Over the top
Ken and I were watching one of our favorite shows last night, "My Wife and Kids." The acting can be sub-par, all except for that of Damon Wayans. I could absolutely watch him all day. Anyway, I digress....
Michael (whom Damon plays), the father, went upstairs into his youngest daughter's room to have a chat. In he walked, and my eyes about popped out of my head. The walls in her room were....raspberry! That's the best way I can describe them. They weren't red, nor were they anything you could remotely call just "pink." These walls were even beyond what we think of as "magenta." The shrill reddish-pinkish tones flooded our TV screen, making me wonder if it was our color that needed to be adjusted. Nope, it was really that red.
The more I looked at it, though, the more I liked it. Not liked it....absolutely loved it. It was all her. It was all GIRL. It was simply a backsplash which grandiously set the stage for the numerous other whimsical things which adorned the walls, as well as the feminine yet edgy furniture that would make every young girl swoon.
It immediately made me think of all of the ways in which Mom and Dad allowed me to personalize my bedroom growing up. I always had my own room, and now I realize how lucky I was (it didn't seem like a big deal at the time). Within reason, she let me pick out the "theme" I wanted, and I ran with it. I wanted a canopy bed for my first bed out of the crib, and so it came to be. Whitewashed wood with pale blue coverlet and canpoy....simply gorgeous, yet innocent and sweet. When I entered my Strawberry Shortcake phase when I was five, I had my entire room upfitted with her sheets, curtains, pillows, you name it. Gaudy? maybe. Me? Entirely. (After all....there was finally another red-headed role model of sorts in Shortcake. It did wonders for my self-esteem to know that red hair CAN be cool.)
Mom let me choose the colors of my room as I grew. These ranged from pale ivory to light blue to raging Pepto pink to a pale lemon yellow. I felt as if the colors of my room changed as my personality did. The only time my room was a blank white was when we were in military housing and had painting restrictions on us.
I went through a phase, too, where I oogled over everything Asian. When some other girls my age were pasting up posters of Michael J. Fox or Punky Brewster, I was displaying silk miniature kimonos, porcelain masks, and paper fans. Oh, wow. I can only imagine what went through people's minds when they saw it....my parents included.
I am trying to choose a color for Gardner's new room. Airplanes is the theme, led entirely by his interests, not my pleading. He is ga-ga over aeronautics, and we're going to play it up. Although my first inclination would be to paint his room an ivory or a taupe so it would harmonously blend with the rest of the house, the pale sky blue paint chips beckoned to me from across the Lowes home improvement store last week. "Blue," I muttered. "He would probably love a blue room."
I'm sure Mom winced those few times I chose Pepto pink....she might have even visualized how badly it would look against the other, subdued colors she'd chosen for the rest of our house. Yet there were no comments made, just a happy Mom who paid graciously for the paint and brushes and helped me set to work on the "room of my dreams."
Now, I know Gardner's not near old enough to tell me if he wants blue or not, but I'm willing to bet that he would choose it over ivory any day if he had the vocabulary to express that fact to me. I still have some time to decide, of course, but for now, blue's winning out.
Michael (whom Damon plays), the father, went upstairs into his youngest daughter's room to have a chat. In he walked, and my eyes about popped out of my head. The walls in her room were....raspberry! That's the best way I can describe them. They weren't red, nor were they anything you could remotely call just "pink." These walls were even beyond what we think of as "magenta." The shrill reddish-pinkish tones flooded our TV screen, making me wonder if it was our color that needed to be adjusted. Nope, it was really that red.
The more I looked at it, though, the more I liked it. Not liked it....absolutely loved it. It was all her. It was all GIRL. It was simply a backsplash which grandiously set the stage for the numerous other whimsical things which adorned the walls, as well as the feminine yet edgy furniture that would make every young girl swoon.
It immediately made me think of all of the ways in which Mom and Dad allowed me to personalize my bedroom growing up. I always had my own room, and now I realize how lucky I was (it didn't seem like a big deal at the time). Within reason, she let me pick out the "theme" I wanted, and I ran with it. I wanted a canopy bed for my first bed out of the crib, and so it came to be. Whitewashed wood with pale blue coverlet and canpoy....simply gorgeous, yet innocent and sweet. When I entered my Strawberry Shortcake phase when I was five, I had my entire room upfitted with her sheets, curtains, pillows, you name it. Gaudy? maybe. Me? Entirely. (After all....there was finally another red-headed role model of sorts in Shortcake. It did wonders for my self-esteem to know that red hair CAN be cool.)
Mom let me choose the colors of my room as I grew. These ranged from pale ivory to light blue to raging Pepto pink to a pale lemon yellow. I felt as if the colors of my room changed as my personality did. The only time my room was a blank white was when we were in military housing and had painting restrictions on us.
I went through a phase, too, where I oogled over everything Asian. When some other girls my age were pasting up posters of Michael J. Fox or Punky Brewster, I was displaying silk miniature kimonos, porcelain masks, and paper fans. Oh, wow. I can only imagine what went through people's minds when they saw it....my parents included.
I am trying to choose a color for Gardner's new room. Airplanes is the theme, led entirely by his interests, not my pleading. He is ga-ga over aeronautics, and we're going to play it up. Although my first inclination would be to paint his room an ivory or a taupe so it would harmonously blend with the rest of the house, the pale sky blue paint chips beckoned to me from across the Lowes home improvement store last week. "Blue," I muttered. "He would probably love a blue room."
I'm sure Mom winced those few times I chose Pepto pink....she might have even visualized how badly it would look against the other, subdued colors she'd chosen for the rest of our house. Yet there were no comments made, just a happy Mom who paid graciously for the paint and brushes and helped me set to work on the "room of my dreams."
Now, I know Gardner's not near old enough to tell me if he wants blue or not, but I'm willing to bet that he would choose it over ivory any day if he had the vocabulary to express that fact to me. I still have some time to decide, of course, but for now, blue's winning out.
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