The Nosy Pepper: Master bedroom on a budget

It turns out mattresses are expensive, it was a good thing my husband and I had decided that we wanted to downsize to a queen for our next bed anyway. Holy Moly have you been mattress shopping recently?! Since we previously had a king, we had to buy all new bed linens.

Time to head to Target. I had nothing particular in mind, and I found this little gem on a clearance end cap. (How much do I L.O.V.E. Target's clearance?! The red sticker said 20.45---are you kidding? I couldn't get it in my cart fast enough

Since this was just a duvet I had to buy a comforter to go with it, so I opted for a lightweight down alternative one for 24 bucks. As for sheets, I cannot live my life with 200 thread count sheets. I ran across these 400 thread count sheets marked down to 30 bucks for the set simply because they were out of the package. I also found a similar set in gray at Gabrielle Brothers for 9.99. Yes, please.

Next up, I had to tackle the curtains. I had previously made a pin tucked duvet cover from some sheets (thank you Pinterest), while the duvet turned out well, the curtains I had made to match did not. They looked like I had bed sheets hanging from my windows. Everyone insisted they did not, I only thought so because I knew they were made from sheets but I couldn't get them down fast enough.

To make these curtains, I took 4 and 1/2 yards of coordinating fabrics from my stash (read: free), and cut each yard into four 9" strips, with the exception of the half yard of the teal fabric, I cut that into six 3" strips. It just so happened that the 44" width of the fabrics was a perfect length for the curtains. I just arranged how I wanted the strips to go, sewed them together, hemmed the sides and bottom and turned the top down a couple of inches so I could slide the curtain rod through.

For the wider panels, I used 4 of the 9 inch strips and 2 of the 3" strips. The window above our bed is MUCH smaller, so I only used 2 of the wider pieces and one smaller piece per panel. The sizes worked out perfectly.

I still had 4 of the strips left over so I used those to recover the throw pillows I already had.

I decided that, in addition to the gray, I wanted some pops of turquoise and red (I adore these colors together!) So how better to pull in the red than a little embroidery on the pillows?

I got to try out one of my new favorite items, Pellon's water soluble embroidery stabilizer. It's printable, so you can run it through your printer and just stick the sheet with the pattern on it, directly onto the fabric you are using. It worked like a charm, you can use it on darker fabrics that otherwise may be difficult to transfer the pattern on and it saves you the hassle of tracing more complicated patterns.

Just like the package claimed, the entire sheet melted away under some running water and a little agitation by me. I let the fabric air dry, ran a hot, dry iron over it and sewed up an envelope cover for one of my existing throw pillows (why buy new ones when I can just update the old?).

I underestimated how much smaller a Queen bed is, and how much extra room we would have in the bedroom. Our room is TINY and a smaller bed works really well in the space. However, it seemed like there was too much open space so I went rug shopping. I found this 5 x 7 rug for 16.98 at Ollie's. Score.