#65 - Touch up the paint spots all over the house (with the correct shade)

As it turns out, after nearly 10 years in a house, paint fades. For the life of me, I could NOT figure out how to touch up any spots on our walls because the right paint color, with every sheen under the sun, was not a match.

I later learned that sprayed-on paint can't necessarily be touched up with a paintbrush. Who knew?

Now that we've decided to stay put in our house for a while, I decided it needed a face lift. A friend had her cabinets and banister painted and it looked nice in pictures, but once I saw it in person, I couldn't stop thinking about it! 

Was there anything "wrong" with my house before? No, not really. I was just ready for a change, and paint is a relatively cheap way to change things up.

I didn't mind the tan that was throughout our house, but I have had an itch to cool things up with gray for a couple of years now, so I started looking for grays. There are brown grays and green grays and TONS of blue grays...finding a shade of gray turned out to be a lot harder than I imagined.

I finally pulled the trigger and picked one. We painted all of the common areas of the downstairs, up the stairwell, into the office and in the halls. I really like how it turned out! I went with a basic white for the cabinets, even though I considered tea-staining it, I decided on white in the end.

Kitchen: Before

Kitchen: DURING the painting of the cabinets. I thought ahead and pulled out some dishes and silverware and put them in the pantry, but they moved the fridge right in front of the pantry door. Curses!  So we had to eat out almost every meal for 3 days and, what's worse, is that I couldn't get into my kitchen to make Mike a birthday cake this year. :(  He got a birthday pumpkin pie from Trader Joe's.

(I didn't know what was going on behind that quarantined plastic wall, so I peeked through from the backyard window.)

Cabinets painted, walls the same

Kitchen: After

Family room: Before

Family room: After

I bought some pillows to try to tie together the old brown and the new gray, because we're clearly not replacing our furniture and window coverings anytime soon!

This was my inspiration for the staircase. We'll rip up the carpet and put in wood down the road.

Banister: After

This was my inspiration for a VERY dark charcoal bathroom with red and white accents.

Bathroom: After

It's easy to decorate with red and white at Christmas, but we'll keep the colors the same when we replace our decor in a few weeks!

In the bathroom, I spray painted a useless, mint-green tin container bright red and that's what's on the back of the toilet, holding extra towels. I also touched up a giant red basket that holds extra toilet paper on the floor. I know it seems silly to pay this much attention to a random half bathroom, but I am in there every day, multiple times each day, and it makes me happy every time I see it.

#82 - Do something crazy with my hair (well, crazy for ME)

It took me a while, but I finally decided to do something fun and different with my hair. I tried last year, but when I told my friend, she asked if I was going through a midlife crisis. It made me feel like I was trying to be younger than I am.

But during my most recent hair appointment, I finally pulled the trigger. My hair stylist (who originally tried to talk me out of it) said that I would be disappointed if I just did a strip underneath because you wouldn't be able to see if. So she took a HUGE chunk and colored it bright red for Christmas. I LOVED how it turned out!!!  I might even have her recolor it red for Valentine's Day, then phase back to my normal hair. 

So, at 39 years old and only a few weeks left until the 1001st day, #82 is crossed off of my 101 Goals in 1001 Days list. What's funny is that it's such a big deal for straight-laced me, but hardly anyone has noticed it. I've probably only had 4 people say anything unless I brought it up!  Go figure.