Color!

olor!

I just found out Apartment Therapy is doing their new color contest later this week. Last year you could only enter one room - in past contests they've done the whole house. I'm debating trying to hurry up and get my bedroom finished so I can enter it. I've totally been putting that off - concentrating on school and generally feeling a sense of malaise about everything, including any and all motivation to paint or decorate a darn thing. The other option I might have is to enter the back yard - "outdoor room"...there is a lot of color out there and that might be an option. Thoughts?

I just need to some motivation to move forward even if it's not because of the color contest.

I thought I would do something a little different today.

Sometimes people ask me if the posts I do take a long time, or how I have time to wade through the internet and find photos. It doesn't take me long because I have this weird habit - when I get up in the morning I check my email, check facebook, check huffington post and then I'll look at a few design websites. There are like 3 or 4 that are my favorites. If I see something new I love I'll save it in a folder on my desktop. When the folders get pretty full or I'm in a specific sort of mood for a specific thing I just go looking for that folder with those colors, or art or whatever. Why am I saving all these photos? I honestly don't really know! (and with as fast as I type it really only takes me a few minutes to do a post once I decide on something...I wish the rest of my life were so organized and easy!)

Someone asked me recently why I wasn't becoming a designer instead of a counselor. I think being a counselor honestly appeals to me more than being a designer. But it's kind of like the design thing is more of a hobby, an avocation rather than a vocation I guess. I do like it when people ask for advice though or when I get a chance to help someone trying to decorate, I just don't know if I would want to do it as a profession. I think it's important to have outlets outside of more serious subjects. So that's really what it is for me - it's an outlet for an interest outside of everything else. And it's sort of frivolous, I know. But in it's own way I look at it as an addition to good mental health. I honestly don't think that you can feel really good if you don't like your surroundings.

So right now I'm thinking maybe I need to work at this backwards. I haven't been working towards my new decor desires because I don't feel like it really. But maybe I need to do it in order to feel better. That's what I always say I think, I'm sort of not following my own advice in this instance.

So today I give you my favorite photos currently in my folders for each of the major colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple, plus Pink.

I love how cozy and effortless this seems. It's such a bold red, but then all the furniture and natural light makes it just cheery without being overwhelming. I think I'm heavily influenced by the light in this room - I don't have enough natural light in my house I've decided.

Oh gosh...I LOVE this room. That modern corner fireplace with the orange wall and then the furniture is more classical french lines with the bold pillows? I couldn't love a room more than I love this one. Makes me want to paint something orange. Sometimes I am really tempted to replace the red in my house with orange.

This is more a mustard and leaning towards a type of green than yellow I know. But it's still yellow I feel. I just really dig this headboard. I've really been wanting to do one of these myself and I found a place online with pretty specific instructions for how to do it. I figure it would take a really long Saturday to get it done. I just need to really plant a Saturday to do it.
Even though I'm looking at doing a more grassy green in my new bedroom, I still really love bold lime, paired with all the white, it looks really great and cheerful.

I'm still pretty obsessed with finding the right blue. We're going to repaint one of the bedrooms and I really want to find something like this or something more like a peacock. But it's much more challenging than you would think! I have millions of blue paint chips and still don't feel like I've really found the right one.
This eggplant color is so brave. But I love the end result!

This just makes me happy to even look at it. I love that they went ahead and painting the floors bright pink! The polka dots on the wall look like something I would do in a moment of bad judgment, but somehow they work anyway.

Now I've just got to get motivated to do something around here.