Do you remember the time in your life, maybe in your early thirties, when you realized you didn't have to decorate your house like a student? Maybe you could buy a real book case instead of the homemade bricks and planks you'd been using for years. This happened to me when we were still sleeping on a trundle bed, we'd bought in graduate school ten years before. My side of the bed had a loose coil that kept a perpetual bruise on my right hip. I would complain to Tom, but he was unsympathetic: "I can't feel a thing." This continued until I gave up the idea of buying a Queen size bed, which, as I had preached to Tom, was the best looking, best proportioned, bed for most bedrooms. Calmly shaking his head, he would mutter, 'I want a King size bed." So you see the choice? An eternity of a coil in the hip or a king size bed. I gave in. He got his enormous bed, and I had to admit that it was damned comfortable. Former student, Sharon Beesley, made this decision for her living room recently. She claims she wanted a "cool" living room, but I translated that to mean a grown-up room. I've pasted it below from her very fine blog: NYC Taught Me. Didn't she do a wonderful job? The couch comes from West Elm. I especially like the two angled carpets. So sophisticated and lovely. One of the reasons, I love Sharon's blog is she is willing to share "real life" which isn't always pretty: Here's the same room after three children and a husband have blown through. Real life. It happens.