image: Elle Decoration (maybe UK?)

I've had this image tacked up on my inspiration wall for about 2 years. It's one of the few images that hasn't been taken down and filed. I should have remembered it when we struggled to figure out house paint colors last spring.

Somehow the cabinhouse just doesn't take well to bold exterior colors. It's small, square and old. White suits its simplistic nature.

The front of our house is now white. This year we'll paint the sides and back to match. (This image reminds me of the scene in the Anne of Green Gables miniseries when Anne walks across the roof and falls off. Maybe that's why I love it so much. I loved that movie.).

you know how every once in a while you go in for a regular old hair trim and you accidentally tell the hairdresser to give you mia farrow-esque pixie cut?

and then you go home, pick a fight with your sweetheart, cry about how you look like a chubby boy and wake up the next morning feeling somewhat reassured by the fact that hair does grow back...

well, we kind of gave our house an accidental pixie-cut last weekend.

our back bedroom windows had some work that necessitated repainting. we taped, filled holes, caulked gaps, primed everything and built a new grate for our attic window...it took 2 looonnng days.
and then on day number 3 we got a little crazy....
spurred on by a seething hatred for our trashy white security gate and the recent revelation that we could paint the gate (gasp!), we eschewed the white in favor of color! bright color! beautiful, rich, robust purple cornflower blue!
I'm working on a fancy photoshopped mock-up of what the back will eventually look like when we are finally able to repaint the entire house (yes, we know trim should be painted after the house...) and landscape a bit. We'd like a little sheltered area above the back door and I'm thinking that some sort of climbing orange/red flowering vine (nastursiums?) would look great...

oh and the original project? the inside of the back door? meh...not so great. i'll post a photo of the new color but i'm not excited about it. might need to repaint it. it only took us 2 years to get around to it the first time!