who knew?

The last time I had to pick out paint,

I walked into Lowe's,

walked slowly through the paint cards

and grabbed the first one that caught my eye.

I kept walking and looking

and grabbed the second color that caught my eye.

Both paint card were the exact same color!

Done.

Today I left the house around 2

and figured I'd be back home 3 ish.

(including a quick run to Walmart)

At 2:45 I left Lowe's empty-handed.

I had hoped the boys and I could get the upstairs painted

by the time Tyler got home from work

as a surprise

and here I couldn't even settle on a color family,

much less a color!

Tyler suggested I go to Pack's Salvage and look at flooring.

They let me bring home full-plank samples

of all the types I liked.

The boys and I laid the boards on the floor,

(or rather on the stack of drywall on the floor)

dropped things on them

whacked them with tools

and walked on them with bare feet.

Surprisingly, we settled on a favorite pretty quickly.

I talked with Tyler and told him to hurry home,

pick out the floor,

and take me to Lowe's.

 Choosing paint now

would be a breeze.

The first piece of flooring to be eliminated by Papa

was the one we'd all chosen as our favorite!

But that was fine,

'cause there were still four more boards....

Wouldn't you know it, though,

Tyler's favorite

was the one we'd all discarded first!

conundrum!

We talked and banged up the floors some more

and settled on two that everyone could live with

and headed to Lowe's.

All of us.

(except for Tony, who was MoD tonight...)

Ya'll know how much I enjoy 

shopping

with all of us.

But.

But this was going to be easy

because now, I was inspired.

And had flooring.

sort of.

We told the kids if they were really good,

we'd go out to dinner.

It was only sort of a bribe,

'cause we we're going out anyways.

But they didn't know that.

Let's just say that the kids became concerned

 that there might not even be a restaurant open

by the time we left Lowe's.

( And they really were quite good, considering....

Huge thanks to Marcos & Brandon for keeping up with them

 while we wrestled with color cards!!)

Tyler finally picked a color by it's name,

clothesline fresh

and said, "This is the one."

And when he laid it on the darker board

(my favorite of the two)

and put a bright white next to it (as trim)

I just suddenly felt peace.

This paint color, a light blue gray,

is completely opposite of what we'd normally pick,

and when I looked at those little color blobs

on four cans of paint,

I felt a little panicky.

We'll see how we feel when it's on the walls...

Just to prove that we aren't just horrible picker-outers:

in the time it took the gal to mix up 4 gallons of paint,

we picked out 2 ceiling fans,

and 2 different light fixtures.

Just like that!

Who knew it would be so hard to pick out paint?!