A Work in Progress...

I'm actually ashamed, being all design-y and a very visual person, and having a complete gravitiational attraction to off-beat decor, that we painted the main part of our house such a boring color... off white. Dani and I have lived in what he calls a "mint chocolate chip" since last July when we bought our home. I absolutely love our yard. We have six different types of palms, several banana trees around the property, hibiscus, and a huge, sprawling fig tree. The previous owners took the tropical theme a bit too far though. Our living room and dining room walls were mint green on the top 2/3 portion, there was a white chair rail all the way around, and the bottom 1/3 was this diluted chocolate milk color. The chair rail got ripped down when the termite inspectors came before we even moved into the house, so for many months we just dealt with the sickening colors that never quite met in a straight line because of the non-existent chair rail. A few weeks ago I got a wild hair and decided to pull a 5 gallon bucket of off white paint out of the shed and get to work. I was honestly expecting Dani to come home and be pleasantly surprised but he had mixed feelings about it because apparently I absolutely suck at doing the edges. I got frustrated and left one wall, the biggest wall in the house, halfway unpainted. Yesterday Dani learned his aunt will be visiting from Poland this week, so we used that as our last motivation to get the painting done!

If you ever came to my old house in Jacksonville, you'll know this off-white doesn't look like my style AT ALL... we lived in an old house built in 1893 near downtown Jacksonville and I had collected such a hodge podge of random furnishings are art and such from my jaunts around the country in my early 20's. My living room was entirely hot pink with black furniture and black and white photographs all over the walls. Since we moved we've gotten new furniture, and now that we have this massive living room (compared to the tiny one in the house we were in before), I decided to ditch some of the smaller prints for bigger pieces. Since everything else is pretty neutral in the room now, I plan on doing my craziness on the walls with some new/different/bigger art.

It was a disaster area in here last night! We're slowly getting things back together and everything back up on the walls, so I'll post updated pictures after it's visiting aunt approved!



Malik was really interested in what we were doing, but I think he was more upset that his "tropical" (bleh!) walls are now gone!







The Dali over the fireplace is soon to be replaced by a 47" Samsung.





(PS: that candle! Plaza Verde in St. Augustine has the best candles in the world, hands down! That one is persimmon, tangerine and pomegranate!)