If I could be any car...

Mmm...

Not too sure about this color combo.

I think it's growing on me, though.

I am spending waaay too much time watching Cars.

Which reminds me, I need to go get my free tokens!

Can you say, "cabin fever...?!"

Dude, where's my paint chip?

I am so happy with this green I could marry it.
(family room...winner: hmm...nobody guessed this one.)

I always heard you use warm tones where you eat, and cool tones where you "live"...saw this green on a home show, and they mentioned how it "brings the outdoors in" ...our willow tree seems to be in front of our fireplace now!


The orange (Benjamin Moore's Aura in Buttered Yam) was pretty intense going on, but dried to a warm finish. (dining/scrap (ha!) room, winner: Shannon guessed I'd do 2 colors in here, so is she half-right?)


Our painting supervisor called in the color code for a *quart* (what I picked up to sample on Friday) when he ordered another *gallon* (oops), so this went on too light at first, BUT the guy doing the painting knew I wasn't happy with that, and he took his lunch hour to go to the paint store and get me the right shade. (bathroom, winner: Shannon!)

Since I was going with a Sherwin Williams shade, I had to give up my paint chip (I want it back! It's called "Drizzle") , but I was delighted that the painter went the extra mile for me and STILL got it all done today.

I'm pretty easygoing in life, except when it comes to color matching. Then I get a little persnickety.

All in all, a crazy Mother's Day weekend. My sister came in to town on Friday; she wanted to tag along with me to Novi to meet Mom for Mega Meet, but decidedly did NOT want to check out scrapbooking. She insisted on going to Flute World, which bored Mom & I to tears, but we got back at her by getting so absorbed at Mega Meet that we were very, very late picking her up from 12 Oaks, the mall where we dropped her whiny @$$ off earlier. All's well that ends well, even if I didn't get to go to Archivers. I only picked up and dropped off my Mom there :(

Eeny, meeny miney moe...

I have lived in a beige house for the last 6+ years (and before that, beige apartments...you know, apartment "cream"...?!) So I am delighted to take on the task of painting our new place. Not sure why the old house never got painted (except for the purple room we did for Tess...a year before we put the whole place up for sale). And I did have a pink living room in my home in Redford...which ended up painted taupe (Martha Stewart "Mushroom," actually) when the ex-fiance almost moved in (and then I sold the place, two years later...I'm detecting a trend...)

This time around we are here for a while (we hope), so I want colors I love...although I do have to please E with them as well.

So, the colors above are for three rooms: family room (accent wall), dining room (whole kit and kaboodle) and 3 walls in our luxury bathroom upstairs. Your mission? Figure out what color goes in which room. And yes, I've already made up my mind.

Getting Ready

Before clean-up
Originally uploaded by CreativeExile

This is what I spent my weekend cleaning up. Seriously -- it took two days to get this mess straightened out.

I don't even recognize the interior of our home anymore. We have been living with clutter for so long that our home is now like new (but alas, not much bigger than I remember). Thus, we have it on the market.

I think we have it priced fairly -- there are lots of homes priced above us, and just a handful below. Two Realtors we spoke to suggested pricing it in the lower range just to move it, but since I'm not THAT interested in moving (actually, I wasn't that interested in cleaning and preparing our home for showing) I really fought taking at $15,000 hit on our place just to get it off our hands.

There are lots of things I love about our house, things I will miss. The peaceful backyard. Walking into the village. Neighbors.

But I do look forward to having room to entertain, and perhaps even a nice, warm, dry scrap room. Somewhere where the dryer buzzer doesn't scare the daylights out of me while I'm tuned in to my Ipod, scrapping late into the night.

And perhaps, a room as clean as this, all the time.