some color inspiration

Walking into a paint store, looking online at colors or shopping at home depot (with their terrible lighting) is an overwhelming event when you are in need of paint for your home. It's so hard to think about a two to five inch square as a color that will cover your whole wall.

To alleviate any pains of paint purchasing on your part, we have put together a fairly comprehensive paint palette for any style of home. I know people who would use every color in one category and others who would mix the categories up! It's all about your personal style and what makes you LOVE your home.

Before we show you our choices, we wanted to share some advice that we learned a while back: It's easy to fall into the trap that every room in the house should be a different color - even if they look good in the scheme of "matching" - but in reality all those separate colors create some serious home A.D.D. ha! Use a color to complete two adjoining rooms (ie. kitchen and hallway) to create some serious flow for your home!

We decided to use Benjamin Moore as our source. We love the quality of Benjamin Moore paint and have known these colors to be pretty true to their swatches. Needless to say, any color from any company can change based on the individual circumstances: primer used or not used, base color, wall condition/type, etc..

We compiled six different categories for your inspiration!

 COOL BOLDS

COOL NEUTRALS

WARM BOLDS

WARM NEUTRALS

WHITES

BRIGHTS

Imagine these colors not only on walls, but trim and ceilings, as accents, back splashes, furniture and more!

What's your favorite and where would you love to use it!?

feeling pinspired part deux

I would love to commit to a once a week craft or Pinterest inspired project but the reality is that I won't ever live up to that commitment. Not only because sometimes time gets away from me but also because I will run out of places to put things! I think, instead, I will just create a series of posts that are "pinspired" (like this one here). This way, they will all be organized, you can see if these projects are something you would like to try yourself and I don't have to lie to you about getting a post up each week! Deal? Deal.

This week I did a project for which I have had the materials for months. I like to have somewhere to stick notes that is a little more specialized than the calendar or the fridge, where things can get lost in the shuffle. So while watching Alias (the third to last episode, OH MY!) I decided to complete this project. 

Ikea sells cork hot pads for 2.99/pk of 3 and you just can't beat that price! I decided, after seeing a similar idea on pinterest, to use these to make cork boards for our kitchen. 

This project felt free because it took me so long to use the hot pads after buying them but in reality it cost me a whopping 2.99+tax. 

I used two t-shirts from Salvation Army that I had bought for another project a year ago and they just happened to be the right colors for my current use. All the other materials were things I had on hand and waaalaaa another "free" project! 

      

I opened up the t-shirts at one of the side seams and then looked for an interesting part of the shirt. After finding what I wanted, I laid the hot pad on the shirt and roughly traced a 2 inch border circle onto the shirt. Once it was outlined, I removed the hot pad and cut out the circle. 

      

I used the hand staple gun, with 1/4 inch staples, to fasten the material to the pad. I placed a piece of cardboard on our coffee table just in case of any rogue staples. Because the material of the shirts was nice and stretchy, I was able to get a nice smooth edge around the circle. 

I used one shirt for one circle and the other shirt for the other two cirlces, with plenty of material left over in both shirts! 

To hang them on the wall, I used a small piece of yarn knotted at both ends and secured them with two staples. These cork boards aren't heavy at all and adding notes won't add much weight so this hanging method is plenty sturdy! 

We decided to hang them in our side entrance hallway. Because of the way the stairs turn at this entrance, we are able to see these at eye level from the kitchen but they are above our head on the landing. It's a perfect spot so we don't forget important things as we are walking out of the door! 

   

As you can see, we haven't done anything in this area of the house yet: yellow door, cream organizer, etc... all to be addressed at another time! 

This was a nice little project that took me about twenty minutes once all my supplies were gathered and I even got my first note! He's my "most favorite" too! 

Have any of you put your own spin on something you found on Pinterest?

let there be darkness?

As you might have seen in yesterday's post about our new bedroom furniture we also spent the weekend painting the walls of the bedroom. Last week we painted the ceiling and though we liked the color it was darker than we had imagined it being. It was "sitting" atop the white side walls, and the light grey ceiling look heavy and a little bit clumsy.  

Enter step two of painting and step four of our bedroom upgrade: grounding the walls with a dark color on the sidewalls.

The paint we used on the side walls was Armory by Pittsburgh Paint; again I only paid $10/gallon for this paint and ended up using less than half the gallon. We decided that the rich color, which plays off the blue in the ceiling, was a perfect color to ground the room. 

***Disclaimer: the dark carpet, whose days are numbered, should be ignored completely! We are choosing color schemes with hardwood or cork flooring in mind. 

Painting with a dark color, like we did in the hallway, is always simultaneously exciting and nerve-wracking. Because the color is such a stark contrast to its surroundings there are more chances for bleeding, uneven lines, etc.. To alleviate most of the worry, I arm myself with many painting cloths as well as my handy short handled paint brush to get the job done. Painting cloths are the best, made of old t shirts, they make the best wipes for getting into tight corners and cleaning off molding. 

       

During the edging process, the color was reading much more brown than we had hoped for. The color swatch, shown above, looks more like the ceiling color than the wall color but we just crossed our fingers and kept on painting. 

     

After the first, very splotchy coat we were left with a good feeling. Even though the color was still reading a little more brown than we had hoped, it was doing the job of grounding that ceiling and making them feel light and bright in contrast! As you can see above, we opted not to paint the "end walls." We thought adding that much darkness to the room would make it feel like a cave. 

You can also see the way the walls and the carpet are fighting one another, it's driving us crazy for the time being but we are putting our blinders on until our wallet is ready for us to change up the flooring. 

     

After two coats, the second with a roller, the color smoothed out and was giving us warm and cozy feelings! Even though it still reads a little more brown than we thought it would, we love the color and are happy to walk upstairs into our new and improved room. 

     

Above you can see where all three colors come together: white molding and end walls, Benjamin Moore Winter White ceilings, and Pittsburgh Paints Armory side walls. Doesn't it just make you smile?

Painting the bedroom: CHECK!! (phew!!!)

Here are a couple looking forward / next project peeks for the bedroom!

Left: The 15 drawers that are built into the wall of the bedroom are currently natural wood, as you can see below. I got a little over zealous and (just to see what it would look like) painted the top left drawer the same color as the walls. Eventually all the drawers need to be taken out, emptied, sanded and painted but that will be another day! 

Right: The built in cubby space that is right across from our bed (at the foot) needs reorganizing and a paint job. Currently, the center section houses my jewelry, rob's watches, etc.; really, it's just a catch all. I want to change it around so there are more shelves in the middle and make the back of the right cubby a place where I can hang my necklaces. We're not sure what color we will use for the back of these cubbies but I can only imagine it will be one of the existing colors in the room. 

   

Lots of things already accomplished and still more to do! For now we are enjoying our cozy space and counting down the days until the carpet "meets its maker", ha!

Until next time,
Lindsey