Beating (Blue) Hearts

I briefly mentioned in my last post that my dear sweetie told me that he'd let me decorate our nest however I wanted. To me, that says he REALLY trusts me.  Once upon a time, I had every plate, cup, mug, creamer, sugar bowl, teapot, serving platter, placemat, butter keeper, etc... with this design:

COUNTRY BLUE HEARTS

For the love of all glazed glassware, what was I thinking?!? Well, I've thought long and hard about my choice of everyday dinnerware.  I'm going to stick with this reasoning: I was in my late teens/early 20's. Sponge painting was a craze then - and it looks as though someone sponged this mass produced, yet handcrafted-looking beauty's border.  Then they practiced sponging all kinds of shapes in the middle in no particular pattern.  And if that's not excuse enough, I was also a college student on a college budget and that big yellow smiley at Walmart had just rolled back the right price for me - cheap!

I say all that to say this - my husband KNEW I had hand-picked that pattern when it came time to decorate.  He realized that somewhere deep inside of me was a repressed country girl who loved inexpensive, bad wallpaper patterned dinnerware and still he let me pick out all things for our nest.

I do love that man of mine.  So to avoid making his heart blue, I tried to be considerate.  When choosing a style for the house, I made a list of his style preferences to compare with mine.

HIS                   MINE

modern                contemporary w/flares of traditional

cold, hard lines       cozy and comfortable

minimalist             personalized

cool colors            warm colors

modern retro details   craftsman details

solids/tone-on-tones   art deco patterns

geometric asymmetry    symmetry

new-ness              old school character

After looking at just a few things on the list, I was really quite discouraged. Paula Abdul was SO right when she said opposites attract.  I wasn't quite sure what kind of compromise could be made so that we both felt comfortable with the decor in our home, but I was certain I would find a way to make it work.  So instead of focusing on the differences, I decided to concentrate on style ideas we both liked.

OURS

functional and durable

clean lines, right angles

crisp and fresh

natural elements (woods and metals)

<----- neutral color palette

few eclectic pieces

minimal pastels

minimal floral patterns

artsy element w/o gaudy ornateness

glass elements

natural light

I love this color palette because it embraces all colors from nature. Additionally, it has the stark color extremes black, white, red, and grays that he loves.

I dug some pictures up on the internet to share with him. I chose pictures with elements I liked (mainly craftsman, mission, and prairie interiors), and then asked him what he thought. As easy-going as he is,  he's good at telling me what he likes and doesn't like.

With this in mind, I set out to find a piece to build our living room around.  (Keep in mind - at this time we still had the ORANGE walls I thought might rust-y up but instead stayed eye-poppin' great-ball-of-fire colored!).  As unexpected as it was - when I found it, I knew. Was it lamps or lighting?  Was it accent pieces?  Nope, it was an area rug.  This rug:

Not exactly the lightly-colored, fluffy shag I had envisioned. But this rug has clean lines and right angles.  It has minimal patterns with simple ornateness.  It has color, but is still neutral - all while matching the awful beige tile and coordinating with the orange walls.  Check out those corners, baby! 

The dictionary says a compromise, when used as a verb, is to arrive at a settlement by making concessions, often reducing the quality, value, or degree of something.  In this case, I disagree.  By compromising, I found the combination of different things yielded something better for us, but that individually neither he nor I would have ever chosen on our own.  

Don't you wish it worked like this all the time? Of course, there are some things that one just cannot compromise on in life.  But, I want to learn to be more open to compromises that are synergistic - where the result of the sum is greater than the individual parts.  It often surprises me - the goodness that accompanies the compromises that result in a win-win situation.  How do I change my thinking? American author Greg Anderson said, "The Law of Win/Win says, 'Let's not do it your way or my way; let's do it the best way.'" 

Now, I can't even remember what concessions I felt like I was making then.  And he's just glad the rug doesn't look like this:

Orange you glad we painted?

Because we had previously briefly called a rental house our home, we got used to the idea that there were limitations on interior decorating. Neutral builder-grade paint colors.  Not quite white but not quite beige...mostly dingy sock. Yuck! When we were looking for our new-to-us home, we had to remind ourselves that the possibilities were nearly (within what we could afford) limitless.

So, as we entered every house I tended to see past all the wall colors, wallpapers, light fixtures, and even flooring that weren't quite our taste.  As long as the floor layout, square footage, and structural condition were okay and the house fit in our budget, I was game.  Our house was no exception.

We like to entertain, and so we made a list of things that needed to be done to start showing off our newest investment. One of the first areas we decided to update was the living room.

This is the room seen when you first walk into the house. Can you count how many shades of beige are used in this room? Hollarin' housefairies, I count at least 5!   And although we knew that the ugly beige tiles with hard to clean, unsealed grout needed to go - we decided to tackle projects from least expensive first.  We started by ripping the beige/rose colored gauze curtains down.  Against my better judgment, I took them to the local Goodwill - although I'm certain they shouldn't be in anyone's home. Then we removed the late 80's-inspired border (of which, in the latter days started seeing faces in! ScArY!) and then decided to slap a few coats of paint on the walls.

I should preface that my sweet hubs told me, even before we moved in, that I - and I alone - could decorate our home.  So, I was on a mission for paint - any paint color I wanted!  Like a kid in a candy store....How do I narrow down my choices?

I didn't want anything blah - the room was full of it when we moved in.  And I particularly shied away from any popular color combinations (robin's egg, browns, etc...) for fear of overuse, boredom, or being outdated too soon.  The room receives a lot of soft light from our north facing house, so that kept the pallet wide.  We also have a dark brown leather sofa, so pretty much any color would work with our furniture.

I knew that the flooring would change, as would the fireplace facade - but that wasn't on our immediate list of to-do's.  So, I garnered inspiration from a few internet photos, gathered some paint swatches, and decided to go with a complimentary color to the those two (soon to be gone) fixtures of the room.

I fell in love with the little swatch called "Georgian Leather" from Olympic.  I was enamored with its warm, rusty hue.  Natural, but muted.  Bright, but not blaring.  Or so I thought....

I decided to start painting one evening while my husband was busy working. I made the first "W" with my paint roller and then stood back, I gasped.  My, oh my! Burning eyeballs... But I kept talking myself into painting more and more of the room with little mantras like "it always dries darker than it looks", "there's no natural daylight in here yet...", and "just keep painting, painting, painting".  I did just that. I kept right on painting.

I was about half a wall short of the first coat before my hubs came in.  I didn't have to be a mind reader to know what he thought.  So easy going, he started repeating my mantras back to me.  "Don't worry, let's give it a chance."

Well, we gave it a chance.  A chance for several months.  Everytime I came inside or downstairs I wanted to shout "Go Longhorns!" as it was THAT orange.  There was no rustic, no cozy, no warm feeling about it.  I could've painted two black triangles on the wall and invited Linus and Charlie Brown over for Halloween!  I don't know if it was mixed incorrectly or if I was temporarily color-blind.  But we both knew, it had to go.

We did change it -- to the color it is now....let's save that for another day.  But I wanted to share this little mistake with you because it reiterates something to me.  Sometimes a little bit of a seemingly good something is MUCH better than having it ruined by a whole lot of the same something. In this case, orange. But it can apply to other things.  I need to remember that -- especially when it's something I enjoy - food, places, and even people. And I'll be keeping my orange in check - juice, TN football (go VOLS!), and halloween!