A Weekend of Colorful Mistakes

Memorial Day weekend Griffin, Ashland, and Baby Ozey (Zoey) made the trip from Oklahoma to Texas to come and visit us for a few days! And while I'm not sure how entertaining Bennett and I were, I know that at least I had a ton of fun hanging out with them and working on a few projects around my house at the same time. However, I only pulled my camera out of its case once, and only for about one minute. So there are hardly any pictures to document the fun we had. But I promise, it was great.

Here's one of the only pictures I took. During one hot afternoon we decided to take a break from our work and play outside in the water.

Baby Ozey loved it right away. Bennett loved it after about twenty minutes of whining and playing by himself on the porch. In the end I think we all got wet a time or two, and since we are already experiencing near 100* weather here in beautiful Texas, it sure felt good.

Another fun thing we did was go to "The Big Park." This is a park on base that has seven smaller park sets crammed into one ginormous fenced-in play area. The park was fun, but the real fun was attempting to get through the base's gate with my Arabic-looking brother who had no ID, and then setting the alarms off by driving too fast upon our return trip with his ID. Needless to say, the guards were none too impressed with us.

Bennett and Zoey doing a choo-choo train

So what were the projects we worked on, you ask? Well, for the last couple of months I have started to really dislike the color brown. Maybe it is because it is spring/summer. Maybe it is because I have visited friends and adore their cute, light-colored homes. Maybe I am just bored. But whatever the reason, I got it into my head that I was sick of brown and I wanted it to go. Most of our home is very tastefully decorated in shades of neutral--tan, cream yellow, white--but the dining room was brown, and I didn't like it.

So we painted it.

I wasn't going to post these pictures at first because I really wanted this to be a surprise for Matt when he got home. But then we actually did the project. Woah. I ended up calling Matt at midnight, crying into the phone and telling him I was sorry for ever attempting to chose a color pallet that didn't include the tone "neutral". Apparently I am only good at the neutrals when it comes to decorating.

Here is a (really old) picture of what our dining room used to look like. The color wasn't bad, I was just sick of it and ready for a change...and I got one...

Here is what we turned it into (although in real life it is a LOT more green than these pictures show. I like the pictures better than real life).

Honestly, I love the color. I love my dining room. When I stand where the garbage can is and just look at the dining room, I think, "Wow! What a happy place!" But eventually I have to expand my view a little farther to include the rest of the house (which is all open to the kitchen, and which is all very...non blue...) and it is at this point that I realize what a terrible mistake I made. Trying to cram my Caribbean blue kitchen in with the light cream yellows, whites, browns, and beiges of our home is like trying to enter an elephant in a neon sweater into the New York ballet. It just doesn't work. (P.S- It is Sunday, the hardest day of the week around here. And I am really tired. So just take my analogies and don't ask questions.)

So anyway, I will be repainting. I don't know when, but I know I will be. Actually, I already have the new paint in the garage waiting for me. And guess what color it is.

Brown.