Scene: The chorus members for an opera have assembled on stage, getting ready for the beginning of Act 2, Scene 2 of L@ Travi@ta. The curtain is closed. Cast members stand about, fidgeting with their costumes, smoothing down their hair. Two women are sitting center stage, one leaning into the other's arms. The director is bustling about, giving last minute directions at this final rehearsal. He is about to leave the stage when he pauses, and looks intensely at the 2 women center stage.
Director: SEX!!
The director dashes out through the curtain. The orchestra begins to play and the curtain opens. The two women center stage are trying hard not to laugh.
This is a friendly reminder to start thinking about your Monday Mission post. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a post as a script/dialogue. Use your imagination. Come back here on Monday and leave a link to your post. And read the post I am working on for that day, which, if I am brave enough, will have a similar cast of characters.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Generation Gap
So many of you dear readers have asked how my car trips with the teens are going. How very sweet of you to even remember.
One specific question was how they are taking my having to kiss a girl in the show. LOTS OF GIGGLING would be the answer to that. In one very awkward moment it nearly ended up being me and ONE OF THE GIRLS I DRIVE, until I expressed to the director that she was a teenager, and he immediately backed off. I've tried to not make a big deal about it at all, and they are beginning to relax about it.
As I said, driving 3 teenagers back and forth to rehearsals for L@ Travi@ta has been an education. High school feels both like yesterday and also worlds away to me, which was brought home when a song that was a favorite of mine when I was a senior came on the radio the other day and I thought "oooh! cool song!" and realized it was released THE YEAR THESE KIDS WERE BORN.
The world is very different now, in a lot of ways. Often all three of them have their cell phones out (who had cell phones when I was in high school? Um... no one). One evening I was fairly certain they were texting back and forth to EACH OTHER (and of course felt all "high school" myself in my insecurity. Were they texting about me?) One of them wrote a paper on his cell phone, then e-mailed it to himself to print out when he got home. (I got my first e-mail account in college. I had to go to the computer lab at the library to check it. Once a week.) At least he was making good use of the drive time!
As time has passed we've become mutually more comfortable around each other, and will talk and laugh together. Sometimes. Sometimes I still just listen. I've been pretty good about keeping my opinion to myself when they are just being teenagers, although I have made a point to give them a bit of insight about how you behave professionally in a theatre (nicely, I hope. As in "The Stage Manager is the one you need to talk to about that. It's the stage manager's job to......") The only time I spoke up was in regards to Halloween costumes. The two girls were discussing what to wear to their costumed dance, and one said "I want to get the Mile High Captain costume." Calmly, although perhaps the white knuckles on the steering wheel gave me away, I said "Please, don't dress like strippers for Halloween." She replied "The Mile High Captain costume isn't really that bad." I calmly repeated "Please don't dress like a stripper." I did not go into a tirade about how we are only encouraging boys to think of us as sex objects, or even ask her if she knew what "Mile High Captain" meant. I think my tongue may have been bleeding.
I am surprised by the changing technology... the cell phones and ipods and e-mail and internet access... all of these things that both expand their world and limit it.
And yet there are some things that haven't changed. One day the girls talked quietly in the backseat about heartbreak: a surprising turn from a whole group of friends that has left one of them feeling lonely and confused, crying each day after school. And that could have been me at 15. It WAS me at 15. I didn't understand it and I felt all alone and like nothing so horrible had ever happened to anyone, ever. I felt I would never have friends again.
And I kept my mouth shut. Because they were talking quietly. Not to me. They were not looking for grown-up advice, for words for someone who is in a different stage of life. But my heart cracked open a bit wider, as my old self cried with her, silently, inside. The generation gap isn't so big, after all.
*************
L@ Tr@vi@ta opens tomorrow, and at our rehearsal last night our soprano lip synched the whole show. She has laryngitis. So any prayers or good thoughts you can send our way will be much appreciated.
One specific question was how they are taking my having to kiss a girl in the show. LOTS OF GIGGLING would be the answer to that. In one very awkward moment it nearly ended up being me and ONE OF THE GIRLS I DRIVE, until I expressed to the director that she was a teenager, and he immediately backed off. I've tried to not make a big deal about it at all, and they are beginning to relax about it.
As I said, driving 3 teenagers back and forth to rehearsals for L@ Travi@ta has been an education. High school feels both like yesterday and also worlds away to me, which was brought home when a song that was a favorite of mine when I was a senior came on the radio the other day and I thought "oooh! cool song!" and realized it was released THE YEAR THESE KIDS WERE BORN.
The world is very different now, in a lot of ways. Often all three of them have their cell phones out (who had cell phones when I was in high school? Um... no one). One evening I was fairly certain they were texting back and forth to EACH OTHER (and of course felt all "high school" myself in my insecurity. Were they texting about me?) One of them wrote a paper on his cell phone, then e-mailed it to himself to print out when he got home. (I got my first e-mail account in college. I had to go to the computer lab at the library to check it. Once a week.) At least he was making good use of the drive time!
As time has passed we've become mutually more comfortable around each other, and will talk and laugh together. Sometimes. Sometimes I still just listen. I've been pretty good about keeping my opinion to myself when they are just being teenagers, although I have made a point to give them a bit of insight about how you behave professionally in a theatre (nicely, I hope. As in "The Stage Manager is the one you need to talk to about that. It's the stage manager's job to......") The only time I spoke up was in regards to Halloween costumes. The two girls were discussing what to wear to their costumed dance, and one said "I want to get the Mile High Captain costume." Calmly, although perhaps the white knuckles on the steering wheel gave me away, I said "Please, don't dress like strippers for Halloween." She replied "The Mile High Captain costume isn't really that bad." I calmly repeated "Please don't dress like a stripper." I did not go into a tirade about how we are only encouraging boys to think of us as sex objects, or even ask her if she knew what "Mile High Captain" meant. I think my tongue may have been bleeding.
I am surprised by the changing technology... the cell phones and ipods and e-mail and internet access... all of these things that both expand their world and limit it.
And yet there are some things that haven't changed. One day the girls talked quietly in the backseat about heartbreak: a surprising turn from a whole group of friends that has left one of them feeling lonely and confused, crying each day after school. And that could have been me at 15. It WAS me at 15. I didn't understand it and I felt all alone and like nothing so horrible had ever happened to anyone, ever. I felt I would never have friends again.
And I kept my mouth shut. Because they were talking quietly. Not to me. They were not looking for grown-up advice, for words for someone who is in a different stage of life. But my heart cracked open a bit wider, as my old self cried with her, silently, inside. The generation gap isn't so big, after all.
*************
L@ Tr@vi@ta opens tomorrow, and at our rehearsal last night our soprano lip synched the whole show. She has laryngitis. So any prayers or good thoughts you can send our way will be much appreciated.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
A Kiss is Just a Kiss...
... particularly when it is a stage kiss.
My husband, in our 11 years of marriage, has had to witness me kissing at minimum 8 other men. Which is actually fairly low, for an actress of my age, but I am not exactly the ingenue type.
When we first got married he needed to know ALL the details of any kissing in a play. I would have to outline every move so that he would know what to expect. I learned this, and respected it. I tried to be completely upfront with him about EVERYTHING, so there would be no surprises when he came to see the show.
I ran into problems with this in our second year of marriage. I did a show where in one scene I had to take off a fair amount of my clothes, as well as a fair amount of my partner's clothes (in great kudos to the costume designer and the director they dressed us and directed us in such a way that a lot of clothes ended up on the floor and yet we were still quite decent) push him onto a bed, kiss all the way up his stomach and on to his lips (while describing a lawsuit our characters were working on). I described this scene to my husband in painstaking detail. Yet after the show he was upset with me. But, as he told it, not about that scene. No, he was upset about another scene where our characters appeared in flashback. We were playing ourselves at 8, and I was wearing overalls and my hair was in pigtails. I pecked my partner quickly on the lips and SKIPPED offstage. My husband was ANGRY that I left that kiss out when I told him about the play.
At first I was bewildered. Was he really bothered by that peck and skip? And what I realized was that no, he was not. He was bothered by the other scene. But, because I had told him about it, he could not openly be upset with me about it. I had forgotten all about the peck and skip, because it seemed so irrelevant. Yet because I had failed to warn him, he could be upset about it.
I honestly can't imagine what it would be like to watch him kiss another woman. He's not an actor, so I will never be put in that position. And I think, because I am an actress, that if he were an actor I would see it for what it is - playing a part - and not worry about it. But it still must be really weird. So once I realized what was behind the anger at the peck and skip, I simply apologized and let it go.
My husband has relaxed about the stage kisses I have quite a bit over the years, although there was one show where he came opening night and then again at our closing 6 weeks later. When I asked him how the show had changed and grown his only comment was "You guys kissed a lot more." Which, when I thought about it, was true. As we as actors got more comfortable with each other we became more playful on stage.
But a stage kiss is truly JUST that... a stage kiss. When you're working in a small theatre, or in interactive theatre where you are sharing a dance floor with the audience, you have to actually KISS the other person. No hand over the mouth as you dip them back nonsense they teach you in high school. The first time it has to be done is rehearsal is usually terribly awkward, since you often don't know the other person very well. You feel a really strange pressure to both really impress, but not impress TOO much so that they think YOU are kissing them and not your character. You worry about whether the director thinks it is believable or not. Is there "chemistry"?
I did a commercial that had me lying in bed with another man, both of us looking miserable from our colds. More people asked me if my husband was bothered by this. I laughed at them. Laying in bed in flannel pajamas next to another man was one of the most innocent things I've had to do in my acting career. And what the viewer doesn't see are the 20 technicians in the room with us and the camera on a crane hovering over our heads. It was not a romantic moment to say the least, particularly since it was an ad for cold medicine and not, say, K-Y Jelly.
But this weekend will be a first for both of us. My first stage kiss with a girl. He seemed completely unconcerned when I told him (in the long learned spirit of full disclosure). To be honest, it's a real STAGE kiss, in that we don't actually kiss. It's not quite the hand over the mouth trick, but it is a bit of hide and seek. And for me, honestly, it's not a big deal. First of all, I have no problems with women kissing each other, even if it's not MY orientation. Secondly, I'm an actress. If I can kiss a man I don't love on stage, what is any different about kissing a woman? Nothing. Except the fact that we were the ONLY two women in the cast willing to do it. And now my fellow actress is convinced the director thinks we are lesbians. Which I disagree with COMPLETELY, but even if he does, so what?
One of the joys of any kiss on the stage is that I get to relive that sort of giddy first kiss moment, or play out a romance that is just not part of my real life. And, if my husband is like the media likes to portray most men, perhaps this will play out a bit of his own fantasy. At the very least, I feel certain he won't be angry about it this time around.
My husband, in our 11 years of marriage, has had to witness me kissing at minimum 8 other men. Which is actually fairly low, for an actress of my age, but I am not exactly the ingenue type.
When we first got married he needed to know ALL the details of any kissing in a play. I would have to outline every move so that he would know what to expect. I learned this, and respected it. I tried to be completely upfront with him about EVERYTHING, so there would be no surprises when he came to see the show.
I ran into problems with this in our second year of marriage. I did a show where in one scene I had to take off a fair amount of my clothes, as well as a fair amount of my partner's clothes (in great kudos to the costume designer and the director they dressed us and directed us in such a way that a lot of clothes ended up on the floor and yet we were still quite decent) push him onto a bed, kiss all the way up his stomach and on to his lips (while describing a lawsuit our characters were working on). I described this scene to my husband in painstaking detail. Yet after the show he was upset with me. But, as he told it, not about that scene. No, he was upset about another scene where our characters appeared in flashback. We were playing ourselves at 8, and I was wearing overalls and my hair was in pigtails. I pecked my partner quickly on the lips and SKIPPED offstage. My husband was ANGRY that I left that kiss out when I told him about the play.
At first I was bewildered. Was he really bothered by that peck and skip? And what I realized was that no, he was not. He was bothered by the other scene. But, because I had told him about it, he could not openly be upset with me about it. I had forgotten all about the peck and skip, because it seemed so irrelevant. Yet because I had failed to warn him, he could be upset about it.
I honestly can't imagine what it would be like to watch him kiss another woman. He's not an actor, so I will never be put in that position. And I think, because I am an actress, that if he were an actor I would see it for what it is - playing a part - and not worry about it. But it still must be really weird. So once I realized what was behind the anger at the peck and skip, I simply apologized and let it go.
My husband has relaxed about the stage kisses I have quite a bit over the years, although there was one show where he came opening night and then again at our closing 6 weeks later. When I asked him how the show had changed and grown his only comment was "You guys kissed a lot more." Which, when I thought about it, was true. As we as actors got more comfortable with each other we became more playful on stage.
But a stage kiss is truly JUST that... a stage kiss. When you're working in a small theatre, or in interactive theatre where you are sharing a dance floor with the audience, you have to actually KISS the other person. No hand over the mouth as you dip them back nonsense they teach you in high school. The first time it has to be done is rehearsal is usually terribly awkward, since you often don't know the other person very well. You feel a really strange pressure to both really impress, but not impress TOO much so that they think YOU are kissing them and not your character. You worry about whether the director thinks it is believable or not. Is there "chemistry"?
I did a commercial that had me lying in bed with another man, both of us looking miserable from our colds. More people asked me if my husband was bothered by this. I laughed at them. Laying in bed in flannel pajamas next to another man was one of the most innocent things I've had to do in my acting career. And what the viewer doesn't see are the 20 technicians in the room with us and the camera on a crane hovering over our heads. It was not a romantic moment to say the least, particularly since it was an ad for cold medicine and not, say, K-Y Jelly.
But this weekend will be a first for both of us. My first stage kiss with a girl. He seemed completely unconcerned when I told him (in the long learned spirit of full disclosure). To be honest, it's a real STAGE kiss, in that we don't actually kiss. It's not quite the hand over the mouth trick, but it is a bit of hide and seek. And for me, honestly, it's not a big deal. First of all, I have no problems with women kissing each other, even if it's not MY orientation. Secondly, I'm an actress. If I can kiss a man I don't love on stage, what is any different about kissing a woman? Nothing. Except the fact that we were the ONLY two women in the cast willing to do it. And now my fellow actress is convinced the director thinks we are lesbians. Which I disagree with COMPLETELY, but even if he does, so what?
One of the joys of any kiss on the stage is that I get to relive that sort of giddy first kiss moment, or play out a romance that is just not part of my real life. And, if my husband is like the media likes to portray most men, perhaps this will play out a bit of his own fantasy. At the very least, I feel certain he won't be angry about it this time around.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Don't throw roses, throw CASH
Tuesdays are turning out to be rather rough days for us. And if bad things come in three, I think I may just have a nervous breakdown next Tuesday.
You may recall that last Tuesday our computer went up in smoke. A large purchase on the credit card followed.
Today, I had to take my car to the shop. Yesterday a nice dad in the carline indicated that my front right tire was low on air. Since I just had it filled 2 weeks ago, I knew something must be wrong, so this morning we took it in. Two new tires and an alignment later... a slightly smaller but still larger than we can afford purchase on the credit card.
sigh.
On a way better note: At rehearsal last night (our first with the orchestra! it was awesome!) the director came up to me backstage, and said to me in his lovely Italian accent "You are very good at the acting. I watch the whole stage..." (insert lots of hand motions here)"... and you are very good. Bravo."
It doesn't quite pay the credit card bill, but it was priceless.
You may recall that last Tuesday our computer went up in smoke. A large purchase on the credit card followed.
Today, I had to take my car to the shop. Yesterday a nice dad in the carline indicated that my front right tire was low on air. Since I just had it filled 2 weeks ago, I knew something must be wrong, so this morning we took it in. Two new tires and an alignment later... a slightly smaller but still larger than we can afford purchase on the credit card.
sigh.
On a way better note: At rehearsal last night (our first with the orchestra! it was awesome!) the director came up to me backstage, and said to me in his lovely Italian accent "You are very good at the acting. I watch the whole stage..." (insert lots of hand motions here)"... and you are very good. Bravo."
It doesn't quite pay the credit card bill, but it was priceless.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Bloggers Protest NaBloPoMo - Monday Mission
Protesters descended on the mall today holding aloft signs that read "NaBloPoMo BLOWS" and "Stop the Posting: Stop the Insanity." Several speakers took the microphone and spoke of not being able to get their Google Reader lists down below 100. "Everytime I read a blog and hit "Mark all as Read" the Reader refreshes and the number is HIGHER. They're posting faster than I can read!" Another speaker complained that she had no time to write her own posts. One weary protester had leaned her sign against a tree and sat down with her laptop. "I don't have time for this protest," she protested under her breath, "I have blogs to read!" The blogger known as Painted Maypole stepped up to the microphone. She clutched a nearly empty Mountain Dew bottle in one hand, and sported a stunning set of undereye circles. "Please. We love you. We want to read your posts. But every day? We need a break. Some of us have lives. Some of us need SLEEP. Some of us are fighting off colds. Some of us are preparing to embarrass ourselves by singing in a foreign language on stage this very weekend. We can't keep up. Please, if you must post each day, please, please, for the love of all things bloggy, keep them SHORT!" She paused to take a swig of her Mountain Dew, and looked up to see a group of counter protestors arriving. Their signs read "It's not about YOU reading, it's about ME posting" "I post everyday. You don't have to." Many of the counter protestors came bearing trays of coffee, which they began passing out to the crowd. One kind person offered up a fresh bottle of Mountain Dew to Painted Maypole and asked for a chance to speak into the microphone. Painted Maypole aqueisced (or fell off the platform) "We love you. Read us when you can. You don't have to comment every day. It's OK" Signs were lowered as hugs were given all around. Groups began moving off into local bars and coffee shops for conversation. Some people were live blogging from their i-phones. One lone protester was left leaning against a tree, asleep, her laptop screen casting an eerie glow onto her restful form. 250 unread items.
This post is part of the Monday Missions. All are welcome to write their own posts. This week's Mission is to write a post in the style of a news article. If you accept the mission, please enter the link to your post in the widget below! Next week's mission is to write a post as a script/dialogue.
And I am still in the midst of opera craziness, cold fighting (a losing battle) and less computers in the house... so please, please be patient with me if I am not reading and commenting as often. I love you. Even if you are posting everyday, you crazy people.
This post is part of the Monday Missions. All are welcome to write their own posts. This week's Mission is to write a post in the style of a news article. If you accept the mission, please enter the link to your post in the widget below! Next week's mission is to write a post as a script/dialogue.
And I am still in the midst of opera craziness, cold fighting (a losing battle) and less computers in the house... so please, please be patient with me if I am not reading and commenting as often. I love you. Even if you are posting everyday, you crazy people.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Opera Musings
This week we have finally begun staging for L@ Tr@viat@ (I do all those crazy symbols so that someone doing a google search for our local production won't come up with this blog. Hopefully) Monday we had our first rehearsals with our principals (so far we've just been meeting as a chorus) and when I first heard the tenor sing, 2 words in the midst of us singing, I nearly fell to the floor. He is amazing. His voice just fills the whole auditorium, and when he sings you can hear it echo off the back wall. With no microphones. THAT is singing. I just want to lay down on the floor and listen to him sing. But instead I have to try to remember my notes. In Italian.
Our tenor, our baritone, and our director have been flown in from Italy. This makes me more than a wee bit nervous about my awful pronunciation. As if worrying about hitting the right note was not enough stress in my life.
The staging, however, is fun, and the combination of the lights, and the amazing talent, and the energy of creative people on a stage is invigorating. The director speaks mostly Italian, and others translate for him. Sometimes. Sometimes we are left to try to figure out exactly what he means. He is very expressive, and uses his hands a lot, and so if you pay attention you can get the general gist of most of it. At one point when he was showing me where to stand (by snapping and pointing, apparently this is a universal sign) he paused, looked at me and said "How do you understand Italian?" I repeated "How do I understand Italian?" (to make sure I had it right) and he nodded and I said,very simply "I don't" There was much general laughter. But I took it as a compliment, that I am paying attention enough that I can figure out what is going on. The same can not be said for everyone.
I have always thought that being in the chorus is a hard and often thankless job. Harder than having a lead, in fact. For me, acting wise, there is very little worse than having to fake a conversation with some other chorus person while the real action happens elsewhere. Not for vain reasons, nor for a want to be the center of attention, but for the want of DIRECTION. Give me a character and some lines, and a wee bit of background and I will tell you what my character wants and her relationship to everyone in the play and how she goes about achieving her goals, etc, etc, etc. But tell me "you're a partygoer" and make me fend for myself, while mouthing words to someone who is equally as lost as I am, and frequently far more disinterested, and it's not much fun. Then try to carry on a fake conversation in something that looks like Italian in the late 1800s. It's not easy. But I'm trying. Hard. Yesterday our lead soprano complimented me, saying I was so "cute" and that it was really fun to watch me because I had expression while everyone else was just singing with a bored look on their face. So maybe all those years at acting school have paid off.
This has been truly a learning experience, which is what I knew it would be when I signed up for it. I don't think that I will ever do an opera again. I have enjoyed this, although I find it much less satisfying than a play, and it is very time consuming for something I am not passionate about while not getting me much closer to my own career goals. But fascinating it has been, and I have a much deeper appreciation for a style of music I was, before this, nearly ignorant of. And I am hitting notes I have never hit in my whole life. And I have my first stage kiss with a girl. But that's another post.
**REMINDER FOR MONDAY MISSION** Monday's Mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a post in the style of a News Article
Our tenor, our baritone, and our director have been flown in from Italy. This makes me more than a wee bit nervous about my awful pronunciation. As if worrying about hitting the right note was not enough stress in my life.
The staging, however, is fun, and the combination of the lights, and the amazing talent, and the energy of creative people on a stage is invigorating. The director speaks mostly Italian, and others translate for him. Sometimes. Sometimes we are left to try to figure out exactly what he means. He is very expressive, and uses his hands a lot, and so if you pay attention you can get the general gist of most of it. At one point when he was showing me where to stand (by snapping and pointing, apparently this is a universal sign) he paused, looked at me and said "How do you understand Italian?" I repeated "How do I understand Italian?" (to make sure I had it right) and he nodded and I said,very simply "I don't" There was much general laughter. But I took it as a compliment, that I am paying attention enough that I can figure out what is going on. The same can not be said for everyone.
I have always thought that being in the chorus is a hard and often thankless job. Harder than having a lead, in fact. For me, acting wise, there is very little worse than having to fake a conversation with some other chorus person while the real action happens elsewhere. Not for vain reasons, nor for a want to be the center of attention, but for the want of DIRECTION. Give me a character and some lines, and a wee bit of background and I will tell you what my character wants and her relationship to everyone in the play and how she goes about achieving her goals, etc, etc, etc. But tell me "you're a partygoer" and make me fend for myself, while mouthing words to someone who is equally as lost as I am, and frequently far more disinterested, and it's not much fun. Then try to carry on a fake conversation in something that looks like Italian in the late 1800s. It's not easy. But I'm trying. Hard. Yesterday our lead soprano complimented me, saying I was so "cute" and that it was really fun to watch me because I had expression while everyone else was just singing with a bored look on their face. So maybe all those years at acting school have paid off.
This has been truly a learning experience, which is what I knew it would be when I signed up for it. I don't think that I will ever do an opera again. I have enjoyed this, although I find it much less satisfying than a play, and it is very time consuming for something I am not passionate about while not getting me much closer to my own career goals. But fascinating it has been, and I have a much deeper appreciation for a style of music I was, before this, nearly ignorant of. And I am hitting notes I have never hit in my whole life. And I have my first stage kiss with a girl. But that's another post.
**REMINDER FOR MONDAY MISSION** Monday's Mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a post in the style of a News Article
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
Well, golly, who would have thought that so many of you would want to see my polka dot bathroom? But here it is, by popular demand:
I got very tired of living in homes with white walls, and although a lot of my friends have homes that are just lovely in shades of beige and offwhite, I like a little color in my world. OK, a lot of color. We have painted nearly every room in this house since moving in. So while we're at it, let me take you for a little tour of the Crayola box that is my home.
This purple is the playroom. The walls are decorated with a poster from our first Mardi Gras here (2005) and feathered masks bought cheaply in the French Quarter. I love it.
Our living room and kitchen are this shade of green. (the painting was also bought in the French Quarter. We couldn't quite afford a Michalopoulous but this imitation I bought off the fence of Jackson Square makes me happy all the same) I wanted red, but my husband voted green, and he won. I hated it when I started painting it, but love it now. It's very relaxing, and goes very nicely with the navy blue wall we have by our fire place:
This yellow is our kitchen nook... bright and sunny for the grumpy Mommy in the morning. (the polka dot bathroom is off of the kitchen, and the dots are the blue, green and yellow that are found in the living/eating areas of the house)
We get tons of compliments on the red in our guest bedroom. Hot Apple Spice. Yummy.
Forest Green for our office. It can get a bit cave like in there at night. My husband likes it that way.
MQ's bedroom was this pale yellow when we moved in. I stuck these little wooden bugs to the wall with poster putty. I bought them for a quarter each. The room also has dragonflies and butterflies, and when I want to redecorate, I'll just pull them down. My husband says I'm going to be known as the lady who sticks strange things to her walls. I'm OK with that.
MQ's bathroom - blue with brightly colored fish. Oh, and sharks.
Our bedroom is the same color blue (I just used the leftovers for MQ's bath!) Along the ceiling I attached a wave of stones with poster putty - interspersing them with dried sea stars. It looks really cool, if I do say so myself.
The master bathroom continues the theme, only in green.
I got very tired of living in homes with white walls, and although a lot of my friends have homes that are just lovely in shades of beige and offwhite, I like a little color in my world. OK, a lot of color. We have painted nearly every room in this house since moving in. So while we're at it, let me take you for a little tour of the Crayola box that is my home.
This purple is the playroom. The walls are decorated with a poster from our first Mardi Gras here (2005) and feathered masks bought cheaply in the French Quarter. I love it.Our living room and kitchen are this shade of green. (the painting was also bought in the French Quarter. We couldn't quite afford a Michalopoulous but this imitation I bought off the fence of Jackson Square makes me happy all the same) I wanted red, but my husband voted green, and he won. I hated it when I started painting it, but love it now. It's very relaxing, and goes very nicely with the navy blue wall we have by our fire place:
This yellow is our kitchen nook... bright and sunny for the grumpy Mommy in the morning. (the polka dot bathroom is off of the kitchen, and the dots are the blue, green and yellow that are found in the living/eating areas of the house)We get tons of compliments on the red in our guest bedroom. Hot Apple Spice. Yummy.Forest Green for our office. It can get a bit cave like in there at night. My husband likes it that way.MQ's bedroom was this pale yellow when we moved in. I stuck these little wooden bugs to the wall with poster putty. I bought them for a quarter each. The room also has dragonflies and butterflies, and when I want to redecorate, I'll just pull them down. My husband says I'm going to be known as the lady who sticks strange things to her walls. I'm OK with that.MQ's bathroom - blue with brightly colored fish. Oh, and sharks.
Our bedroom is the same color blue (I just used the leftovers for MQ's bath!) Along the ceiling I attached a wave of stones with poster putty - interspersing them with dried sea stars. It looks really cool, if I do say so myself.
The master bathroom continues the theme, only in green.
So there you have it, a tour of most of my home. Well, the paint, anyways.
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