How to decorate my loft or, an overly long story about carpet.

Because my life wouldn't be complete if I didn't have something shallow and meaningless to stress out about, I am currently plagued with the constant thought of how to decorate my loft.

Here's the deal.

I knew almost instantly what I wanted to do with the downstairs but, for whatever reason have been unable to come up with a design plan for the upstairs. Most of my indecision and stress can be attributed to one thing. My carpet. It's basically the color of tan carpet after about 200 kids walked on it with their rain and dirt soaked shoes. I know what you are thinking, "um Allison, didn't you pick the color out?" Why yes, as a matter of fact I did. And yes, I did purposely choose a medium toned neutral (insert medium toned boring) color on purpose because I knew I wouldn't want something that I had to worry about keeping clean, or a color that would force me to incorporate it into a color scheme.

So at the design center I was down to two choices. We'll call choice number one 12 grain wheat bread and choice number 12 grain bread that fell in a puddle. In other words tan or grayish tan. My initial thought was the fresh bread, but both Christian and John liked the puddle bread better and so after much deliberation puddle bread won.

But I can't seem to shake the idea that it looks a little like dirty carpet. I keep telling myself that it won't once you add in about 1200 sq feet and more doses of natural light than are necessary but the thought still lingers. It stays and whispers to me like an annoying little dwarf peeping over my shoulder.

I told you that story so that I could tell you this one. (Bill Cosby anyone?)

I know that what we have is a loft but what I want is the feel of a den. You know that warm, cozy, slightly dark, comfy furniture, come stay and relax kind of room. So I'm naturally drawn to the darker gray and taupe colored walls. I wont do gray because that is what is going in the MB and taupe is well, taupe. I'm more of cool than a warm palette kinda girl so I wont be doing any reds or oranges. But maybe a cool toned chocolate milk brown? I don't know.

I JUST DON'T KNOW.

I spent some time searching the internets for inspiration. I just saved every picture I liked that didn't look like my downstairs.

Notice a trend?

I'll let you guess which one is my favorite. And obviously any input is VERY much appreciated.