Color Me Happy

Our Color Palette

Let me just say that I LOVE COLOR! As much as I can appreciate and admire a fully neutral palette, I just have to have color in my own home.  I just picked up our color selections from the designer at Benjamin Moore.  Let me tell you, she was worth every bit of the $50 we paid to have her drive out to the house and spend 2 hours helping me figure this color business out.  I know how bad color selection can go and we don't have room in our budget for error.  I'm sure the colors are a bit "off" here from my photo, but you get the idea.

Since I can't have Zeke & Camille's house from Parenthood (the show that has recently been helping me get through cleaning the kitchen at the end of the day), I can steal some inspiration from them.  I am LOVING blue walls.  When I pinned a magazine photo up in our new living room next to some blue paint chips, let's just say Peter wasn't feeling the same positive emotions that I felt.  But the designer caught the vision and helped me picked a blue that even Peter is excited about.  We actually picked Annapolis Green (the top of the two blue colors), but I think we're changing it now to Seacliff Heights (bottom left corner) because it matches some throw pillows I already have.  I also just realized it matches our bedroom quilt, which makes it easier to spread my new favorite color throughout the house.

Looking at these colors makes me happy, both because I like them and because I've waited for SO LONG to be able to paint our own home! I know there is more we could do with color in the house, particularly in the bedrooms, but right now we're trying to cut the cost of paint by buying a couple of 5 gallon buckets of Carrington Beige.  The one thing I'm not 100% sure of is the designer's opinion that the fireplace should be painted beige.  Should it be white? I like the beige, but I like the look of white brick, too.  But our trim is white.  See my dilemma?

So this is what we're working with right now.  I might add an accent wall in the boys' room and paint our bathroom blue or green instead of the Lennox Tan.  Peter isn't fully confident in our decision to paint the lower kitchen cabinets Chopped Dill and the upper cabinets Lewiville Green.  But this is the basic idea.  If any of my creative artsy friends out there have anything to say about this, changes we should make, fun ideas, etc., now is the time to speak! :)