For the Love of Color

A fresh coat of paint made it's way onto the dining room walls yesterday. What a color it is. In the green family, a very new family for me. You see, I have never been a green girl. My world of paint color has seemed to stick in the more vibrant worlds of yellows, reds and oranges. I will never forget the first time I painted my living room red at the old house on Oaklands. It was like taking a huge tube of lipstick and watching it seep across the white walls. What a blast. I knew in that instant that I was addicted to color and the more the better, like the Halloween orange in my livingroom here on High Street. I remember Emma and I looking at the samples and wanting to go for it, but being nervous it was too much. After the initial strokes, there was no turning back and I have loved it everyday since.

You know time is passing when you paint the first room in the house that you painted when you first moved in. The dining room was the first canvas I dared to touch because so many of the colors in the house were very muted, pastelly and while they are not something I would have picked, I loved them...and still do. And the reason I felt I could do this room because it was clearly the one room that the woman who lived here before us, was unable to get to. It was still clad in a heavy, dark, maroon wallpaper that was so out of step with the rest of the house that flowed from room to room so beautifully. Even half of the woodwork was only done, leaving the dark heavy mantel and china cabinet next to the white woodwork of the windows. In a sense I felt the need to do that room, to finish the work that Jackie was never able to.

You see, Jackie still lives here too. Jackie raised her five year old son in this house. Jackie died in this house. From cancer. She also made sure we lived here, but that is another story. This one is of color and the choice I made yesterday would be very high on her list of selections. In fact, I would even venture to say that she helped lead me to this color. Greens...tough for one who is not naturally drawn to them I again went through the process and put various samples up on the walls. What I thought I wanted did not seem to be out there. So I started a survey and asked everyone who went through to give their vote and EVERY person picked the same one. And so that was it! I went to the paint store, bought a gallon of Benjamin Moore's Croquet, knowing if it was horrible I could always paint over it.

Glorious I tell you. Simply glorious!! The room is transformed into an elegant space that I am so excited to decorate with all natural elements. I want to create several pieces myself to give it that David Bromsted feeling that stamps it as my own. (You must be a HGTV junkie to know what I am talking about here!! LOVE Color Splash!) And as I envision my pieces I only hope that my skills will be able to keep up with what I am seeing in my mind's eye. Either way the excitement at the thought of creating is enough to get me a bit giddy! I am an idea person. I love ideas and have gotten to the point where I realize the ideas are so much fun that if I don't get to follow through with them then that is okay...because that creative processing piece gives me pause and I just LOVE that part of it all. Follow through is where I am always lacking, but again...we are talking about color here!!

So, on top of all of this is the woodwork, which is where this whole project started. I have always wanted to paint over the woodwork, but have avoided it like the plague because it is SO much work! So my Mom volunteered to do that and well...this dining room project was born. And that is where this project still is. Much woodwork to be done, but that first impact of a whole new fresh coat of paint is just like nothing else! God I love change and this green thing might be something to stick with! In celebration of such a move I even bought myself a pair of green sloggers...gardening clogs! NEVER before would I have picked green. Colors are part of who we are and where we are at that given point in time. Gone is the bright happy yellow from those dining room walls and in with the serene, calming, oh so elegant touch of croquet. So I say hello green. And is there a theme? I am actually gardening and enjoying it for the first time, and doing the weekly Farmer's Market CSA with SO much green coming into the house once a week it is a scramble to figure out what to do with it all, but hey...green is in. It is fashionable...it is hip and apparently, so am I!! Go green!