Blah blah beige....

I've tried to like it people, really I have. But Beige? It gives me the blahs.
I've given it my best shot in every form: Tavern taupe, Sand, Beautiful beige....you name it, I have probably painted it on some wall in one of our houses.
Lest I offend someone, don't get me wrong here.....I have walked into umpteen hundred homes all painted with some form of beige and thought they were beautiful. Hence, I've tried to re-create that beauty-ness in my home.
But it's just not working for me.

Maybe it comes from growing up in a nothing-but-white home (well, okay....unless you count the dusty rose/country blue floral wall-paper from time to time), and living in several stark white apartments.

Beige is not too far off from white. It's kind of a non-color color.

I remember a couple of times as teenagers giving our parents a gift of home-make-over...poor mans style. One Christmas (or Mothers day, I don't remember which), my brothers and I thought it would be a great idea to pool all of our minimum wage job earnings together and fix up the upstairs bathroom that was starting to look quite dilapidated - a project we knew my parents would have loved to do, but couldn't afford. So, off to the home project store we went. Kmart, actually. Looking for paint. We brought home a can of stark "bright white". I did see the rows of different color chips there. But, I walked right on by - I thought they were for rich people.

No joke.

I figured we couldn't afford color.
(no one ever mentioned that color was FREE!)

So, white it was. And stark-bright-white that bathroom was painted.
I'm not sure how on earth my parents allowed us to do what we did, trying to fix things up. Looking back, I'm absolutely positive our work would not have qualified for any home-show awards, and in fact - coming from teenagers who had no direction, and absolutely no idea what we were doing - the work was I'm sure sub-par at best.

Anyway, I digress.
The point is, I think my life has been filled with an over-dose of white.

This basement of ours has been a "mochachino" version of taupe, (once again....really trying to love the neutral-ness of it). However, I decided that what I was really hoping for was a fun teenage-slash-family-hang-out-sort-of-a-room. So, just for the record - here's what the family room has looked like:






Can you say BLAH. And Blech. And Boring.




....and now drumroll please.....???? (Well, actually, it's not COMPLETELY finished yet, so I shouldn't ask for the WHOLE drumroll.....just a half drum roll.....a drumroll-in-progress-sort-of-a-drumroll).....







Too much......or getting better? I know it may be drastic for some, but - me thought the room was a bit pizazz deficient.
With any luck this project will be done by weeks end and I'll post real true live finished product pictures.

Hooray for color....I think.

Be nice..........or else

Being nice is good. Right? It's nice to be nice. Everyone should do it. I've always loved the idea of people......families, neighbors, everyone included.....just being nice. Someone once told me I live in an unrealistic "Pollyanna" world. (really people, is that SO wrong.......to WANT everyone to just be NICE?)

So the two year old has a thing for 'nice' too. Not personally, per se - she can boss the best of us, throw a hefty tantrum, and has even been known to occasionally grab, scratch, and kick innocent bystanders who happen to have what she wants at any given moment. Definitely not nice.

But as of late I've noticed a trend with her. While waiting in the dentist office a few weeks ago, she decided to play with the dinosaur set they had available. First time for a little dinosaur play for the girl, so I thought I'd show her what dinosaurs do.
"Roar" I said, in my best dinosaur voice.
"No mom" two year says, "they're nice."
"Roar" I said again.
"No. They're happy."

So we played happy dinosaurs.

Playing Sequence-for-kids (a board game with animals), she chose the lion card. "What does a lion say?" I ask.
She answers nothing.
"Roar" I say, in my best lion voice.

"They're nice mom".

Oh.

In the past month we've experienced lions, tigers, bears, cheetahs, dinosaurs, skeletons, and even played with the boys old castle set with the evil vs. good knights.

They are all nice.

The 'bad' knights were invited to eat soup with the good ones.

And if you ever wondered what a nice lion sounds like (because roar is not nice), I'll tell you what the two year old told me:


(put on your sweet-princess voice here):

"Hello. My name is lion. Come to my house for noodles."


Well put.


Be nice. Amen.