pink

Pink is not my favorite color.  I don't think it ever has been (well, maybe when I was, say, 6.  But that's an increasingly long time ago).  For as long as I can remember I've liked blue and green, and, more recently, brown.  I don't hate pink; I just don't often choose it.

Thus I rarely buy pink clothing, and I have never decorated in pink.  But this last week I did both of those things, and it has been unexpectedly empowering.

My friend Beth and I began our 3x/week running regimen again, inspired by the delectable foods of the holiday season and the resulting tubbification.  Beth bought a hot pink running shirt to inspire her in this endeavor, and her choice inspired me.  So, when I was running errands last week and saw a hot pink running fleece, I knew what I had to do.  Buy it.  Wear it.  Run in it.  And do it proudly.  I like my hot pink running fleece.  It's soft.  It's bright.  It's warm.  It makes me happy--and, yes, it inspires me to get out there and run.  Go, PINK!

I also chose pink in a decorating endeavor last weekend.  Of all the rooms in our home, our downstairs bathroom is the least satisfyingly decorated (not to mention designed).  Throughout our house, beautiful bright colors warm the rooms--yellow in the living room and kitchen, green in the bedroom and study, red in the dining room.  The previous owners did a great job of painting the rooms colors Greg and I like. 

But the bathroom . . . not so much.  For one, it's painted a pale, wishy-washy blue.  I wouldn't mind a deep blue or a bright blue.  But it's just kind of blah.  Secondly, it's small.  It's doesn't have quite enough room for a standard sized tub (though Greg and I realized we could possibly take out the shelves and put in a non-standard sized tub--oh, the possibilities!!); it's not even exactly rectangular, and the angled wall makes it an even tighter space than it would be otherwise.  When we moved in, we bought a medicine cabinet and some glass shelves and a towel rack and did the best we could.  I had a dolphin shower curtain that I bought when I moved to Chicago after college, in 2002.  It has followed me from Chicago to Charlotte to Iowa to Missoula--not bad for a piece of plastic!

Lately, however, I've been wanting a change.  Perhaps this is due to not being able to do garden and yard projects this time of year.  Perhaps I just needed to do an affordable home improvement.  Either way, It Was Time.

Last week Saturday, then, Greg and I went to Ace Hardware's paint section.  I knew what I had in mind--dark brown on the lower walls and a dusky rose (all right, all right, PINK) on the upper walls.  I've appreciated the color pink more since going to Morocco, where popular colors were bright blue and a stucco/earthy pink, the colors of the sky and the earth.  As I considered various color schemes, I just couldn't get that pink out of my mind.

The helpful paint lady found just the colors I was looking for, mixed them up for me, and Greg and I went home and got to work.  After 15+ hours of clearing everything out of the bathroom, mopping the floor, cleaning the sink and toilet, washing down the walls, taping taping taping, putting on multiple coats of the deep colors I'd chosen and then touching up all the little mistakes with a tiny artist-quality paintbrush, this was the result:

How's that for making a tiny bathroom into a classy little space?  As Greg says, "It's a grown-up bathroom!"  Not bad, eh?

I have to say, that dusky rose color looks mighty fine.