Committing to a paint color...

...was not as difficult as I feared it would be.  My husband and I were looking forward to Valentine's Day weekend, because we decided to make some home improvements.  We agreed on a huge undertaking:  priming & painting our great room.  Now, unless you've seen this room, you are probably rolling your eyes and convinced I'm just being dramatic.  This room is a 600 ft² addition with a natural rock wall, pitched ceilings, and several exposed wood beams (read: a sh!t ton of trim work).  We agreed on priming the walls first, because it is possible that this room was last painted somewhere in the 70's.  Also, we considered painting the room white (Benjamin Moore's 'White Dove' to be exact) and thought we would get a good idea of what white walls would look like once they were primered with KILZ white.  No go.  It looked too VFW hall...

So, color!  We looked at an oil on canvas painting we love (that I picked up at a yard sale for $2 last year--that's how I roll) for inspiration, then consulted my beloved color fan deck my dad snagged for me from his job.

Round 1:  Dunn-Edwards "Sweet Garden" in flat.  Honey made his first (of several) trips to The Home Depot for a sample container, then returned to paint a swatch next to the wood beams.  After it dried, it looked like a color that would only sanely belong in a teenager's room.  It was quickly covered with primer.

Round 2:  'We need something with more green; more serene but not a yawn, and definitely not sage green; nothing too dentist's office...'  Looking around the room for an example, our eyes rested (read: ogled) on the obvious choice... :::drumroll:::  my Domino Book of Decorating!  We have both always loved the cover of my bible, so it only made too much sense to paint the room the beautiful and perfect green-blue of the de Gournay wallpaper that wraps the book. 

Round 3:  I grabbed a Behr color inspiration brochure I snagged over a year ago from HD.  Inside I found what looked to be the exact color of the book:  "Indian Ocean."  Honey headed back to HD, got a sample made, but (thanks to his trained eye and sometimes-awesome memory) thought the paint looked a bit too dark to match the book cover perfectly, so he had a sample made of another color he saw on a swatch card at the store.  We painted areas near one another on the wall that the natural daylight was still hitting, and also near the rock wall and wood beams to see how they responded to the colors.  I was too impatient to sit through the drying time, so I plugged in my hair dryer and sped up the process.

Round 4:  SCORE!  Since I am generous, I will share with you the exact color match to the Domino book.  For Behr, it is called "Garden View," or "470D-4."  We tried, we loved, we bought two gallons of premium plus ultra flat and covered the walls in its perfection.  Of course, that meant sending honey back to HD to purchase the two gallons, but he never complained. 

We chose a flat/matte finish to help hide the imperfections on our oddly-textured walls.  It works!  And the light bounces off beautifully, which in a room that doesn't receive a flood of natural light, is a big plus.  Sorry to tease, but I don't currently have any photos of the room to post-- 50% because I didn't bring my camera to upload the photos off of, and 50% because it isn't decorated.  Check back soon and I will share some work-in-progress evidence--some of which is still annoyingly stuck to my skin.  Yes, I showered.

tested on Cassi, not on animals...

I thought it helpful to share my experiences (good and bad) with products I have used worth blogging about--be it beauty products, cleaning products, etc.--and offering my 100% honest-no-paid-endorsement-opinion.  And GO.

 

 

1 - Burt's Bees Pomegranate Oil Lip Balm is the best chapstick  balm I have ever used.  This is coming from a person who never leaves the house without two items: chapstick and sunglasses.  Repeat, never, am I without chapstick.  Over the many years, I have tried almost every available kind, some with perfectly adequate results, but this is the first kind to tick all the boxes on my 'lip wish list.'
Smoothing - check.
Soft, not sticky - check.
Alluring scent - check.
Sheer tint of color - check. Note: the color of the product itself is the exact color of the cap, but offers a sheer hue rather than a saturated color like lipstick.
All Natural ingredients - check.
Long lasting and waterproof - check.  I swear I will put this on in the morning and my lips are still hydrated and smooth after 3+ cups of coffee combined with my subconscious habit of licking my lips, and totally conscious habit of talking way too much.  Speaking of which, I need more coffee.

Please share your thoughts. :)  About my coffee addiction or Burt's Bees...

Spoonflower: a new way to pass the time

Today I discovered Spoonflower, a fantastic and creative website that encourages people to create their own designs to be printed on fabrics by yourself or others.  They even offer discounts to the designers when purchasing fabrics!  I have already spent hours searching for fabrics using terms like, "eames, scandinavian, paisley, kaleidoscope, silhouette," etc. in the handy search engine.

I am envisioning using this fabric for recovering my mid-century Danish modern dining chairs, in the linen cotton canvas...

 ...and I haven't figured out what to use this fabric for, but I will think of something, because it is beautiful!  Do you think it would be too "much" for curtain panels?  I bet this pattern would be a perfect pop as a throw pillow...

What are your favorite sites/sources for fabric?

In a nutshell...

I'm a happy camper right now, thanks to one very considerate stranger.

While organizing my Domino [RIP] magazines the other day, I panicked.  Seven issues were missing from my perfect collection.  gasp!  I had been a subscriber since the first issue in August 2005, and to my knowledge, I had coveted every last issue through March 2009.  Either during one of the many house-moves I had made in that 4-year span, or by some sneaky puppy destruction, I had misplaced seven issues.

The next morning, I shifted into my instinctive Virgo-problem-solving-mode, and began searching the Internet for my missing issues: ebay, craigslist, etsy, amazon, google...  I had already spent several hours searching and determining the better deal (some people estimate values very differently), and had filled both my amazon shopping cart and my ebay "watched items" folder with four out of the seven missing issues, when something magical happened.  By means of a Google search, I saw a craigslist posting for "free Domino and Martha Stewart magazines" in SAN FRANCISCO!  A woman posted that she had a few of both magazines, and the recipient would need to take the lot if they wanted them.  I was totally willing.

I immediately e-mailed the woman, and asked if she would be so kind as to let me know if she had the exact issues that I was missing, and if so, I told her I would drive to SF (a mere four-hour round trip) and take the lot.  Within minutes, she responded that she would check when she got home from work which issues she had and get back to me.  yay!

When I checked my e-mail the next morning (yesterday), I had a message from her.  :::drumroll:::

She had five of the seven issues I needed!!  And here's the best part:  she wrote that it would be silly to make me drive all the way to the city just for a few magazines, so she would be happy to mail the ones I needed to me.  What a doll.

The package arrived this morning;  the five beautiful like-new-conditioned gems stacked with care;  all flagging-stickers intact.

I realize I am talking about magazines, which are not normally something people get all nutty over, but any die hard Domino fan out there reading this will completely understand.