Shades of Green

We decided to re-arrange our house a bit and so there's been lots of moving furniture, painting walls, and buying new things here and there to make it all work. It all started with a conversation about our dining table. Our dining area was quite cramped, with a dining table against our stairwell wall beside our kitchen. It's bothered us that we don't have a very good place for a kitchen table since we moved here, especially in winter because we can't eat alfresco when it's cold and wet. So we decided to make our downstairs lounge a dining room AND sitting room within one room, which meant moving quite a few things around to make it work.
Our front room upstairs was my craft room / sitting room / put it here because we don't have another place for it room. In its early days it looked a bit like this. And you can see a few more photos here. We didn't want to make it a dining room because it seemed weird to haul our food upstairs to another room (our kitchen is below this floor) so we thought we'd make it a lounge (and I stole Ellie's room as my craft room, or rather we're sort of sharing for now). I didn't think all our dark and earth toned things that we needed to move into that room went very well with the duck egg blue walls, and for some reason I had my mind on a light shade of green. So I got to painting! What a mess, huh?

But after I finished I thought it was too light. Too green apple-ish! 

So I looked at many beautiful inspiration pics on pinterest, like these below, and fell in love with the idea of a more dramatic green. I HATE painting and really didn't want to paint the room again, but that light green just was not right. I felt it wasn't right the entire time I was painting, but I kept going with it, thinking it might feel more right once it was finished. But that didn't happen. So back to the paint store I went. (A fantastic paint store, by the way!)

I briefly got de-railed from the green track with thoughts of other dramatic colors like salmon pink, teal, or mustard. I think I would have been happy with any of them, but we made our way back to green. I told our landlords I wanted to paint the room a "deeper" color... but I'm not sure what they would have made of some of these! But I love pink walls, and teal can be amazing too! 

I'll have to save my ideas for pink and teal for other rooms one day. Now our front room is a mossy shade of green, and we love it! In some light it still looks a bit apple-like, but in other light, it looks warmer and more chartreuse. I've been having fun deciding where to hang things, but I still need to get some things framed and buy a few more pictures and accessories before it will look finished. And I'm waiting for some burlap curtains from Ballard Designs. This is a start, though! It's our grown-up game room / library / sitting room, and Lois loves it too. It will be cozy by the fire this winter.

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I blame Lois for where the chess pieces are!

And now we're working on the downstairs... I'm going for a look that is colorful, cheerful and very kid friendly. I've been pulling lots of inspiration from my "colorful spaces" board on pinterest. More to come from our makeover soon.