Painting Crew

I know, it's been a while, right? Well, earlier in the week I tried to upload a video of Matthew, but it just wouldn't go, so I gave up. It's not in this post, but hopefully I can get it up on another one. This post isn't really about him anyway. Ok, get over your disappointment. I still have some pics of him, so relax :)

This weekend we committed to painting two rooms in our house, the family room and the nursery (aka Matthew's room).

Josh began the weekend before with some primer to cover up the dark green walls. It's not necessarily an ugly green, but dark walls means the space can look small, and that color was not the vision I had in mind for our family room.

Then during the week he painted our accent wall orange. We figured with that done, we could tape it off and make the weekend job easier.

Josh's family and our 2 friends from church came over on Friday to paint. Josh had Friday off, and so did everyone else. Here you see Josh and Cathy working hard with the rollers. This golden yellow came out so pretty in the end. The camera doesn't do it justice. It look mustardy, but I promise, it's not.

My Dad-in-law working on the opposite wall. They have a paint machine that made the job go faster.

Here's Josh doing touch-up on some spots the next evening.

The finished product. Yes, I know, all the walls look orange, but only the accent wall is. The rest looks like the golden sun setting on the western horizon. Which is my family room theme, by the way, western. I was inspired to do these sunset colors because of a small vase I own. And get this, a friend from my church paints artwork, and she's working on 2 paintings for me for this room. I am so excited to see them when she finishes!!

Now I can begin collecting some western items for the room. The walls look really bare right now, but in a way I don't mind. I enjoy looking at the colors. The rooms looks much bigger and warmer and cheerier. It makes me happy just thinking about it. But back to western stuff, I bought a wagon wheel that I'd like to put on the wall. And then there's the paintings my friend will do. Plus I found a western clock on Amazon I'd like to order. And I liked a framed piece I saw at a store that had a quote and a horseshoe, so that's along the lines of my theme. I want to take my time decorating my walls, because I don't want to rush into buying something and end up hating it. I also don't want to go overboard with the western stuff. Some things I've seen border on tacky, and other stuff is too outdoorsy for the look I want. I just want a taste of the west, and I want the room to feel comfortable. Hopefully I can achieve that as I collect stuff for my walls.

Josh took apart Matthew's crib and moved it into the Nascar room so the nursery could get painted.

See the light green and pink on the walls? Plus there was a butterfly border around the top that we removed a couple weeks ago. Yeah, too girly for a boy, and totally not matching my Mickey nursery stuff.

Here's Dave (Cathy's husband) working hard...maybe :)

The final product. I picked a warm corduroy brown for these walls. I wanted a neutral on the wall for future kids that would live in this room, and the color matched really well with the wall hangings and valance. By the way, I keep saying I picked such and such color, but Josh was part of the decision-making too. He helped me decide what shade of brown for the nursery and just what orange would go perfect with the yellow in the family room.

Friday was gorgeous weather, so when the paint was drying, we spent lots of time outside, which Matthew loved. Lately he's been asking a lot if he can go outside. When did he become such an outdoor lover with an indoor mom? We had pizza and salad for lunch, but for dinner we grilled chicken, corn on the cob, my Mom-in-law made potato salad, and I made a fruit salad. Plus we had patriotic brownies and rice krispie treats. Mm, everything was so yummy! Especially after a hard day's work. Oh yeah, I didn't really work, did I? See, I planned to not paint, cause I didn't think close exposure to the fumes would be good for Jellybean. But I supervised, and my sis-in-laws and mom-in-law helped entertain Matthew. I even managed to get him to nap, despite the exciting day and lots of people in the house.

Cathy and my mother-in-law enjoying the outdoors.

Fun with frisbees. That's Bek on the left and Hannah on the right. Sorry Dad, I cut part of you off in this pic :)

Matthew loved the frisbees. See? Told you there'd be a picture of him. Actually, I guess I said there'd be more than one picture, but uh, I just have one. So here it is. A wonderful conclusion for my post :)