My House Re-done: new colors

My house is a work in progress. I have one friend in particular who challenges herself every time she comes over to find something different, and she usually can. I'm usually repainting, rehanging or asking Ben to do those things. OK, I almost always ask Ben.

I like the creative process, and my house is kind of my place to let it all out. It's nothing new. My parents endured me coloring all over my walls with magic markers. I wrote deep things like my favorite Goo Goo Dolls song lyrics, and I colored bizarre wall murals. Not the kind that make you need to call the school counselor, just the kind that are not really artistic unless you're 15.

But, somehow, over the past couple of years, other than redoing my kids' rooms, I lost my decorating mojo*. Everything in the main part of my house stayed generally the same. Maybe because I was too busy filling out 18 dozen background checks and financial statements for the adoption, or just generally trying to keep little people alive.

But, it's come back. My desire to have the spaces I live in reflect and inspire my personality.

When we moved back from India, we painted the kitchen turquoise, which was inspired by our surroundings there, but the living room/great room was some horrific shade of khaki. My least favorite color in the whole world is khaki. In pants and on walls. Gross. No offense. Most normal people like it, just not me.  One of the things that makes me weird. That and the fact that I don't believe in reading more than one book by the same author. And that I love Greene County, Ohio. And many other things.

Other factors in my "style." I don't like to spend money. And one other big thing. Everything that hangs on my walls needs to be meaningful to us personally. I don't hang pretty pictures up, I only hang up pictures of places that are part of me (Lake George, India, Rwanda), things I'm obsessed with (paisleys), people I love. And I'm pretty neurotic about it. That leaves me having to make most of the "art" in my house. The next several posts are going to show you what I made. It's not spectacular, but it's all very much "me." Oh, and it was all pretty cheap.

But, first, the paint. Historically, we buy our paint at Wal-mart, enlist some friends or my little brother, and then do it ourselves. We're not that good at it, but we're not perfectionists, so we make promises to touch up later and then don't, and then eventually we just change the color. This time, we decided that three kids + vaulted ceilings + a lack of perfectionism + Ben's fear of heights = paying someone else to do it. This proved to be a good decision and left em free to obsess over colors.

I wanted to get away from warm colors completely - especially khakis, tans, and mustards, but we still needed a neutral, so picked dark gray for the great room. For the kitchen, after much facebook advice, we went with a sort of billboard/grassy green. It's pretty much the color of the green screen the weather man uses. Sounds hideous? I love it. It's bright and cheery and about as green as you can get.

My pictures are terrible, but here you go.

those big pictures are of Lake George, which as my cousin says, is my "emotional home."

family pictures

*mojo in this instance has nothing to do with expertise, talent or skill, just the desire to keep at it.


Up Next: My DIY art projects