Sad Day, Happy Day

First, the sad news. It was finally time for little Princess Joli and her mommy-in-waiting Lisa to go home. So sad. We had So. Much. Fun. We sewed, painted, cooked, ate out, played, danced, gardened, laughed. I'm amazed we didn't get kicked out of the Chinese restaurant last night. After the hats, things got so crazy Lisa and I were practically snorting tea out of our noses we were laughing so hard. And then William waved his arm in excitement and tipped over an entire glass of water. I introduced Lisa to the movie Amelie and the shortlived but amazing television show Wonder Falls. It's going to take some time to adjust to no happy, smiling, demanding baby to entertain us. On the bright side, at least I'll stop ignoring all my blogging buddies so much.The happy news is that the woodstove is finally out of my house. Originally I felt sad and sentimental about getting rid of it. That was before the boys moved it into the middle of the hallway and we had to squeeze around it for most of the last week to get back and forth from the livingroom to any place else in the house. I was happy that our friend and neighbor decided he could use it. Since we broke our furniture dolly trying to move the behemoth, he rounded up a sturdier dolly and a winch (I almost wrote "wench"), and when I came home from seeing Lisa and Joli off this afternoon (we had to stop by the high school so they could say goodbye to William at football practice and then Starbucks for a drink for the road), Jeff and Al were just finishing up and my hallway was now woodstove FREE!!! They wanted me to take a photo to prove that two old guys could move the thing all by themselves.

More good news, although it's good news that make my brain hurt, the hunt for the right wall color has begun. Yesterday Lisa spent most of the day painting and decorating a couple of cabinets I gave her. While she was busy with that, I bought some paint to audition for the walls. I started on the bricks with the color to the left. That first green is much lighter and brighter than it looks in the photo. So back I went to another store for a couple more colors, those on the right.

It was hard to tell what the colors would look like on their own against that red brick, so I wandered around painting the three interconnected areas that I want to paint - the kitchen, the livingroom, and the dining room. I want to paint them all the same color as they form an open U shape with the diningroom at the bottom of the U, the kitchen on one side of the house (with no direct sunlight although not terribly dark) and the livingroom in the front (brighter with winter sunlight).
I painted the three colors in four different areas and discovered that what looked great in the front room was too dark for the back room, what was just right for the kitchen was too yellow for the livingroom, what matched the accessories in the front was too muddy for the accessories in the back. ARGH!!!! Too hard to think! Brain hurt! But now that my house looks like it's painted in "camo", I'm committed to following through sooner rather than later.

Last night I finally decided that the color on the bottom in the last photo (called Dragon's Hide - love that name), taken one shade lighter, might work. So off I went to buy some of that this morning. On the way to the store I decided to check one more place in town that carries paint and, to make matters worse or better, I'm not sure yet, I found three MORE colors that are completely different than the ones I've already seen and which might work even better.

The swatches are so teensy tiny, I think I'm going to break down and go buy all four colors. It's the only way to tell what they'll really look like in my house. The paints I don't use, I can mix all together and use to paint something else, like maybe all the hallway doors. The hallway is dark, you won't be able to tell what color they are anyway. Or I can paint some old furniture. It's a good thing I like green.

The paint store is about to close. Off I go. When I get back, I'll mosy on over to my studio blog tonight and post some photos of Lisa's artistic efforts.