Wow, here we are rolling right through the holiday season and I haven't written one thing about how to find inexpensive gifts or what to make for dinner. Why, you might ask? Because I'm absolutely sick and tired of morning "news" programs filling every minute of every hour with "new" ways of doing the same old crap. If I see one more segment on how I can make an inexpensive hostess gift out of recycled cans or listen to a therapist list the ways one can survive the holidays, well, I'm gonna lose my marbles! Don't get me wrong, I love the garish, campy, overly-garnished holidays more than anyone (I have five trees set up in our house and enough glitter to make even Liberace pink with envy!), but the explosion of holiday nonsense makes me insane. It's all enough to make my grey birthmark even more grey! Speaking of grey and new ways of doing the same old thing, I am working with a cool couple who bought a neat old farmhouse they plan on turning into a bed and breakfast. While they want to maintain the integrity of the traditional farmhouse, they want to make it slightly more modern and user-friendly. How can they achieve that fairly quickly and inexpensively? PAINT. Architectural Digest recently published an article on "new trends in white paint." Humm. Blues were hot a few years ago, pinks before that, and everyone seems to be talking about GREY lately. Thankfully, just like old saint nicks red coat, grey is fairly evergreen and won't go out of style any time soon. The wood trim in this house was already painted (several times, in fact), so I suggested painting the walls a light color grey/white tone and the woodwork a darker grey. Because this will be a heavily used home, I suggested tile that looks like wood in the entry in a herringbone pattern (original floors in this area were badly damaged from weather and adjoining rooms have wool, inlaid carpet, so this won't compete with real wood floors). What we achieved was a clean, simple, yet traditional look that will take a beating for years to come and keep on shining.
