Dorm Tour of Third Year

Welcome to my 3rd year dorm tour! The dorm tour that should’ve occurred in August but COVID’s been turning this year upside down. It’s ~finally~ here!! Woooo!!!

Maybe I’m the only one excited because when I look back on my college years, I won’t have to use my faulty memory to remember what my room looked like and how I decorated it. So ultimately I write for posterity.

In my life update, I detailed a lot of my move in weekend struggles – TONS of boxes, my tiny shoebox of a room (I’m not complaining, I actually love that I have a room to myself). As a result, I acquire sore arms after said move in weekend – and now, I write to you, my plan of dorm decor and how that fell apart.

~MY VISION for the dorm tour~

Earlier, in the midst of quarantine, I was dreaming of this room, the room that I was finally going to live in by myself – no more roommate, either at school or at home, I did lots of Pinterest digging. I had a lofted bed for my dorm room for 2nd year (see here) and I wanted to replicate that because a lofted bed gives you a lot of extra room.

Welcome to move in weekend – I explain to my understandably exasperated parents that I would like to loft my bed. I find a hammer from a new dormmate down the hall. We try. We enlist help. We find loose screws in bed frame and worry. We stop.

So yeah, no lofted bed. I did put in a work order for the loose screws and the lofted bed, but it didn’t happen.

I was supposed to have a lofted bed with twinkle lights underneath and an ottoman I made as well as the rug my mom made me and more. But no bueno.

The actual execution

Given the state of exhaustion that fell over my parents and I after a long move in weekend, I waited until the next weekend to decorate. I did do my desk decor and my bookshelf earlier on, but the second weekend I had several tasks for myself – put up the tapestry using command strips, put up the adorable cat poster of Mr. Pebbles, and find a way to put up the string lights.

Throughout the week, I had added a print I made to a frame and added it to my tea section. I put two art pieces – a canvas of a dove and a watercolor painting with Isaiah 55:8-9 on my windowsill.

Saturday morning, I woke up, got dressed and got to work. Firstly, I needed to take out the boxes of mail I got. Secondly, wash dishes and my new kettle for tea and dining utensils. Thirdly, I needed to organize the bottom drawer of miscellaneous things which was super messy and hard to look through. Lastly, I needed to sweep my floor and dECorAte.

Decor Time (dorm tour style)

Decorating was a troubling adventure. I tried to do the string lights and they were A LOT. So I ordered them off of Amazon. They are 40 ft, which you know, is long, but after you order them and spend 1 of 3 hours (3 hours being how long it took me to figure out how and where to set up the string lights, ‘twas a time) detangling while trying to put them up, you truly understand how long 40 ft is. If you want to order them, I would highly recommend waiting to open up the box until after you have a clear vision of how you want to place them and possible difficulties you will encounter. I almost cut them. Luckily, I didn’t and I doubled them up – blue and red, green and yellow – and they still look super nice. BUT LOTS OF WORK.

My first year self did not read the instructions for command strips and so never put anything up. However, now that I realize reading the instruction manual is everything then I actually can put stuff up. I put up my tapestry which honestly feels tiny compared to my white cinderblock walls but it adds some color. And my cat poster is just inspiring. I feel like I have such hot takes on the world. For instance, hot take: cats get a bad rap and they shouldn’t. *mic drop* I said wha t I said.

The Photo Dump

Down below I have all of the photos I took for this post. If you want the link for anything, comment down below. My print is something I made – I would love to open a print shop – I’m not exactly sure what would be best, but I’d love to do if you all are interested.

Beware the long photo dump!!!