Dream a little dream… books in the bedroom

Hopefully you’ll have already read all about my sleep challenge and how it got me thinking about making some changes to my bedroom decor. Last Sunday I wrote about my plans to wallpaper the bedroom wall using book pages and here’s how I got on with putting the plan into action: 

I chose to use a mixture of three books along with some sheet music, which would give me a variety of sizes, texts, images and page colours – each book was slightly more aged than the last. It started off quite formally, working around the edges of the wall to make sure I had a neat edge, and then I began overlapping the pages and positioning the colours randomly as I worked across the room. I found it easy to create “organised chaos” with the different sizes of paper, but my neat-freak husband was less keen on my ‘just slap it on’ approach! He did however agree that it was starting to look pretty good by the time we’d covered half the wall and we could really see the ‘patchwork’ of pages taking shape.

The books I used were a really old, yellowed Marilyn Monroe biography, a book on growing roses (which is where the rose images came from) and a book on feminism which had faded around the edges. I picked up these books from a charity shop, so I was happy to slice out the pages and I will probably read them more now that they are on the wall than I would ever have done before! I used postcard images from The Edwardian Lady’s Diary and choir sheet music with cute titles including “Oh hush thee, my babie” and “Oh, lovely voices of the sky”. I positioned the pages that meant the most to me on ‘my side’ of the bed, such as chapter 4 in the biography because 4 is my lucky number and the sheet music titled “I love to play among the flowers”.  I really liked how the end result turned out and am much more happy to have created my own version of the expensive book-page wallpaper without having to spend a fortune – plus I’ve got something completely unique to me!

Getting back to the sleep challenge, this weekend I’ll be trying out my memory foam pillows from Dunelm and following some more of their top tips for improving your sleep below – come back soon to see how I get on!

1. Try sticking to your usual going to bed and waking up times even on the weekends. This will regulate your sleeping patterns and help ensure that Monday mornings aren’t quite such shock to the system
2. Aches and pains can be balanced out by using a Memory Foam Mattress Topper or Memory Foam Pillows as these mould to your body so provide better orthopaedic support: http://www.dunelm-mill.com/shop/bedding/memory-foam/
3. Increase the amount of natural light that you are exposed to during the day, this will keep you awake and alert and make the night time difference more effective
4. Getting comfortable in bed when pregnant can be difficult, using a bolster or a v-shaped pillow to support your bump can help women sleep more soundly

Related articles

• Dream a little dream… bedtime reading (cassiefairy.com)
• Dream a little dream… of a bedroom makeover! (cassiefairy.com)
• Dream a little dream… a sleep challenge (cassiefairy.com)