Dabbling in Interior Decorating

In an effort to help my parents out while I'm living at home and looking for a real job, I've started working on updating certain rooms in the house. We live in a two-story country home, and my mother is into the burnt siena/gold/sage green color scheme. The room that I've spent the most time on thus far is the dining room, which was done in two shades of a golden yellow, separated by a chair rail. Here is a shot of the overall effect:


My father and I worked on the painting of this room together. Beneath the chair rail, we did a solid gold (shoutout to that old show, lol), and then above it, we painted a lighter gold, then let it dry. After that, we grabbed old rags, squished them around in the gold paint bucket, and pressed them onto the wall over and over to create a beautiful rustic, antique look.

Afterwards, I was given the task of finding some frames for reproductions that we had done of old photographs given to us by my grandmother. They are of our relatives on my father's side, and they are all black and white. I went to Michael's (http://www.michaels.com/art/online/home) and found some beautiful, vintage-looking frames, spent around $90 on frames and matting, and put them up on the wall. This really added to the rustic, familiar appearance of the room.

The final touch was inspired by a great bowl my mother had found at a local housewares store. I created a bouquet of faux flowers by using styrofoam blocks as an anchor in the bowl and Spanish moss to hide the foam from sight. I carefully picked out all the flowers to stick with the basic color scheme...and as a result, spent wayyyy too much time in the store (as usual). It's the first bouquet I've ever made.
I have to tell you, though, it would look a lot better if my cat didn't continually chew up the plastic grass. I've already replaced it three times, and have pretty much given up on trying to keep him away from it.