Tikkabik

Wow, no posts since Monday. Jim's on the road again which means a busier-than-usual week for me. I've also been making plans to take a quick two-day business trip to Montreal in a week and a half, which means I have to find or replace my birth certificate (not a big deal, just a hassle) and, preferably, get a passport. I've long wanted one, so this is the excuse I needed. Unfortunately that's a logistical hassle as I book the trip, get my itinerary and have to make an appointment at the passport office in Boston so I can travel.

In other news, Bonnie and I are finally making headway on some long-planned but never acted upon interior decorating. We've lived in our house now for three years, and have gradually gotten sicker and sicker of the annoyingly neutral beige color every wall in this house has been painted. We've long wanted a more vibrant, lush palette for the walls, and we've finally found a series of paint colors from Sherwin Williams that we're really happy with.

Bonnie has some spare time before she takes the kids to camp next week, so she and I have been repainting our downstairs hallway with this gorgeous, lush color called Plummy. It's basically as it sounds -- a brilliant, rich and deep purple color that pops right off the wall. The downstairs hallway connects Emmeline's room, the downstairs bathroom, and family room to the kitchen -- one common wall has doorways to the family room and basement, and an archway into the living room. At this point, all three walls of the hallway -- and the adjoining wall of the kitchen -- have been painted Plummy, and it spreads so well I don't think we'll need a second coat.

We plan to keep the baseboard trim, the doorways and the doors white, because it's a nice contrast. Emmeline says she likes it because purple looks nice next to pink, the color of her room. Bonnie and I have already picked out really gorgeous, rich golden yellow and red tones for the living room and upstairs hallway respectively. I have to buy them in the next couple of days even though we won't be painting until my vacation later this month because the paint store is having a sale that ends this weekend.

Figuring out what we'll do with the family room comes next. It's a tough area, because it's a converted bedroom that's had a door taken out and a closet removed to open it on two walls. Bonnie and I would both like to do a green color in there -- something to make it *look* like a den, if you will -- but the colors we've heretofore looked at have been a bit too dark for our taste.

We'll also need to do something to complement Plummy in the kitchen. Bonnie and I are bouncing around some ideas, but I'm dreading them. The kitchen has a ton of moulding and cabinetry that will make it the most technically challenging to paint. There's also this hideous painted wallcovering that's got to come out that's almost like a splashguard behind the counters, and I'm not sure what's underneath.

Window treatments in the living room are also on the list of things to buy. We're still using bare, cheap, vinyl mini blinds in there, one of which desperately needs to be replaced. Once we've got the colors up in the living room and upstairs hallway, which is partly visible from the living room, we can make our final decision on how to proceed there, but we saw some really interesting, affordable options during a recent outing to Target.

Anyway, it's nice to finally get moving with this. Don't know what's taken us so long.