Fall is BACK!

Second day of FALL, Y'ALL!  Only...

Yeah.  Insert frowny face here.  The high for today is supposed to be 102.  How lame is that?  Still, I can pretend!  Let me share my favorite things right now with you, in no particular order.

This child's bed head.  Her hair is super curly and super fine, and she is a crazy flip-flopper in her sleep.  It makes for some pretty epic bed head.  Thankfully I've figured out how to tame it!

This boy. Total mom brag moment here - He started Kindergarten this year and not only is he the only kid in his class who can read, he's reading at a second grade level.

Also, I want to add my haircut.  I finally feel like I found a good haircut and style for me.  Now let's see if I can properly maintain it.

My sorority.  Yup, eleven years after the fact I've decided to get back into it.  After all, it isn't supposed to be for just four years, it's supposed to be for a lifetime, right?  I need to get out of the house more and be more involved with other adults.  I was thinking to myself, sure, I can go out and look for something, but I already have this thing with people I already know built into my life.  Why not get back into that?  I've attended two alumni events in the last month and we're going to start planning for our grand convention next month.  I've paid my alumni dues, busted out my lavaliere and badge, and even bought a cute violet pin to wear for more casual events.

I may or may not have also started to teach the baby recruitment spirit songs. It's super cute!

Speaking of getting her ready for college, I'm also getting a huge kick out of teaching her slightly inappropriate things such as how to play flippy cup.  I'm easily amused.

Making The Team.  Dang I love me some Kitty Carter, but I wouldn't want to have her judging me.  The woman is awesome yet scary as hell.

Fall scents!!!  I so look forward to this time of year because it has the best scented candles of all!  I waited until Bath and Body Works put these on sale 2 for $22 and then printed off a $10 off $30 coupon to make these a great deal. Also, that lotion?  I wish I had gotten a bigger bottle.  YUM.

My pretty new fall wreath.  I saw one just like this on Pinterest years ago and finally decided to bite the bullet and make myself one.  The last one I made before Bubba was born, if I recall correctly, so it was time.

Glow in the dark nail polish.  It's so flipping cool!!! I found this at Target in the Hallowe'en section. This is my favorite brand of polish anyway (yes, even over OPI and Essie) and the fact that it's only two bucks a bottle doesn't hurt either.  I polished my nails and Kelly's nails with this and then when I went to bed I couldn't stop admiring my glowy nails under the blankets.  Again, I'm easily amused!

Card making.  Finding out that one of my neighbors is into stamping and paper crafting too has really gotten me back into this hobby.  We split orders to save on shipping, text each other pictures of completed projects, squeal over YouTube videos from our favorite stampers, and sigh over cool new product because we want to buy it all and know we shouldn't.  We've reorganized our stamps and dies and borrow items back and forth.  In fact, those are her stamps in this photo because she had a baby on Monday so I knew she wasn't going to be making anything any time soon!

So I guess I should add my stamp buddy (my husband calls her my pusher, haha) to this list!

Pumpkin spice chai lattes.  I can't drink coffee.  It's too harsh on my stomach and when I do manage to drink it the taste is usually too bitter because I'm not used to it.  The closest I get is the occasional Frappucino.  Chai lattes, however, are a different story entirely.  Add the pumpkin spice flavoring to it and it just tastes like Fall.

And yeah, I totally was watching Scooby Doo. Alone at night, without my kids.  Don't judge.

Hallowe'en decorations!!!  I look forward to Hallowe'en every year, not only because it's seriously fun, but also because it usually marks the end of the hot weather here in the Phoenix area.  That's right folks - summer here lasts until almost November.  How bad does that suck?

Until that cooler weather comes, I can distract myself with glorious Hallowe'en. I love going out shopping to look for new decorations to add to my collection. I love to look at pictures of how others have decorated online.  I love planning costumes for my kids. Honestly, Hallowe'en is second only to Christmas on my list of favorite holidays.

The blow mold ghost is a new acquisition this year.  I didn't even know they still made blow molds! I will admit that I would love to have a bunch of vintage ones in my collection, but they don't really show up in the thrifts or antique stores around here very often.  It's too bad, because I just love the retro look of them.

The spider is new too.  That big metal circle thing has to be about four - four and a half feet across, to give you some idea of how huge the spider is.  I debated between getting the one big spider or covering it with a bunch of smaller ones, but I'm glad I went in this direction.  It's really freaking creepy!

This guy.

And his weird little bendy self.

I love having him in our family since Leila passed this summer.  He's the perfect cat for our family, even though I could probably do without him getting on the fridge or the tops of the cabinets. He snuggles with me in bed, plays tag with the kids, tolerates them when he's not playing, and in general is just a good cat.  Let's not forget to mention that he's an absolutely gorgeous flame-point Siamese! A lot of these cats have really badly crossed eyes, or strange dark spots on their noses, but he has neither.  He's just handsome.

This isn't to say that I don't miss having a dog.  I think about getting a dog every day.  I miss having a dog, but I know that now isn't the right time for our family.  That doesn't make the void any less noticeable for me though. I love the cat but I know I really need a dog.

That's a little peek into where I am now.

The Gratitude Tree

This year, since Bubba's a little older now, I decided to do a "gratitude tree" in our living room for Thanksgiving.

At the beginning of the month, I took some five sheets of construction paper and made a bare tree on the short wall under the bar/counter that separates our living room from the kitchen.  I just stapled it to the wall, because the holes are tiny and that wall needs to be painted anyway.  It's about three and a half feet tall.

I added a teeny bunting made from twine and washi tape.  I spelled out "We are Thankful" in round letter stickers that I found in the dollar spot at Target.

Man, I love Target.  I need to go see if I put that on the tree.

I cut up some more construction paper into squares and sat Bubba down with the Sizzix.  You know, there have been times that I've considered getting rid of this thing because I have the Epic now, but I have to admit it's pretty handy.  It's easy enough to use that I can leave the boy unattended with it.  He thought it was great fun and cut out many leaves.  I would have found it tedious, so win-win!

Here's what our tree looks like now, in the middle of the month:

Now that Bubba's learning to read and write, it's fun to see what he adds to the tree and try to figure out what his leaves say. I'm trying to get my husband to add stuff to it, so that we can all be adding things to it, but you know how husband's are with crafty stuff.  ;)  Either way, I'm really liking this and I might just leave it up longer than this month, because hey - we should be thankful ALL YEAR LONG, right?

Halloween Decor 2013

This past weekend, I decided to stop talking about how I wanted to rearrange the furniture and I actually did it. Of course, when you start to move stuff around like that you tend to finally get around to actually giving it the good cleaning that you've been neglecting, oh, just all summer.  Since everything was looking all fresh and clean, I figured, hey, as long as I'm doing this, I may as well put out the fall decor too, right?

It was a project.

I really like how it is now.  The couch is kind of close to the tv, but since the biggest open area for play is now off to the side, it won't be blocked by little people when we're trying to watch something.  I moved my big plant into the living room from the kitchen and it really helps to break up that big wall.  The armchair being angled in the corner helps to create a conversation area and doesn't block the patio slider, causing it to feel closed off.

It makes me smile to see some of my favorite things on display.  It's no secret that fall, although brief, late and pretty weak around these parts, is my favorite season.

This little "arsenic" bottle may be one of my very favorite Halloween decorations. The skull is plastic and was three dollars at the Walmarts last year, and the old books were thrift store finds.

I found the larger primitive guy at TJ Maxx a few weeks ago.  The smaller one was .99 at Goodwill last year! The printable was free online and the frame was another Goodwill find for a few cents.  I leave that up all year, where I can see it, as a reminder.  I truly believe gratitude is a HUGE indicator of happiness.

We moved the piano from under the kitchen bar to the wall where the tv was previously.  Since I lost the 2x4 Expedit that we had been using as a sofa table in the move (it's in the kid's room now) I had to find a new home for the lamps.  I finally took the plastic off the shades and put bulbs in them.  It's only been a year since I painted them, and another year since I brought them home!

The pumpkin is fake and was found for a couple of bucks at Goodwill, the stand is vintage Fenton and was a gift from my friend Suzy as were the lace milk glass dishes, the sign was hand painted by me last year or the year before, the runner was found at Goodwill, and the large mirror was $20 from Goodwill too.

Having the lamps over there made it possible to get rid of the big lamp I had on the entry dresser.  It was pretty old and was having some issues.  Besides, it being gone makes it so much easier to decorate that flat surface now!

I love my front entry display.  It's all stuff that I had previously, including the candy.  I can't stand candy corn but think it's pretty in an apothecary jar so I just bag it up after Thanksgiving to reuse the following year. I actually do that with a lot of seasonal candy.

I think this bunch of candy corn is like four or five years old, so yeah... don't eat the display candy at my house without checking on it's age first!  ;)

The black and white striped "candies" are actually wooden dowels painted black and wrapped with white ribbon.  I made the tassels and the labels on the jars.  The glitter skulls are from Kirkland home (a few years ago) and the black amethyst glass dish holding them is vintage from eBay. Looks like there's another one just like it on there now too.

I set up this little vignette on the end of the kitchen bar.  I think it needs something more in the back corner though, after looking at this photo.  The best part of this display is that after Halloween, all I have to do is put away the witch hat, turn the carved pumpkin around so you can see the side that says "Give Thanks" and boom!  It's still seasonally appropriate.

Kick butt.

I had a pottery painting playdate of sorts with some of my friends a couple of weekends ago, and this plate was my project.  I copied one of the display samples, and other than apparently forgetting the second coat of green paint on the H (whoops!) I think it came out pretty good!  I painted each one of those letters by hand with an itty bitty paintbrush and it literally took hours.

OCD ftw, yo.

I put it on the table in the bay window/dining area of the kitchen.  I kept it pretty simple in there. I put the vintage globe on there because honestly, I had nowhere else to put it and I just love the colors. The fruit is fake, as is the pumpkin.  Both were found at Goodwill in years past.

I didn't put everything out.  I put out what fit and if something didn't have a space, I left it in the bins.  I was very conscious of not wanting to overfill the spaces this year.  Usually I use every inch of space, but I left some, like in the middle of the mantel over the tv and next to the lamps on the piano.  I did go out and buy a few pumpkin and apple scented candles to add to the fall feeling in our house, but really, I didn't add a whole lot to the decor this year.

It's interesting, because on Saturday night when I was all done I had this feeling of contentment inside me.  Not the usual, "I cleaned and my house looks good" contentment,  or the feeling of "I decorated and it looks nice!" contentment either.  It was like a lightness in my soul, I guess.  Like my soul was a dusty rug and someone had given it a good shaking and airing out.

You know how some people who live in darker or "gloomy" climates suffer from SAD?  I've been feeling like I get a reverse version of that, from too much freaking sun. Seriously, it's summer and too hot to go outside six months of the year!  I don't like to be hot at all, and my meds make me hotter.  I rarely wear a jacket or coat in the winter.  I live for cloudy and rainy days.

I Googled it and discovered that reverse SAD is actually a real thing, and I have all the symptoms with the exception of loss of appetite/weight loss.  I actually gained about 25 pounds in the past six months though, so that can't really be ignored because that's not normal either.

We don't really get cooler weather here until around Halloween, so I still have another month of awful heat to go.  It's especially hard to deal with now because of everyone on social media posting about how AWESOME Fall is OMG!!! and also because I have to do school drop off and pickup every day so I have to go outside in the middle of the day. Yuck.

Still, I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now, and that, my friends, is a very good thing!

Christmas in May

You can tell if I've been crafting because when I do, my craft room is clean.  I'm really good about working in a neat area and cleaning up after each project.  However, an extremely messy room is a good indicator that I have not been doing anything creative.  The space ends up being a total dumping ground for junk and things I want to get around to doing when I have time (HA!) and it's just terrible.  Based on my lack of posting this year so far, I'm betting you can guess what sort of state my craft room has been in.

Last Sunday, I told my husband I wanted to take a "personal day."  I went into my disaster of a craft room that hadn't seen any love in literally months, and I got to cleaning.  One giant bag full of trash, four bags of miscellaneous crafting supplies given away via my local Freecycle, a bag of paper and stickers to my neighbor's daughter, two boxes of stuff for the Goodwill, and a week later, my room is finally clean.

I did the bulk of the work on Sunday, cleaning and reorganizing for about seven or eight hours.  I did the final small tasks during the past week, a few minutes here and a few minutes there. It was a long process, but one that sorely needed to be done because my storage was bursting at the seams!  

It feels so good to have so much gone!  Gone are the remnants of yarn and cheapie skeins that I didn't really love and for which I had no plans.  They were given to a woman who makes hats for preemies in the hospital.  Gone are all the fabric scraps that were too small for any sort of cohesive project.  Gone are the cards I made literally a decade ago but never used.  Gone are the supplies I've had nearly as long that I haven't touched in years to two different ladies who are just starting out with scrapbooking.  Gone is the pile of brass embossing stencils that I had never, ever used.  Gone are the half finished projects that I know I'm just never going to get around to finishing.

There was, however, one half finished project that I knew I wanted to tackle:  My December Daily album... from December 2011!!!  Isn't that terrible?  It has sat on the corner of my work table for almost a year and a half; just this huge pile of patterned paper, stickers, and photos waiting patiently for me to get to them.  Well, since my room is cleaned I figured, why not today?  I sat down and worked all night until finally, FINALLY!!!  It was done.  

It's not as fancy as some, or in a great album, or anything like that.  It's very "me" though, and it's DONE.  That's good enough for this girl!

Rather than photograph the pages individually, like I've done for other projects, I decided to make a video like I did for the Gratitude Album that I made a few years back.  Pardon the shakiness - I broke my little tripod and haven't gotten around to getting another one yet.

I'm thinking I may do a room tour video if time and my little people permit.  Just something to show how my room is set up and what I do for storage of certain items.  I've been watching those on YouTube and I love getting to peek into other people's spaces!  In all honesty, those videos are what inspired me to get up off my butt and clean my room, so thank you to everyone who posts those!  I love them!

Happy Hutch

The next area up for Halloweenification was my china hutch!

Having a new baby definitely slows down this process!  It took all day to do this.  I had to start with finding temporary homes for all my vintage Pyrex pieces.  As much as I love them, the bright colors do not go with my Halloween decor!  I cleared off the shelves and gave them a good dusting so I could start with a clean canvas.  I went with a heavy pumpkin theme here.

I found this little guy at HomeGoods last year.  I just love primitive items when it comes to Halloween!  I looked this year but they didn't really have anything else like this.  Bummer.

I painted this chip board box last year.  Tutorial here. The pumpkin is from Hobby Lobby via Goodwill.  It says Give Thanks on the other side.  I just turn it around when Halloween is over and VOILA! Thanksgiving decor!

Here we have the BOO letters I did many years ago, some resin pumpkins from Hobby Lobby, a stone pumpkin I found at Goodwill, the Trick or Treat sign I embroidered last year, another Hobby Lobby pumpkin I found at Goodwill, a little glittered F medallion under a tiny glass cloche, and an old radio that one of my mom's friends gave me.

On top I have a large milk glass platter (gift from a friend) with a small dessert plate that was found at the grocery store a few years back, as well as a stone toad my husband bought for me when we were first dating.

I found this vintage Milky Way ad online and just printed it out on cardstock.

As you can tell, I haven't really bought a lot of decor items this year.  I have so much from years past that so far I haven't needed it.  I do seem to have a few extra surfaces with which to contend this year (I have no clue what I'm doing in my entry on the dresser there!) so I will have to buy some stuff.  Oh darn, right?  I also need one more item to finish my mantel display.

I did find this awesome unabridged dictionary while out the other day:

It was only three bucks at the DI!  I wanted something to elevate the plant and thought some large books would fit the bill perfectly.  My husband suggested I check out our local Deseret Industries thrift shop since they had a really large book section.  Well, I arrived to discover that they've reduced it by HALF (lame) but since I was able to score this baby for so cheap (DI prices totally trump Goodwill prices, nearly every time) I forgave them.  The cover isn't very cool looking so I figure I'll cover it or paint it eventually, but for now, I just put it on the table with the pages facing out.  Looks cool that way, I think.

It's the most Wonderful time of the year!

It's no secret that Fall is my absolute favorite time of the year.  Maybe it's because I live in the desert and I'm desperate for a break from the heat.  Maybe it's because we don't really get a real Autumn here and I'm jealous that the leaves are red and gold on the other side of the fence.  Maybe it's because I'm a fat kid and I look forward to sweaters, jeans, and yummy apple and pumpkin desserts.  Maybe it's because it heralds the beginning of the holiday season and getting to decorate my house feeds my creative soul.

Heck, it's probably all of these things!

I went out shopping on Sunday with my friend and I picked up this lovely at HomeGoods:

It's glazed terra cotta and is pretty heavy.  It was only twenty bucks!  They had some bigger ones with Jack o'Lantern faces (my friend got one of those) but I like how I can leave this up through Thanksgiving.  When it comes to outside decor, I'm lazy.  :)  It has an opening in the back so you can insert lights.  I picked up a strand of 50 Christmas lights at Target last night for $2.50 to stick in there.  The flowers in the front were stuck in the pot to hide the dirt and came from a single bunch I picked up at the Dollar Tree.

Since I started to put stuff outside, I figured it was time to get out my bins of Halloween decor to start decorating inside too.  I have a lot to do still, but I did manage to get my dining area looking nice and festive.

I've been looking for a round pedestal dining table for a while, but even the cheap ones (I'm looking at you and your laminate one, Ikea!) were almost $300.  I figured I could probably find one at Goodwill eventually and just paint it.  I made a comment to that effect to my friend Dorie when she posted about one she was painting on her blog.  Well, when she offered the table to me because she decided to go in a different direction, I didn't even hesitate! It fits perfectly in my small kitchen and compliments the bay window so much better than the rectangular one did.  I love it!  I am so very blessed to have such awesome generous friends.  :)

I made the candy corn poms after seeing some on Pinterest.  I made the quilted mini-runner a few years back and the Fenton stand was a gift from my friend Suzy.  The pumpkin in it is fake, as are the fruits in the milk glass stand on the side table.  Please disregard my plant in it's ghetto pot.  I can't find one I like that is big enough and doesn't cost a small fortune.  I made the garland last year too.  The cute vintage Halloween images were all found on Pinterest, printed out on cardstock, and then accented with Stickles glitter glue.  Each little medallion has a different one.  You can check out my Halloween Pinterest board here!

Decorating for the holidays is so much fun!

40 Weeks

Yup.  People say you're pregnant for nine months, but since there are approximately four weeks in a month, couldn't you argue that you're really pregnant for ten?  It sure feels like I've been pregnant forever, especially since I'm one of those lucky women who shows really early.  Here's my 40 week belly photo:

I've resorted to wearing dresses because most of my tops, even the maternity tee shirt that I bought in an XXL specifically because it was long, are too short to cover my belly now.  Seriously, it's like I'm Porky Pig wandering around here with my gut hanging out the bottom of my shirts.

You are welcome for that visual, btw.

Here's the list of things I should be doing:

1. Deep cleaning my house and checking things off the FIVE pages of lists that I made last week so we would not miss anything that needed to be done.

Here's the list of what I actually have been doing:

1.  Shopping.
2.  Eating.
3.  Sleeping
4.  Crafting.

Yeah.  It's like, I'm busy (ish) but busy with the wrong things.  For instance, yesterday was Sunday.  We could have knocked out a lot of my lists.  Instead, we slept in until noon, hung out doing nothing for a couple hours, went to Michael's to look at ribbon (they have FALL stuff out already!!!), went to Starbucks and hung out for an hour, dropped off some stuff at the Goodwill and decided to look around since we were there already, went to the Mongolian Grill for dinner, and then finally headed home at about seven.  My husband managed to weed whack the front yard before it got dark.  That's all that was accomplished.

Whoops!

For my part, I came home and got out the sewing machine.

I decided not to go the big wooden letters route for the baby's name over her crib, since it's temporarily in our room.  I was not about to go buy a Pack and Play for our room and have a crib in the kid's room when our house is so small.  That's silly and a waste of money!  So, we put the crib in our room, and when I am ready, we'll scoot it back across the house.  No biggie.

I wanted to put something on the wall above it though, and decided to do a little bunting with her name from some of the leftover fabric from burp cloth making.  The bedskirt on the crib is yellow and the sheets are green gingham (both from Pottery Barn Kids) so I picked all pink and green fabrics, tying them together with yellow bias tape at the top.  I used Steam A Seam to adhere the letters and then outlined them in Platinum Stickles.  It's simple and cute and most importantly, easy to move!

I put the pettiskirt up there because it's so dang pretty and it makes me happy every time I see it.

The other thing I made last night was binky clips.

It didn't take many times of Bubba launching his pacifier like a rocket from his mouth for me to realize how handy these things were!  No worrying about them falling on the floor and getting stuck without one with these.  I made them a bit differently than I did for Bubba. I think these came out a lot better.  Of course, I had to hand embroider them with her monogram too.  LOVE THEM, even though the stitching on my first one came out way wonky.

As for the sleeping part...

The past few days I've woken up with contractions.  I know that sounds exciting (contractions mean the baby will be here soon!  yay!)  but it's not.  They're strong enough to keep me from going back to sleep, but not strong enough that I can't walk or talk through them.  Also, they're between 10 to 30 minutes apart, which is nothing.  They have to be less than five minutes apart and hurt so bad that you can't walk or talk through them to count.  So, basically all they are is annoying.  They are robbing me of my morning sleep!

As a result, I'm tired ALL DAY.  I don't sleep at night, and now sleep is getting cut off from the other end as well.  I think I'm averaging 5 hours or so, which is totally lame.  Thankfully I have a child who can entertain himself quite well and doesn't take the first opportunity where I'm not being 100% vigilant to go destroy something.  Today, for example, I laid in bed and kind of dozed between contractions for a few hours (no real sleep, but better than nothing!) while he sat in bed next to me and played with his cars and the iPhone.  That's pretty awesome, and I'm so thankful for that.

Now, instead of dusting or cleaning the patio doors I think I'll go have a cookie or three with my boy.  :)

The one where I drone on about paint and light.

I have this orange and white damask-ish duvet cover in my bedroom that I just love.  The color is vibrant and happy, and the pattern is sophisticated without being overly stuffy.  It's fun and bright and pretty - just the sort of thing I would like.  The problem with it is that I'm having trouble decorating around it.  I've got all sorts of different room inspirations I've found pinned on my Pinterest decor boards with orange as a color.  I've saved photos of rooms I've found using this duvet in them.  Usually they're either kids rooms or decorated in shades of tan though and not really what I'd want for my own bedroom.

Last year I found a photo of a room that was done in aqua with yellow, orange and bright apple green accents.  It was LOVE.  The walls were aqua, so of course my first order of business was to go buy pale aqua paint and take care of that!  Unfortunately, this was before I got wise to the wonderful time and money saver that is a sample.  I ended up not with the gorgeous, calming aqua of my dreams, but rather, a sickly hospital greenish blue.  NOT PRETTY.

We lived with it for about a year, when finally I went on my nesting kick and decided that something simply had to be done about it.  Looking around Pinterest I came across this room, that really spoke to me.  It's colorful, yet calm and sophisticated.  I'm pretty sure the walls are white, but since I wanted some sort of contrast in there, I was thinking maybe a pale greige/taupe would be better.  

Now, I am not one for the gray paint trend.  It looks nice in other people's houses, don't get me wrong, but I'm just not a "gray" girl.  I feel like gray walls are the 2010's version of the 2000's cranberry/dark tan walls, or the 1990's hunter green walls, or the 1980's mauve walls.  It's gonna look really dated here soon! 

I'm also not one for warm earth tones, I'm discovering.  Again, I usually love them in other people's houses, but I can't get into the burgundy/tan/gold stuff.  I'm finding that I like cool colors on walls, and then warm colors in the accents.  So, even though I wanted a neutral, no way was I going with tan or cream. 

Well, when you want a neutral but you rule out tan, white, and gray, what's left?

I started thinking that a light greige would be the answer.  I wanted something that was light and airy, that would show contrast against white trim, and that when you looked at it, you would be unable to decide if it was gray or beige.  With this in mind, the first thing that came to my head was the lovely color my friend Dorie has in her house.  It's by Benjamin Moore and it's called Hush.

The problem was that Dorie's house has a LOT more sunlight than our tiny little bedroom does.  What looks like the perfect cool neutral in her lighting looked like a super chocolaty milk shake in mine.  It was SERIOUSLY dark.  Back to the drawing board!  This time we just wandered over to the Home Depot because it's about a mile away and I'm lazy like that.  Going from the paint chip I had of Hush, I picked out another color:

Behr Chocolate Froth.  It was too brown too, so I decided to go lighter.  Next sample up:

Behr Irish Mist.  It looks greige/taupe on the card, but on the lid of the sample, it looked WHITE.  I was panicking a little.  Brought it home, painted it on the wall and whaddaya know?  It's a pale TAN with PINK undertones.  WHAT?

Remember that flower pot I painted white for my bathroom and then distressed?  I painted it with the leftovers from this paint sample.  It read "white" everywhere except in our bedroom.  CRAP.  Here's one of the walls with my swatches:

From top to bottom, left to right, that's Chocolate Froth, Hush, and Irish Mist.  See how pink it is?  In frustration, I headed back to the Home Depot, and this time I asked for help.

Well, the guy in the paint department was stumped.  He kept looking at my gray paint chips and saying there was no way they should read as tan in ANY room with any lighting.  Since I was using daylight as my gauge, we couldn't really blame the light bulbs.  He asked if there was anything tan that could be casting light on the wall and changing the color, but the only thing really was the comforter.  Since I rarely make the bed (slacker) and the duvet was usually in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed or on the floor, I doubted that was it.  The blinds in there are white, and the carpet is light tan.  The walls were that pale green, so that couldn't be it.

He decided to call over the interior designer they had on staff.  Let me tell you, this woman was AWFUL.  She stood there looking all unimpressed while he described to her the problem I was having and showed her the paint chips.  She touched one, like it was dirty, and just said "NO."  I was like, excuse me?  She said that there was no way that these paints were looking tan.  I assured her they did.  She simply replied no again, like I was a stupid little kid lying to her.

Look lady, I don't care how long you've been doing this, or that you used to work in Hollywood, but when you're in a position where you have to provide customer service, you shouldn't be rude!  She didn't listen to me, kept telling me NO over and over again, and never once tried to seem friendly.  She was like a crochety old grandma with no joy left in her life.  I was like, look lady, I'm not stupid.  I know how impossible this seems.  I told her she was welcome to come over and look at the wall.

Finally she told me that the green on the wall was the problem and I'd have to prime the whole wall and start from scratch.  You know, the green that was so pale it was almost white?  I may not be a professional interior designer, but I'm smart enough to know that A) green light cast on gray paint will NOT make tan and B) you don't have to prime a wall when the color is that light.

Homegirl was trying to brush me off.

Finally she said that if I wasn't going to listen to her she couldn't help  me and left. That's funny, because I was thinking that since she wasn't going to listen to me she wasn't going to be able to help.  I was glad when her sour old self left!  I think the paint guy could tell I was annoyed.  We talked about the samples some more, when he figured out the problem.

The thing that was casting the colored light and messing up my samples was...

My samples.  Specifically, the Hush.  Since it was so brown, and so close to the other samples, my eyes were taking that color in with the grays and changing them.  Made sense!  He suggested priming over JUST the areas where I had samples, and starting with the lightest one.    We got another sample while we were there, just in case, and went home to try it out.

I grabbed one called Snow Leopard that had NO red in it at all.  He also gave us one of those little folders labeled White and Bright in case we needed more ideas.  On the way home I fell in love with a color called Abalone Shell.

Turned out, he was right.  Once we got rid of the darker colors, the Irish Mist looked completely different.  The Snow Leopard, however was too blue, so I scratched that from the list.  Still, the Irish mist looked a little cream for me, so I decided one more sample wouldn't hurt.  I couldn't shake that Abalone Shell from my head!

I swear it looked less gray in the card!  I painted it on the wall and compared to the Irish Mist and Snow Leopard, it was absolutely perfect. It only took five samples, but by golly, I found my perfect paint color.  My husband headed back to the Home Depot AGAIN and bought the can of paint. He painted the wall that night.

Um...

And the next morning, it was painfully obvious that we had lovely blue gray walls.  AARRGGHHH!!!!  What happened?

Well, here is a photo of my bedroom:

Yes it is small, because we opted to have the master bedroom in our house be the kid's room.  Since we only sleep in there, it didn't make sense to us to give up that real estate when it could be better utilized by someone else, you know?  It's a tight squeeze right now since we moved the crib in there, but like I said, the only time we spend in there is asleep pretty much so it doesn't matter.

Anyway, you see that window?  Our house was built in 1997 and has all those cool 90's "architecture" details such as pot shelves, rounded corners on the walls, pickled peach colored cabinetry, and yes, arched windows. Can I tell you how impossible it is to cover arched windows so they look nice?  When we moved in there were pleated PAPER shades in these.  PAPER, y'all.  Who thought that was a good idea?  I'm sure they were original to the house too, because they were filthy.  Do you know how to clean paper?  I sure don't!  Dusting wasn't cutting it, so they were more of a gray/tan than true white.  Also, because they were old and paper they were tearing in places.  They were velcroed to the glass to hold them in place.  At one point, apparently, some previous renter decided to reinforce the velcro with BLUE BUBBLE GUM.  I kid you not.  There's a big wad of it up near the top of that arch.

So, we pulled the shade down to paint and made a new discovery - the discovery of what was casting the tan light on our gray paint - the filthy shade.  GROSS.  I decided to take the shade outside and see if I could maybe shake some of the dust off .  You guessed it - one of those old tears couldn't take it anymore and the whole thing split down the middle!  CRAP!  I tried to stick it back together but because the paper was so infused with dust, it wouldn't stick.  Lame.  Guess who needs to call her landlord now and fess up about this?

Well, now with the nasty shade gone, we have a new problem.  My lovely, perfect shade of greige paint is most definitely a gray blue color now.  That means that the color scheme I had picked out in my head has to go out the window because I am TIRED of paint and picking paint and moving furniture. It's just too close to my due date to be messing with it anymore. 

It's not a total loss - this sort of color is pretty trendy right now.  Lots of bloggers, including Jenna Sue, House of Smiths, and The Lettered Cottage have their homes done in these tones of tan, white and pale blues/grays so I should be able to find some sort of inspiration out there.  

I'm just bummed that I won't get the exact palette I loved after all this.  Boo.