Once Upon a Time, In the Kingdom of Dining Room...

I've been working on a project for a while.  In fact I've had it in mind ever since we moved in, but the scale of it intimidated me for a long time.  The project was...the dining room.  First we finally painted it the rich teal color I wanted back in March or so.  (I'm a big believer that dining rooms look lovely in rich dark colors lit by candles for dinner.  A favorite interior decorator, Mary Carol Garrity of Nell Hill's, has a navy blue dining room I was inspired by)  Then I started in on one corner of the room, finally, in early April. 

And then I got no further.

One corner of the room was painted with three trees and will-o-wisps darting among them.  The rest of the walls were teal and blank.  Finally this June, I had a dinner party and my friend Aaron raved over the finished corner.  "It will look so amazing when it's done," he encouraged me.  And so about three weeks ago I finally picked up my brushes again.

And now phase 1 is done.

Yes, phase 1.  I debated whether I should share this with anyone until phase 2 is completed, but phase 2 is probably likely to take me so darn long it would be months if not a year before I showed anything.  Because phase 2...is the Twelve Dancing Princesses, from my favorite fairy tale, walking in dreamy-eyed procession through the forest like a Burne-Jones painting across all four walls. 

So let's just enjoy phase 1 for now, shall we?

The three trees to the left were the original three, done months before all the others.

We went out and bought metal light and outlet fixtures for the room, in a scroll pattern to coordinate with...

...Our new, much more fairy tale-esque dining room table and chairs.

Literally no corner of the room has been left unpainted.

The full moon shines down on the night forest from the far wall.

The new dining room set was found on Craigslist, and is just what I've been searching for on there for almost a year now.  Eventually, patience with Craigslist pays off.

Corvin approved.

The impact of the whole dining room is, unfortunately and very frustratingly, impossible to capture with my tiny Nikon Coolpix camera.  It looks even more atmospheric at night, but of course that would be even *more* difficult to capture. 

Eventually, by the way, I hope to replace that chandelier with this lovely model, which I saw at my local  Home Depot and immediately loved.  Ironically I looked down at the box, and discovered the style is called "Grace."  ;)