New paint! New paint! Love is not a strong enough word for how I feel about the new colors in our house. It's made me look at our house with new eyes. The space feels brighter, bigger and more cohesive. I love it. Have I said that already? It took until Sunday to get the house back to normal and to really see the change. I felt so energized that even though I should have gone to bed early I stayed up to make sure all the dishes were washed so the kitchen would be perfect.

An added, unexpected bonus is that I no longer loathe our countertops! They used to be on my "must change one day!" list and now they are downgraded to "would be nice to change one day!" Win!

The blinds we had on all the windows were pretty terrible, stained and with massively tangled cords. We replaced the dining area blinds with shades and we've left the other blinds off the windows. I love all the natural light although it can be intense in the morning (the windows face east) so I'm not sure what we might do...

Now that we don't have a television, we rearranged our furniture to be more open in the great room and we love the layout. Cedric is usually sitting on a blanket playing with toys and now we can easily see him from the kitchen. We live fully in this room and it fits our life so well right now.

We're both about ready to change up the large art that we have hanging on the wall (the six panel piece) but we aren't sure what we'd like. Something less stark and with cooler tones instead of warm perhaps. I'm wondering if I could DIY something of the save size along these lines...any other ideas?

I'm so pleased with the new look of the front door, which was inspired by Erica's home. 

This was such a satisfying project to complete and even though I could have gone on living with the colors we had I'm so SO! glad we decided to do this. We spend so much time in our home and it feels wonderful to really love it instead of to be wishing we could change something. Or course there is a balance between making a change and the investment it requires. But for the $2,500 that we spent, since we could afford it, was well worth it!

For paint colors we used: all walls are gray owl by Benjamin Moore, lower kitchen cabinets and back of the front door are Kendall charcoal by Benjamin Moore and upper cabinets are a standard painter's white (the same color that our doors, ceilings and baseboards already were).