I'm blue! Da-ba-dee....

I'd like to introduce to you a blue toy room. A non-neon-yellow toy room. A kinder, gentler toy room.

I do apologize for my iphone photos in this post. The color seems to shift in every shot! But at least you get an idea of how our lives have changed. What? Color is a dramatic thing! If you think I jest, please scroll down to the entry before this one and see the chaos that we lived with for a year and a half! Decide for yourself if blue is something to be excited about...

With some money from the great-grandparents for Christmas, we chose this sweet and colorful USA canvas for their play room. We have family all over the country and are already trying to teach the little ones where Oregon and Arkansas actually are...

That teeny-tiny closet (smallest bedroom closet in the house) is now the dress-up closet, but I've yet to complete its makeover. I have a low hanging rod, low shelves, jewelry hooks, and new accessory bins in mind... I shall keep you posed. Posted, rather. And above that toy box, I'm planning floating shelves to corral all the favorite stuffed animals. Those shelves should probably have a lip to keep the little critters on, I'm thinking.

I still have lots of plans for this room! The pink chair above is the anchor of the "reading corner." On the walls above it, I'm planning to hang 3 or 4 spice-racks-turned-bookshelves in order to free up some real estate on the cubby shelf unit. Kinda like this:

via Domestic Simplicity

This is a somewhat dark view from the door. But I wanted to show the scale of the new play kitchen that we got the girls for Christmas. There's lots of space on the walls around the kitchen for hanging bins and shelves to help keep our fun kitchen stuff organized!

Oh, and by the way... anyone have any thoughts/preferences/ideas about rugs on top of carpet? I'd love to create "spaces" in the toy room possibly with rugs... good? bad? bleh?

and it was all yellow...

...and horrible. Granted, I've had my fair share of "Oh my word, this looked way better under the store lights!" moments. But by and large, I've been pretty fortunate in the paint color department. (My budget is so relieved.)

But these landlords (bless.) had a seriously hard time. Our master bedroom was pistachio, for goodness' sake! Rule of thumb: not all hues automatically go with whatever white is on your ceiling and trim. Ouch! If it hurts your eyes, don't do it.

The guest bath was another terrible - albeit darker - green which they thankfully covered over in beige before we moved in. The forgotten color tells its sad story, though, in drips on the baseboards and countertop and mirror! (Tape off before you paint, anyone?) I'm really glad our landlords don't follow my blog, BTW! At least I don't think they do! I'll know soon.

Since then, we covered those beige walls with some leftover Urban Mist from covering the pistachio in the Master. I could feel my angst melting away.

But for the last year and a half, I haven't been able to reconcile myself to this sight:

It just hurt. I mean physically. My eyes actually throbbed when I looked at the yellow. Especially wherever it met the white trim in the room! It caused a little vision explosion where the colors touched that just wasn't normal. And to top it off, the room was bossy as all get-out. Lest you think I exaggerate! I shall demonstrate.

There is something to be said for painting swatches of your color choices on the walls, against the trim, in the light, in the shadow, so you can see how it looks in different lighting for a few days before you invest in a couple gallons of mistake! You can never know by looking in the store. NEVER.

And in this last photo you can see the new color going in the corner. Which - combined with the yellow - also hurt.

But I pressed on because I knew the outcome would ROCK. What paint? What else! I uncovered a happy little surprise of a whole gallon of extra Urban Mist and just decided this needed to be done. (Urban Mist is a Behr color, kinda grey-blue...we used their interior semi-gloss, paint and primer in one!) So after a quick trip to Lowe's for a shorty angled cutting brush, a new paint pan, and some frog tape (which I didn't use, what!!), I got right to work. A couple evenings & naptimes later...happiness.

Gotta take some new pics so I can let you see the result! Oh, happy day. I don't cringe when I walk down the hall and glance to the right anymore!

Tell me, do you have any paint color skeletons in your design closet? Any oops color stories? Have you rented a houseful of bad choices (and therefore had to live with them)?? Any favorite never-fail perfect color ideas out there? I know people have favorites and let me tell you, in this house, Urban Mist is on the top of my list!