My mother-in-law is coming in five weeks. She’s staying for 12 days, which is only 2 days less than 2 weeks. Last time, she visited for one week, and by Day 5 I was thinking, “Good thing she’s leaving in two more days, or I’d probably throw out my back digging such a big hole in a lonely field.” That was with a nursing baby that let me escape to another room for close to an hour, six or so times a day, and it is too late to manufacture a new baby in time for this visit.
Actually, let’s not talk about it. Let’s not talk about it AT ALL here, not even in the comment section. Let’s talk about something else, and pretend the MIL situation is not even happening.
I decided what color to paint the new dining room. Cream. I had an epiphany about paint color: my reason for choosing cream paint time and time again is not that I am a Big Indecisive Wuss, as previously theorized. No: I keep choosing cream because I like cream walls. This was a huge shock.
When we first moved in to this house, we hired painters, and I assumed the reason I chose cream for the entire house was that it was too stressful to choose paint colors for a first house purchased mere weeks before the due date of my second child, and also that we hadn’t bought much furniture yet and were still working with handmedowns. Could I really choose robin’s egg blue walls for the living room when we were still using the burgundy/camel/navy-plaid loveseat from my parents? And I thought it was that I didn’t have “an eye” and couldn’t figure out what would look nice.
But no. None of those was the reason. I like the cream walls, and the only thing making me feel uneasy about them is that the style has been to choose “COLOR!” It’s always said in capitals, with an exclamation mark, as in, “Let’s add a punch of COLOR!” On those home decorating shows, when the homeowners are asked what they’d like to do to the house, they always say, “Well, I’m not sure—but I do know we want to add some COLOR!” And the decorator nods approvingly: Yes. Color.
Lucky for me, there’s also the increasingly popular “beige but with better names” (biscuit, cafe au lait) style now. I’ll call my walls “Latte Froth” and people will nod approvingly: Yes.
Oh, I’m SO SORRY about your MIL. I’ll be thinking about you … and maybe sending you fudge? Just a thought. ;)
Want to take your mind off it? We’re talking baby names ’round my place today. Come and play.
I have painted my walls many a color, including rich blues and deep taupes and coffee colors and the one paint that I got the most compliments on was one called “colonial cream”. It was just such a soft, warm, cozy color. AND you can decorate with ANYTHING since everything goes with cream! So, yes, yay for cream.
The last time my MIL came I threw an elbow at her the first night. I’m not kidding. I was bathing The Boy and she stood thisclose to me the whole time, making horrible noises she thinks are coos and generally making the whole bathing, lotioning, clothing process no fun. So, as I slipped The Boy’s arm into his jammies, I just oops! slipped and elbowed her in the side. I confessed to my husband later, but did not feel bad about it.
The accidental elbow jab might come in handy for releasing excess tension.
Hey! All that matter is that you love the color of your walls. And so that they can hide the marks from the items that may or may not be thrown into them in anger during this particular 12 days coming up….(sorry about your dman MIL. That SUCKS!)
You are so right about the color. Latte Froth – people will think your designer picked it out.
Adding color can definitely be a stressful decision. I would recommend expanding on your cream theme, and choosing one wall to paint a color as an accent wall. The wall behind your sofa? or a wall that is a focal point. It would allow you to have the best of both worlds…a splash of color and comforting Latte Froth :) Good Luck! :)
My bathroom walls are called Au Lait Ole. For real. About half the time when I go in there I have to yodel Ole! Ole ole ole… like in The Replacements when the wiry guy kicked the ball.
And yeah, that might not make sense if you haven’t seen that movie.
All that to say, cream is good.
We picked color … color that I now hate and want dead … don’t pick COLOR for the sake of color – ykwim?
Latte Froth sounds pretty (and tasty!)
Is there any way the painting could get delayed for oh, 6 weeks? Then you could lock yourself in a room with a bucket of paint for 3 or 4 hours while she acts the martyr and keeps the kiddos. That might even run her off a few days early!!!
Don’t feel that you need to explain your love for cream. Cream is a color – embrace it!
I’ve lost count of the number of times I have picked up a bunch of paint sample chips to pick out new colors for the walls…all of which are still the same shades of cafe au lait and latte froth they were when I moved in. Most of the furniture is various shades of cream and beige too (with better names, of course). I’ve added punches of color with artwork, a few throw pillows, the blanket that lives on the back of the couch, etc. instead, and I’m fine with that.
Thank you! You just totally justified for me why I want to paint my living room/dining room the color I want to paint it. Haha.
well. there’s “cafe a lait” cream, and then there’s “every dingy cheap apartment I ever lived in” cream. So there’s a difference!
My house is mostly going to be a color called “coffee” which is a browner shade of cream and I really think it looks sharp :)
I like “latte froth”. That is a color with a great deal of thought and effort behind it.
My kitchen is off-white… I mean it is “Underbaked Biscuit”.
the walls of my apartmnet would look FABULOUS cream. really, they’d look fabulous in anything other than the super-scuffed-dirty-white that they are right now.
i crave a super dark red room, like a dining room maybe? one day. until then… i rent. and i suffer through dingy white.
‘Latte froth’ is a far better choice than beige; beige has that brown note that makes it a throughly depressing office color.
Nothing wrong with cream. No siree.
Very calming, just in case you need that sort of thing. ;)
i want to paint the walls of boy and my condo SO BADLY but its very loft like and bright and it more or less just should be all white. Plus we’ve got double high ceilings in the living room and yeah . . .not gonna paint those.
I tried brownies w/ an orange chocolate bar last night. The kind w/ little bits of candied orange peel inside. They were very good (devoured by family almost immediately), but I found them a bit dry. I’ll try again, but maybe do something to compensate for the dryness. like undercooking a little? come to think of it . . . i think my top oven might be a little more overactive than my lower oven. maybe just baking them in the lower would’ve done the trick . . .
Cream is practially the perfect shade of “color.” It’s warm yet clean. It goes with everything no matter what color: furniture, dinner plates, food on the dinner plates…
In my experience, all the designers recommend neutral paint so that you can bring in COLOUR! with accessories. So I picked red, yellow, and brown, and I’m using neutral accessories.
My cream is Milkshake by Beauti-tone, but I kind of wish I’d picked Fragile Beauty by Sherwin Williams. I found cream a very difficult colour to choose because it has so much variation depending on the light and what else is in the room (picking red was a breeze in comparison). Also, my Milkshake colour looked WHITE on the chip, and on the walls it looks very, very peachy.
I LOVE the paint name latte froth. I actually choose colors based on their names because I can never narrow it down from 6 to 1 based just on color.
Good for you for admitting you like cream and being comfortable with it. And I’m proud of myself for not commenting on section A of your post. But I empathize sooooo much.
Ugh MIL’s are such a Pain in ass.
As far as apint I like LAtte froth colors myself but branched out into a bold brown on our main floor that we call “baby shit brown” in these parts. It is a Dark brown with the smallest amount of mustard yellow undertones. Awful in the can – awesome on my walls.
Once I broke out of that beige rut I went on to paint our Master bedroom such a dark grey that it almost looks black. Awesome.
Next time you get married, look for a guy who is an orphan.
(see how I didn’t mention, you know who….I can read damn it!)
Beige is great, beige is good, it’s a calming pallette for our sense of creativity. Projecting one’s mood onto this blank slate of Latte froth…sorry…gotta go to Starbucks, catch you later.
Mmmmm…Latte Froth. Makes me feel kind of…of…sippy, I guess. Yum.
I like that you’ve chosen “Latte Froth.” If you want to add color on down the road, it’s an easy base to work with!
does the future house guest use a computer??? Reading blogs is my secret shame (people think I am WEIRD for reading blogs when I have no kids) and I get so nervous people I don’t will see the blogs I read in the tool bar. Not like you need a dose of paranoia but what if she finds your blog on your comp????? EEEEEk.
Lindsay- I have a password-protected screen lock on my computer. She used to always ask to use my computer and I’d panic, so Paul set up something for her on his computer: he can make it so different users (each with their own login) have access to different stuff, so she can’t snoop his stuff either.
Considering the name of my blog, I have no problem whatsoever with CREAM. There’s a whole THEORY OF CREAM that I’ve not really talked about on my blog yet, but I will one day. ANYWAY, I think that cream is fantastic. Wonderful.
Also: so sorry about the MiL. GOOOOOD LUCK. You know, at least this time you have that, um, PINK place, which is good, yes?
I’ve been laughing at your self-revelation ever since I read it, because I keep having the same type of realization about myself: that I’m not a maladjusted indecisive jellyfish: I just happen to have opinions that aren’t the currently accepted opinion. Nice when that happens, isn’t it?
Sorry about The Visit. If I lived closer, I’d fall ill and you’d have to rush over every day and help me out. Iced coffees and baby names would play a large part in the cure, I think.
I am so sorry. I can’t handle my MIL for more than a few hours. First baby she invited herself with my 22yo BIL for 4 days. It was awkward learning to breastfeed. Everything was awkward. I hope she doesn’t plan on coming when this baby pops out.
Ellen DeGeneres has a whole bit about the color of paint-when she got to the color “smoker’s teeth”, I about lost it. I think it was in “Here and Now”.
I’m all for cream-what was *supposed* to be cream turned into more of a “parchment” color once there were multiple coats, but I liked it enough to do both the living room AND the dining room.
My parents’ house has some heinous colored walls left over from the previous owners, including deep red in the bedroom and dusty rose in the kitchen, and so for years I thought that I didn’t like colored walls, and that I was into beige/cream walls. And I do like those walls, but as we’ve started looking at houses to get a feel for what we like, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to houses with colored walls. In fact, a house with colored walls can trick me into thinking I like the HOUSE, when really I just like the PAINT.
I was at the hardware store tonight and they had a cream colour displayed, except it was called “Neutral Zone”. I thought that was a good name.
I know I’m not supposed to talk about it, but can’t you just take the baby for his “nursng” sessions anyway? It’s not like anyone’s going to burst into the room to make sure that’s what you’re really doing. And a 2 or 3 30 minute breaks might be worth the price of hearing stupid isn’t-he-too-old-for-that comments, or any of the like.
I’ll stop now. Promise.
I LIKE cream walls too. I don’t even particularly care for “accent walls.” They look really neat in magazine photo shoots, but in reality, why is only THIS ONE WALL red??