Colorful

On my trip to Target last weekend, I purchased a set of very brightly colored, floral patterned place mats and napkins for the dining room table. I also purchased two big toss pillows, perfect for adding color and comfort to our aging family room couch. Sadly, they totally clashed with the geometric print chair in the same room - so I quickly realized the pillows would be returned. But I thought I'd keep the items for the table. We recently culled out a lot of mis-matched, old place mats, napkins, table cloths, etc. - and I was looking to perk the room up a bit.

Upon inquiring if J. liked them, his reply said it all - 'they're ok'. That's husband-wife code for 'I hate them but if I tell you I hate them, you might be pissed, so I'm just going to go for the middle-of-the-road response of 'they're ok'.

If J. decorated our home, the walls would be a 'Navajo White' with muted beige, brown, maybe a little terracotta. Nothing brighter than that. He's on the conservative side of decorating - he likes things not-too-bright and not-too-colorful. Just one of the many differences in our tastes that makes marriage such an enriching relationship.

Last spring, I added some patio flower pots out back - and I bought the really brightly colored ones. Teal blue, bright orange, yellow, deep bright marooon-ish red. Not a single terracotta item in site. Boring clay? No way. Brown? Absolutely not. They add interest and pops of color to the patio - and contrast nicely to all the colors in the garden. I love them - and feel like they were 'made for me' - they are exactly what I love and the polar opposite of what J. would prefer to go with. I'm lucky he humors me.

The walls of our home are painted a very 'subdued' yellow. I didn't realize it was 'yellow' until we'd lived here a few years - but they are yellow. We had the interior walls painted to match the model - with a darker brownish-yellow accent walls in the living room and front entry way. It works - but had we not done that, I'm reasonably sure the walls would have been some off-white. That's what we had in our old house. And before this house, I probably tended toward 'less' bold. Light yellow is 'bold' in terms of wall cover - for us.

I am pondering doing some pretty 'bright' accent painting in the kitchen. We also have a HUGE wall in the living room - 18 feet high - that I'd love to paint a deep aubergine purple - and then 'polish' it somehow to make it 'shiny'. It's the 'Doug' plaster method on Trading Spaces that I would really love to do - but it would involve huge manual labor AND building a scaffold in our living room that would likely be there for weeks - if not months. So we stick with yellow walls and attempt to add the 'pop' on that wall via art work. It suffices - but I still would love my aubergine wall - and someday, when we are 'double income, no dependent children', I'm going to do it!

The place mats and napkins were returned yesterday - not because of J.'s lukewarm reaction - but because we didn't really need them. But this morning, I'm having cognitive dissonance about returning them - and just might have to go to Target this morning and buy them back. Maybe. Probably not. But maybe. I'm heading into the dining room to 'work' (on work stuff) and those pops of color on the table would sure be cheerful.....