My Christmas present

Perhaps you've experienced this:  when you move into a new home, you want to make it yours.  Especially in the spaces where you'll spend the most time you want to make it as cozy as possible, suiting your particular tastes.  So, for my Christmas present I wished for paint.  Yup, paint.  Since it was approaching Christmas and we hadn't yet set up our living room, I wanted to have it painted before we unpacked all the fragiles, hung pictures, etc... and Mom agreed.  Our living room (as opposed to the guests' living room/parlour) was painted a brown/green color, what I snarkily referred to as an army camouflage, which made the whole room seem darker and smaller than it actually was.  We picked something called "Touch of Midas" and hired a painter as we dreaded the ceiling and, like magic, went from this:  

varnish splattered on the baseboards

 and over-painted

and this dark color... to this:

stripes!

No, this was just after the first coats.  

What a change!  

 Eventually we had eternal sunshine:

The new color has just a little bit of orange in it that picks up the color in the pine floor and now it's a room where I look forward to sitting in my comfy chair, basking in the light and reading a good book... someday!  Maybe soon!

I have to say that our painter Ryley Wright did a lovely job, working around our B&B schedule and making the entire process pretty painless.  Thank you, Ryley!