COLOR MY WORLD

It's funny that my last post was about GRAY January days. This post is the polar opposite! It's about COLOR!! We are planning to paint our living room and put in new flooring. I decided it would be the perfect time to give the room a whole new look with window treatments and moving furniture pieces around and bringing in pieces from other rooms.  The first thing we'll do is paint the walls.  Several years ago we painted the walls red and we like them a lot. I'm not really tired of the color and it still looks fresh, but in another 5 years I'm sure I'll be sick of it, so a change is on the way!

GREENS~BLUES~BEIGES~BROWNS~GRAYS~ORANGE

SUCH A HARD DECISION!

I'm basically a pretty simple girl at heart. I like simple pleasures. Two of my favorite things are paper-y things and paint chips. I can't get enough of either one. I have been known to go into a paint store and collect a handful of paint swatches for the heck of it. Maybe because we were going through a particularly strained financial situation and I had no money to buy anything artsy or craftsy, or maybe just because they make me happy! Silly, I know, but it's the truth. I really do love them! So, this whole living room project has my creative juices amped up as I search blogs for funky decorating ideas, and follow all the HGTV make-over shows for ingenious ways to give an old room a new look!

Often, I look at beige or white rooms and think they look so calm, peaceful, and clean and think I'd like to have a room like that and almost instantly realize it would never work. I NEED colorful walls in my lfe. I'm not afraid of color..I embrace it! Here is proof...these pictures are of our computer room. Years ago I picked out what I thought was a nice, happy, bright shade of yellow to paint over pale green walls.  In this case, the color was a big mistake! It turned out school bus yellow! It was SO bright. We had purchased all the paint and Richard said "well, we have it we're going to use it....it will be OK"! I picked out a terra cotta shade for trim and for painting a 7 inch strip at chair rail heighth. When I finished I was sick...I hated it!



I called my niece Cara and we laughed about it and I asked for her input...HELP!! As a result of our conversation, she and a friend from college came over and painted murals on my wall. I had a swatch of wallpaper that I loved and would have liked using in the room, but it was so expensive. I showed them the swatch and they used acrylic paints and free hand painted on the walls. I gave them liberty to do what they wanted!! When they were done I loved it. I'm not sure I got a lot of compliments from people...mostly I think people thought I'd lost my mind! I didn't care. It was perfect and stayed that way for almost 8 years before I painted over it. The room was fun and fanciful.

Now as I ponder this new project, I realize it's very important to make a good decision because this room is very large and involves several gallons of paint and many hours of work. We won't want to change it again anytime soon! I usually pick out the wall color first, but I was recently at a fabric store and they had rolls and rolls of amazing, colorful curtain fabric. This time, I am going to pick out my curtains first. We're putting in wood flooring so any color will look good. I am leaning toward olive-y green colors, but I am open should I see some really great orange or purple or brown fabric!

We are also going to do some work in the kitchen and that will require choosing paint,also, but that is for a future post!