When did you become a grown-up in decorating your house?

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.