yellow, and throw in some navy blue with white accents. I browsed pinterest for some visuals, and I liked what I saw. The challenging part was finding what I had in my mind.

 2. Check for coupons. I have an amazing purse-sized coupon filer that always goes with me when I run errands. I got it at Walmart for about 7 bucks. It even has a slide-out notepad and pen for making shopping lists.

I had a 20% off your ENTRIE purchase coupon for Bed Bath & Beyond, and I also had a gift card. So, the logical place to start looking was here. I scored BIG time! I spent a good 5 minutes rummaging through the clearance shams, not really expecting to find anything I liked. WRONG! I found a navy blue square sham, one side has small white outlined flowers stitched on it, and the flip side has big white and yellow flowers on it. You basically get two shams for one!

I still wanted 2 identical shams, and what are the odds of finding that in the clearance pile...but I found a second one! 
I moved on to the sheets, and imagined what color would look best. There really aren't any yellow options in the world of sheets, so that was a no. And with the comforter being grey, I decided navy would look best. I spent FOREVER trying to match the navy of the pillows - it has a touch of purple in it. I wanted a decent thread count, but was hoping to avoid spending a lot of money on sheets that, realistically, will hardly be used. I settled on these:

I didn't find any other toss pillows or blankets or throws that were of interest to me. I decided that I was done here, except for a few other small things (a couple of place mats and some coasters).

Queen bed sheets: $31.99  -originally $39.99

Shams: $3.99 each  -MAJOR SCORE!! They were originally $39.99 each

I used a $50 gift card and my coupon. My grand total: $2.09. Amazing!

3. Check discount stores. I stopped by Gordman's, but their bedding section was pretty pitiful. Burlington Coat Factory is also a good place to check. Great pillow selection, but nothing that I was looking for. I moved on to Home Goods and found this adorable white pillow with silver/grey sequins! I had seen similar ones at Target and Kohl's, but they wanted a pretty penny for it.

I found the yellow pillow at Target.  I kept the sham in my purse while I went into other stores to be sure things coordinated. I'm glad that I did because the yellow in the shams was proving to be hard to match!

Sequin pillow: $12.99

Yellow pillow: $14.99

4. Check the Clearance section at your favorite store. Mainstream stores usually have more selection of color and sizes. So why not check for those clearance stickers? While at Target, I also found a Queen-size white cotton blanket for the bed. On clearance! Not much of a discount, but it ended up being cheaper than any comparable blanket elsewhere, even Walmart!

 I of course had to get a euro pillow to fill the euro shams. The Walmart I went to didn't even carry them! I checked while at Target, and they had one left. Their price was the lowest out of all other stores I looked at. I will have to keep waiting until they restock - most other Target locations were sold out, too!

Queen cotton blanket: $12.74  -Originally $14.99

Euro pillow: $10.99

So here it is! Still missing the actual bed and the duvet...and the second euro pillow, but you get the idea! The grey pillow is from the grey duvet we will use.

Doing some quick mental math, after I purchase the second euro pillow, it will have cost me about $65 to buy the all the bedding for the guest room. Not bad, considering that one set of nice queen size sheets can set you back almost that much! 

Of course, I only had the bags inside the house for just a few minutes before the "kids" wanted to see what I got!

Once we move in, I will hunt for some night stands and a lamp or two. I hope to stumble upon some fun framed art projects on pinterest to decorate the walls. Hope you all get to visit us soon after our move!