lately my favorite music to listen to is regina spektor's new album, "far." it's amazing, as usual. she just doesn't disappoint, does she? i love that everyone in our family loves her. gillian wants everyone to be quiet for "blue lips" so she can sing every line. aedan wants to hear "laughing with" and is currently jamming to it while putting together a puzzle with his grandma.
my personal favorite is "folding chair." yesterday, in the car i told the kids, "your dad and i already did this, except we had TWO baby boys and ONE baby girl, and someday we are really going to get an airstream and tow it around the U.S." i conveniently left out that i also have a perfect body...or if i forget, i can listen to this song and remind myself. somehow, though, i think they weren't getting me, because they were fighting over a book or something while i was talking. so much for being sentimental...
so this album is my current backdrop, and with it, blue is slowly becoming my backdrop. i have always shied away from blue, because i feel like i will just make it look too folksy and not enough "me." do you know what i'm talking about? there's a fine line between awesome, inviting, hip, anthro-style blue and dorky blue. and i've just always been worried that i would be more on the dorky side of the scale than on the hip side.
but living in florida, where blue really is the backdrop for almost everything--blue sky, blue water--i have been drawn to it for a while. so lately i've been trying to work it into my palette more. like, remember the bunk beds? i love that blue. but see, that's just one color. i feel confident using that color. but also remember how my husband gently banned me from using it for a while now, for fear that everything in the house will eventually be that color?
so i had this idea. i don't know why i hadn't tried this before, but that's how it goes, i guess. we bought a rocking chair, a really comfy one with a slipcover, right before gillian was born, over 7 years ago now. i chose cream canvas, because my thought was that if it got slammed with dog prints/poop/food stains it would be super easy to bleach and get clean.
well...at first it was, but then as time has gone on, it really just looked dingy. (i know you can read that word two ways, and it just cracks me up to think of a chair that's dingy, rhyming with clingy, instead of dingy, rhyming with stingy. i'm easily amused, what can i say?)
so i thought, oh! i'll dye it! i'm sure i was inspired by one of the many amazing blogs i dare to visit on occasion. i say dare because most of the time i visit and feel simultaneously inspired and inadquate. anyone else relate to that?
ok, so i bought some blue dye and thought i would just use a little and it would turn out a beautiful light blue. now, when i went to buy the dye, i was at target, and all they had was navy blue. well, i figured rit dye had more shades of blue, but i looked at my 3 kids, who were fighting at the time (surprise! i bet you didn't expect to hear that. they are always so amazingly well behaved.), and i thought, forget it, i'm buying navy, because i am NOT going to another store.
so home we came, and when i first put the cover in, i freaked out (a little) because it was starting to look purplish. but then i thought, well, if it's purple, i'll just make it work. nothing i can do now...
and it turned out awesome, i think! of course, you know, the blue i painted the bunk beds i also used on the dresser in our bedroom, so it (really) clashed with the new color on the chair. but a little switcheroo cleared that right up. and of course, you also know how addicted i am to rearranging, so that part was fun!
the chair used to be in our living room, and i moved it to the bedroom mostly to get it out of view before i colored it, but now i'm rethinking my decision because i love how it turned out. i find myself wanting to sit in it all the time now.
i love it when i get lucky and things turn out so well!
3 comments:
i love it! yeah, you never have to worry about the dark rit dyes because they never turn out as dark as they're supposed to. and i am addicted to homographs! i have a list of them squirreled away somewhere but i totally overlooked dingy/dingy. don't fear blue, it's a fantastic color and one that's, surprisingly very versatile. i plan on repainting the hallway blue, i want to repaint everything but i can be a bit like hammy in over the hedge when it comes to interior decorating. my kids love regina spektor too but we don't have her latest, i'll have to check it out.
I don't think you're lucky - I think you're very talented!! That chair looks great! Now it doesn't look dingy or dingy! ;-)
my parents have an airstream trailer because my dad is a germ freak and as you can imagine: stainless steel is a perfectionist's dream. today i watched my father take down the awning of the trailer (my boys have been camping with them and today I went for a visit) it took him 45 minutes to do a 10 minute job.
he wanted to make sure that there was no sign of dirt of debris being rolled up in the awning. it was a very tedious process.
my parents have had their trailer for three years now and they lived in it for two years. their trailer is cleaner than the inside of a bar of soap. my father spends his hours camping: cleaning the clamps that hold the awning down and wiping the bottom of his shoes off with a wet cloth before he enters the airstream. he would never walk inside his airstream with his shoes on, he just cleans them off so that they will not get the door mat "inside" the trailer dirty. all of this to say, probably by the time you will be able to buy the dream machine for the fam.....my parents will be selling their airstream and if I was going to buy one, I would want to buy one from my father. fyi..... i am fine and i had a wonderful childhood. my father just likes to clean things.
I suggest that you buy an airstream and you camp in Vermont for the summer. Vermont is full of poets and campgrounds. An odd but beautiful combination. only in Vermont that is. And by the way the next time you use the restroom on an airplane, think "airstream trailer" potty room; and you will have a pretty good idea what it will be like to camp curbside in your retro-fitted little wagon of joy and endless trails of possibilities...Blessings and Trails to you!!
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