I turned 31 yesterday. Is there any age that’s less remarkable to turn than 31? I guess 37 is unremarkable too. They don’t make birthday cards for turning 37.

With only one year of my thirties under my belt, I’m clearly not an expert on the topic but I’ll say this: the thirties are totally underrated, in my opinion. I refuse to buy into society’s whole message that I started losing value a year ago. I’m more comfortable and happy now than ever.

Just don’t ask about the gray hairs. I thought I had more time before those would strike.

You guys, the safe house bedroom is coming along! Remember these were our goals for the bedroom, which will be a temporary bedroom for victims of sex trafficking:

• Must feel comfortable, homey and inviting: nothing too pristine or fragile
• Should evoke feelings of peace, refuge and safety
• Nothing that feels too much like a hotel
• Bonus points for incorporating a symbol of freedom. (See the plan for that part here.)

Last we talked, we had decided to hang the quilts on the wall instead of laying them on the beds. Their awesomeness needed to be displayed like a banner!

But we hadn’t settled on anything else.

Once the quilts were going to be hung, everything else changed to fit. We knew we were doing two twin beds arranged like this:

And some sort of dresser in between them. (This is just a random dresser photo I found. It’s not the one we’re using. I don’t even like it. I don’t know why I used a photo of a dresser I didn’t like.)

I’m also not sure why the dimensions of these renderings are so fun-housey and unrealistic. Why are the beds climbing up the walls?!! This post will require lots of imagination on your part.

We wanted the ladies to have their own personal lights for bedside reading. I’ve had a mega-crush on these lamps at target, so I added them in to the plan next:

Then it was paint color time! Erin and I went back and forth on paint colors about 61 times. We thought about just sticking with white, but were worried about how that would turn out with the lack of natural light.

We thought about a pale blue, to inspire calm and serenity.

But I think we both felt kinda “meh” about it. We just did Jill’s room in this color, so there may have been a tiny part of us that wanted to do something different.

We talked about a charcoal gray.

But with no natural light, we were worried this might just be depressing/jail-cell in the end.

Then we talked about pink. Yes, pink.

Pink is risky – we didn’t want to create a nursery – but if you get it right, it can be so warm and sophisticated. Here’s our pink-spiration:

And in the room:

We were both diggin’ it, so we grabbed all the pink paint swatches that exist and started analyzing. This was INCREDIBLY hard, for one main reason: we had to make the decision without actually going to the safe house and seeing how the swatches look in the room.

I KNOW. Huge paint color sin. I hope we can still be friends.

We agonized over the shade of pink, y’all. AGONIZED. Erin and I sent 131 emails back and forth (not exaggerating) about which shade of pink to choose. We settled on the swatch on the right: Valspar Ballet Slipper.

We have just a few more days left to get everything finalized — bedding, extra art, storage, lighting! (We’re making a chandelier for this room and I’m SO excited to show you! It’s not finished yet, but I THINK it’s going to be really, really good.)

I have so much more to tell you about this room! Just need to get photos of how things are turning out and I’ll have an update for you soon!