my front yard

My sister snapped this picture last weekend.  The previous owner left this saint in the front yard, probably because he was hidden amongst the bushes in one corner.  I moved him closer to the front thinking I'd put him on Freecycle.  I haven't gotten around to that and my wild, wild yard has grown around him.  I still need to find him a new home, but from the right angle he looks right at home!

too much personality

I definitely need to repaint my living room.  I was running errands with my sister this weekend and we saw some pretty ribbon that got me thinking about how I need to finish my lamp project.  Some ribbon trim on the lampshade would really perk it up and just a little more glue would help keep it upright.  But I didn't want to get ribbon until I had throw pillows that I actually like.  And that got me thinking - again - about how I have such a hard time picking colors to go with my living room and that it's because I don't like the color of my walls. 

But why?  I love turquoise.  I love this shade of turquoise.  I love that it's so bold.  In my head, this was exactly the way the color was supposed to turn out.  It goes with my paintings, it goes with my mood.  It's cozy and dark at night when I'm watching a movie.  It's lively and bright when I have a party.  But I still don't like it.  And I think I figured out why - it has too much personality.  It pulls the eye away from my art, from the antique quilt, from everything.  I keep wanting to pair it with lime green and while I think that would look great, it's not what I want.  It would make the room even more boisterous.  And then to have the high contrast of white furniture against the dark blue walls?  Just too much.

I want my walls to be background actors, not stars.  My guests, my art - those are the stars.  It's time to take the movie of my life back from its setting.

seafoam green

I painted my spare bedroom the other weekend.  I had a shade of green in my head, a little minty but softer, prettier.  Similar to the color of Aerin Lauder's dressing room, but a little greener and a little prettier since I wouldn't have the floral to balance it.  The name of this green was at the edge of my brain but I couldn't put it in words.

Well, Camila from High-Heeled Foot in the Door named it for me!  Seafoam green.  Yes!  That's it!  She just wrote a blog post about how it's now being considered the new neutral and I completely agree.

I really think your choices for accents are limitless.  Of course white - I adore this color with large doses of white, but navy, lavender, coral, black, brown, yellow, teal....  They're all gorgeous with seafoam. To avoid looking too beachy, I would add more dramatic colors and prints.  But then I think it would be so pretty and feminine but not overly sweet with loads and loads of gauzy white.

I leave for Bonnaroo tomorrow, but watch this space for updates on my seafoam spare room!

Sex and the City 2 - Carrie and Big's apartment

First, let me get it out of the way - I HATED this movie.  The storyline was so shallow - not shallow like consumerism, but shallow in that the consumerism wasn't hiding some deeper meaning.  What was great about the show was that sure, they were all pretty and had fabulous jobs and lives, but there was something THERE with them.  And frankly, it wasn't even that pretty.  I thought the four women looked a little - oh, I don't know - just wrong.  Harsh.  The camera angles weren't that flattering - at one point we got a close-up of Charlotte's mouth, complete with fine wrinkles all around.  Considering how photoshopped the promotional posters were, I was expecting a little more post-production work on the film itself.  Notsomuch.

And the clothes.  I was disappointed with the clothes in the first movie, but this round they were even worse.  The most creative thing was putting everyone in cocktail dresses in the middle of the day.

Though I did really like all the gold - not really Carrie's sunglasses in the opening shot, but Samantha's nails when they were in the Middle East were FAB FAB FAB.  Possibly my favorite part of the movie.  Kinda sad.

But what was really sad was Carrie and Big's apartment.  Seriously?  They couldn't keep the penthouse with all that glorious light?

Instead they moved them to a dark and gloomy lower level of the same building.  So maybe the original apartment wasn't available anymore.  Fine, I get that.  But isn't that what set designers are for?

And the reasoning was stupid - they couldn't afford the penthouse anymore so they moved to a new place.  Makes sense, sure, except that later on they said that they kept Carrie's studio apartment because the housing market wasn't good for selling.  So it's a good market to sell a penthouse but not a studio?  More problems I had with this movie.

Anyway.  I was able to find some nice, non-gloomy pictures of this apartment:

But that really isn't how the place looked to me in the theater.  The whole place just seemed like a case against not having overhead lighting.

There was also too much layering of patters, too much wallpaper, too much greige.  I felt like the designer was trying to prove a point that wallpaper is great, that mixing patterns can be done well, that Carrie's all grown up now.  The above picture shows the fun, floral carpet, but it was never noticeable in the movie as well.  It was all close-ups of the two of them in this Miss Haversham-ish space

It was dull, it was uncomfortable, it was boring and it doesn't reflect the current trends in decorating.

Hmm - maybe there is depth to this movie after all. Carrie felt like her marriage was becoming stuffy so she made her apartment stuffy as well.