Feeling Blue: A Mood Board
It is now mid-October, which marks a little over seven months of strict shelter-in-place for us here in New York. This unprecedented time has disrupted everyone’s lives in ways I can’t even begin to numerate, so it goes without saying that it has been a time of great change and transformation for me, too.
There are some personal silver linings about being at home all the time. I get so much more quality time with my boyfriend and pets than I ever thought possible, for example, and I have more time and space to indulge in hobbies like cooking and gardening. I feel so grateful to be in a safe home that I feel ownership of. But my mental health...? It’s not cute, folks!
I tend to rely on my routines and sense of productivity to keep anxious thoughts at bay — if I’m getting things done, then my worth and purpose are obvious. Having my entire schedule wiped away abruptly has really put me through it. I am trying to ground myself and rebuild, but I feel like I have the energy of a 100-year-old person.
In really bad moments, I just hide in bed and cry. Sometimes I don’t even make it to the bed. In the past month I’ve cried at IKEA, in the middle of a hike, and while muted on conference calls. I’ll cry anywhere! My body makes the rules, not me.
I guess you could say that I’m feeling blue. Blue can be such a moody color, one that you really disappear into.
Anyway, a lot of the anxious energy that typically fuels my day-to-day has instead been funneled into a new project, one that I literally must confront because it is now both my haven and my prison: my house. I’m here all the time.
So here’s a mood board of blue-spiration I’ve put together to share + a few personal home details at the end.
Blue interiors ON Instagram
Instagram stories from Jeanne Damas and Yolanda Edwards during recent vacations
French model and founder of Rouje Jeanne Damas posted this deep blue enameled woodstove to her Instagram story. I love how it is backed by a wall painted in a lighter shade of blue on top of the blue checkered tile. Sometimes more is more, and they really went for it. It’s equal parts country and chic.
Yolanda Edwards is a favorite Instagram follow of mine; she was formerly the creative director of Conde Nast Travel and now has her own magazine, YOLO. She leads an incredibly stylish, picturesque life. On a recent trip to Italy, Yolanda posted photos of beautiful blue and white tile patterns to her instagram. My favorite are the flowers.
Blue in Art
The beautiful blue paintings of Bill Traylor
Frida Kahlo’s home in Mexico (now a museum)
The artist synonymous with blue himself — Yves Klein.
Blue in my home
Now that I’ve shown you the aspirational pictures I’ve been collecting, let me show you the blue in my extremely normal home!
Here’s a pic of Cosmo faceplanting into our blue pillows during a daytime nap. Don’t you wish you had his life? Our bedding is mostly blue, but sometimes we switch it our for white or grey depending on what’s clean. When the blue is on the bed, I love how it picks up the blue accents in the kilim on the wall.
I painted the raised bed (and a few small wine crates) in our back yard with an oil-based blue outdoor paint to protect them from moisture and rotting.
Finally, we have a basement bathroom with a vague color scheme of blue and pink, if you can even call it that. Whatever decor you see here happened completely by accident and was slapped together haphazardly to accommodate a recent guest. I’m not even going to attempt to make these pictures cute because this room is my last priority at the moment, but I wish I could show you a before photo of this bathroom.
Someone spilled candle wax all over the outside of the toilet and there was a graveyard of giant dead cockroaches that had come through the broken tile in the floor. There was a plunger that looked like it had been in the woods for months. And don’t even get me started on my landlord’s perplexing decision to tile the entire room in brown from ceiling to floor.