Recently I embarked on an intensive, two-day hunt for the perfect succulent pillow. I wanted it for the love seat in my home’s 5×5 entry, where I keep 40 small, low-light succulents in a dozen containers. These are shades of green, bronze, brown, terra-cotta, and rose.
Small euphorbias, gasterias and haworthias thrive in the entry, out of direct sun.
Little did I realize how many succulent pillows are out there. Stores such as Pier One, TJ Maxx, Home Goods, Joanne’s and Cost Plus World Market seem to have taken my 2016 prediction to heart: That items themed with succulents and cacti would become commonplace.
From Pier One’s website.
I bought seven pillows and two area rugs, and charged about $500 on my credit card. No biggie, I was going to return all but one pillow and one rug, right? Well, yes, but an embroidered and beaded cactus pillow from Pier One was a keeper regardless. Only $40! (I have a thing for throw pillows.)
I figured just about any multicolored succulent pillow would work. The walls are tan, the trim cream, the floor concrete gray, the door and wrought iron brown, and the seat cushion dark blue-green. Hoping that a rug would add punch and help pull everything together, I bought a 3×5 one striped in brown, green, blue and beige. But—I should have known this, being a Pier One fan—the colors were so crisp, they made everything else look shabby. Also, when I saw it in situ, I realized it really needed some orange-red.
The first go-round: The pillow is a bit too small for the love seat. The rug, though the right size and a nice texture, lacks colors necessary to unify the design.
So back the rug went. Next stop: Cost Plus World Market, where colorful cacti greeted me from Melamine plates, shower curtains, and even nifty metal buckets. Watch the 50-second video I made while there.
I model a soft fabric shower curtain at World Market.
I found a pillow with a watercolor of a cactus garden that seemed the right shape and size: rectangular (“lumbar”) and bigger than Pier One’s for less money. Score! Or so I thought.
Cactus pillow and rug at World Market.
Back home. Aargh. No pillow with a white background looked right. There’s no white in the entry, and they all said “bedroom.” Yet while at World Market I’d also bought an orangey-red rag rug trimmed in blue-green. It worked! Who knew, all along it wasn’t the pillow that mattered most, it was the rug.
My Dorothy-in-Oz moment: I had the perfect pillow all along.
Next I went shopping in my own home, grabbing a pillow with all the right colors from the living room sofa and two stretched canvas prints of agaves from the hallway. (They’re from my online Zazzle store.) As it happened, none of the succulent pillows were ideal for the entry. However, I did keep two. One is now on my bed, the other on an armchair. The entry pillow has a bird on it, but hey, I’m into birds.
Cost: Two pillows that I kept despite not needing either one: $60. Rag rug from World Market: $40. Total: $100. Plus a day and a half of my time, but I had fun so I can’t complain.
Do you, like me, need to hunt, gather and try things on before everything clicks? Then you probably agree that the hard part—and hopefully you’re better at this than I am—is taking things back.
Now (drum roll) my pup Lucky would like to show you “his” new entry.
Lucky demonstrates “downward dog” on his new yoga mat.
He meditates while digesting kibble.
The love seat is ideal for cat-watching.
Lucky echoes the pose of a metal watchdog. At left are a pair of Talavera “shoes” and a frog pot atop a larger one. In the square pot are ‘Pink Blush’ aloes.
Items opposite the love seat include Gasteraloe ‘Green Ice’ in bloom.
Gasteria sp.
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