my lavender bathroom - pictures!

I did it - I painted my bathroom last week. And though I said I would wait on pictures until I was finished, I love the result so much that I just couldn't help myself. It's a little weird to have done my northern-facing bathroom in sunset colors, but I do love the warmth it gives the room at night. Once afternoon rolls around, the whole room & hallway just glow. And then the lavender is really lovely in the icy morning sun - and helps bring out the green in my eyes. This color just makes me happy.

The shower curtain's packaging was made out of the same peach as the top row with ruffles of the the middle pink and lighter purple, which made picking out a paint color so easy. I was able to do it right in the middle of Home Depot - no coming home to check colors, second-guessing myself and putting off the whole project for another two years.

And see? The shade is perfect. If the curtain had another row of purple, it would be Behr's Sweet Petal.

The icy northern light IS beautiful, but it's only so-so for getting detail pictures with my point-and-shoot camera. But you get it, right?

I also painted all of the trim in Ralph Lauren Picket Fence, leftover from painting my living room. One day all of the trim and all of the doors in my house will be this shade of white. It's perfect. Crisp and clean but still with a bit of life to it. And can I just say how much I ADORE Ralph Lauren paint? It was a bit thick after sitting in my shed for two years, but still went on smoothly (after much mixing) and was so much easier to apply than drippy, thin Behr. Really wish Home Depot still carried it, but I'd drive an hour (or order online) to get some more Picket Fence.

I've never really taken pictures of my bathroom before so even though my cabinet set-up isn't new to me, it is new to you. It really makes me happy to use decorative items to hold my everyday supplies - and makes this open shelf a lot more attractive. Plus the stained glass pieces were presents, which makes them extra pretty in my eyes.

Obvs the mini galvanized bucket (found online for 99 cents!) holds my cotton swabs and then the Liberty for Target canister hold cotton balls and the votive holder captures hair elastics, barrettes and tweezers.

And what a fun coincidence that the canister matches my new walls! You know what else matches? Everything in my shower. Yup - my shampoo, conditioner, body wash, body puff, shave gel AND razor are all shades of pink and purple. I swear this was not planned - but I do wonder if I was unconsciously influenced?

I love the way my bathroom turned out. I don't even mind the wrinkles in the shower curtain - and anyway, they are slowly falling out with each shower. Overall, it is just a happy, fun and spirited room. Just what I needed.

a lavender bathroom?

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I bought this shower curtain from Anthropologie on Friday. It's GORGEOUS. Bright and fun and makes me think of salsa costumes from Dancing With The Stars or So You Think You Can Dance. Love it.

And it's inspiring me to paint this room. I kept checking it out all weekend, trying for inspiration. The current white is a bit stark. Gray could be an elegant choice - and it certainly would be safe. But I'm not one for safe paint choices. And anyway, I kept coming back to lavender.

Lavender? Really, Debbie? Wouldn't it look like rainbow sherbet? Or a kid's bathroom? Possibly, but the heart wants what the heart wants. So yesterday I took the package for the curtain (made out of the same peach cotton as the top row with ruffles of the darker pink and lighter purple - so cute!) to Home Depot and bought a gallon of Behr in Sweet Petal. It's on the pink side of lavender and has just a touch of gray in it. I think it will be perfect.

Don't believe me? Check out these pictures I grabbed from Pinterest:

Think I'll want to update some of the accessories in this room once the lavender is actually on the walls so it may be a while before you see the finished product, but I'm pretty excited to get started!

If I...were coming up with yet another idea for my kitchen

I haven't really done anything with my kitchen.  Except for my new stove, it's basically exactly the same as the day I moved in.  I haven't even bothered taking a real set of pictures since it looks just like these from the MLS listing.  Except a heck of a lot more cluttered because, well, I have a lot of stuff.

Of course it's easy to dream about what I'd do if I were to gut the place, but what if I were just giving it a facelift?  Something I could do by myself (or with Shelly's help and/or with minimal help from a handyman/contractor type)?

Now, what I'd REALLY like to do is swap the long cabinet and the dishwasher so the latter will be by the window and out of the way when open.  Right now it blocks movement between the sink and the doorway and is super annoying.  Plus with this switch, then I'd have an even long expanse of counter right where I like to work.  But that's a bigger project, what with taking the cabinets all down and moving them around, moving the plumbing, blah blah blah. 

But I can live with the current layout if I could get rid of the orange cabinets and the depressing floor and the so-not-me counters.  And add a little more storage space.  Here's my latest design plan:

Centsational Girl recently redid her guest studio's cabinets with Rust-Oleum's Cabinet Transformations and they came out great.  She didn't even take the doors down!  Love that.  I decided to go with a more gray-based scheme because it just felt more me (even though I've been all about the brown in my living room).  So I picked Winter Fog and then I'll use their Counter Transfomations kit in Onyx to switch up my counters just as quickly.  I'll add this sideboard piece from Ikea (think I may buy it IRL!) and paint in the same Winter Fog.

I might be most excited about the floors.  My house was built in 1942 and linoleum was all the rage.  It went out of favor, but is coming back with Marmoleum!  I picked out a warm gray and then will add a black Greek key rectangle in the middle as a sort of rug.  Fun, right?  And linoleum is a green product and a lot softer on your feet than tile.  I also like the lack of grout lines (and thus cleaning grout lines).  'Course, I don't know how much it would cost, but let's worry about that later.

Currently, the space above my cabinets is chock full of stuff.  Platters, bowls, cupcake carrier.  I did reorganize my kitchen that one weekend, but it's still full of stuff.  All those bulky kitchen items that don't fit anywhere else.  In an ideal world, I'd put in new cabinets that go all the way up to the ceiling.  In this world, I'll get some nice baskets in different sizes to hide everything.  I also like the way the natural color and texture downplays the could-be-too-stark pink/black/gray color scheme.

I debated the color of the walls.  It'd be safer to go with another shade of blue or maybe yellow or maybe the same grass green as the powder room.  But in my heart, I want pink.  When I first moved in, I thought I'd do them in magenta, but now I'm thinking more honeysuckle.  It's such a bright and happy color.  Combining Rust-Oleum's and Behr's sites, i was able to do a mock-up of my kitchen.

Pretty, but perhaps a bit too bright?  What if I go to Deep Bloom, the next color down? And fill in the floor with gray and pop a few of the baskets up top?

sorry for the lack of photoshop skills

I kinda like it!