Saturday morning we headed to Lowe’s to pick up our paint for the nursery. We went with the colors we decided on last week.

To keep things simple since we were walking in with 4 different colors in 3 finishes, I wrote what we needed on each color we wanted.

Yes that is my iPhone shadow. It was inevitable.

Anyway, the colors are Crumb Cookie in semi-gloss (trim & paneled wall), Lettuce Alone in eggshell (closet), Comes The Dawn in flat (ceiling) and Gray Beard in eggshell (walls).

We painted the ceiling in about an hour on Saturday night (after getting haircuts, buying paint, caulking and attending an engagement party an hour away). We loved the result.

It gives this infinity sky feeling– when you look at it you almost feel like you can jump in it and it never ends.

Then yesterday we started to paint the walls the gray color we chose… and this happened.

Yes, that’s it on the left (and there’s the paneled wall primed and partially painted!) But the gray paint looks like baby blue. Suddenly our modern looking neutral nursery turned into a Pottery Barn boy’s room. Not the look we were going for, so we stopped right then and there.

The problem is that the ceiling is reflecting on the walls, so the true gray is appearing blue. I went back to my pile of swatches and decided we needed something with some brown undertones, to counteract the blue reflection. We picked up a tester of Olympic’s Gray Goose and stuck it on the walls.

Definitely doesn’t look baby blue, but we’re not sure if it’s too brown. Or if it gives off a purpley pink undertone….

Here it is at the top of the closet, which I don’t mind so much. It definitely varies depending on where it is in the room…

I didn’t get a chance to see the new color in daylight since I got home late, so I’m going to check it out again tomorrow morning. It looks great with the curtain fabric and bedding (which I can’t show you) but I’m nervous about it with the charcoal colored glider we’re planning on getting. We have both brown and gray fabrics to mix in, so I wanted the paint to be a little bit of both. Like the bridge that brings the neutrals together.

I have a feeling the solution to our problems may be right in front of my face, like maybe, in our striped walls downstairs in the current office/future playroom…

We might have to dig out the leftovers of one of these colors tomorrow….

After we had our downstairs floors replaced and we got our spiffy new faucet, there was something in the kitchen sticking out like a sore thumb.

Cue the undersized and overused kitchen rug. I took this picture in the morning before work, see how I strategically did not include the sink? That’s because it was full of crap. A little blogger secret 😉

We wanted something bigger for this area mostly to protect our new floors. We often ‘dribble’ water around the dishwasher area while transferring dishes and we wanted to make sure these floors stay as moisture free as possible.

Another reason why we started thinking about a new rug is because this round of floors is slightly more cherry than our previous ones. I know you guys (or anyone for that matter) would not notice, since they are the exact brand and color of our previous floors. But due to natural variations and different lots of wood, this time we seemed to get less of the dark brown pieces, especially in the kitchen. There are a couple you can spot in this picture…

If I could have hand picked the boards that went down, believe me I would have. I basically had the variations in our previous floors memorized, and my favorite piece of wood was in our dining room. It had this pretty mix of colors and it stood out. When we did our pre-closing inspection, I mentioned how much I loved the variation to the builder representative and he said that most people complain about those pieces. Not me my friend, not me!

So to get a little more brown tones in the room, I started looking for a brown rug, a runner to be exact. Thankfully my friend Robin (Hi Robin!) emailed me a link to a rug sale, with our office in mind. That’s the great thing about having a blog, all of your friends send you things that are your style 🙂 She sent me a link to Garnet Hill’s Bogart Flat-Weave Wool Rug…

Loving the cocoa color! It’s a nice way to bring some more pattern into the kitchen (we have our linear backsplash and our leafy Ikea curtains), as well as a little more brown (we currently have brown in our backsplash, pendant lights and window treatment). I measured it out and it will come out a foot further than our current mat, and will be 5 feet longer. It covers a good amount of the “busy zone” of the kitchen.

I decided that this is going to be my Valentine’s Day gift. Mike and I aren’t big holiday gift exchangers, since I kinda wear the same jewelry everyday and the pieces I change up are $2 bracelets. Plus Macky eats flowers so Mike saves money on those! We’re the type of people that say that we’d rather pick out things we really want and not feel guilty buying them than overspend on each other a few days a year. Though we’re all about spontaneous, thoughtful gifts, we’re never aiming to spend x amount on each other because we feel like we have to. Mike once bought me just a mini-muffin pan for Christmas… and I loved it. Then I came home one random day a few years ago to a new MacBook on my desk… and I loved that too 🙂 Such a keeper.

Happy First Valentine’s Day house, I got you a runner! Please don’t return it for booze. I’m not giving you a gift receipt….