Finally, I painted something!

I love my house. I've loved it from the first minute I walked through it with my realtor 4 1/2 years ago. It is beautiful on its own, but it truly has so much potential to be absolutely gorgeous. The problem??? Me. I'm completely unskilled, uncreative, and down right frightened to do anything along the "decorator" lines.

I've been wanting to paint for several years now. My friend Kayce (who is an amazingly talented decorator, remodeler, do-it-your-selfer) has had to look at a million paint swatches from me. ("What do you think of this one? How about this one? How hard is red to do?") My sister-in-law, Becky, just got brave and put some color on her walls, and once I saw it, I just knew I had to paint. Now or never! I didn't let myself dwell on it. I picked a color, filled the paint buckets and got to it.

My girls cracked me up. They have learned well from me, they grabbed the camera without any prompting, and started clicking pictures. They even got a before shot.

Kayce surprised me by showing up ready to paint. After all the phone calls she received from me about every question you can imagine, she must have thought I needed some supervision! Seriously though, I was SO grateful for her help. She stayed for 4 hours and we were able to get the entire first coat on.

Oh-ho-ho! Look at that column standing out!! And the trim around the window. And who knew I had crown molding on my ceilings?

The lighting is a little funky, but here's a somewhat finished shot. I still need to buy curtains for my naked windows (kids' Christmas gifts are the top priority right now though). And although it's not a "brave bold color", I love the color of the wall next to my piano. It makes everything feel so much richer and deeper.

Now, if only it weren't so much work, I'm really wanting to do some more rooms!