My husband taught himself French a couple of years ago, and he did it by downloading free programs from the internet and listening to them on his iPod during his commute. He supplemented this by getting a book on French grammar and studying that, and he took children's French books out of the library, and graduated to young adult novels. He also downloaded the French news every morning (and still does). We watch French movies, too. He felt that Rosetta Stone would tether him to the computer, and he wanted to have more flexibility. He is now fluent and his vocabulary is extensive. The last time he went to France on business he went alone, and had no difficulties (I am fluent and usually acted as interpreter). Now I'm superfluous!

Three of my great grandparents came from Canada and spoke French in their homes. I was raised in a primarily Franco American community and attended parochial school through 6th grade where 1/2 of the school day was taught in French. Sunday Mass was said in French. My parents, aunts and uncles spoke good English but a fond memory I have of holidays are of conversations going back and forth between French & English. Relatives always sang and spoke to little babies in French because it was "softer". As a child I used to dream in French. What a rude awakening, though, when I took French in HS! My background sure was a mixed blessing. I could read and write well, roll my r's but there was such a distinct difference between Parisian French & what I grew up with that it I had a lot to unlearn. I ended up doing well in both French & Latin. But sad to say, by the time we did a student exchange when DS was in HS with a family from Brittany, I hadn't used my polished up version of French in decades and what surfaced was my Eliza Doolittle version ;) At least we could all communicate. I've always wished I'd kept up with it. When we visited Paris in 2011 I was able to read, but was too shy to try to use my French. I wish I could learn Turkish. My DIL is from Turkey and DH & I did our best to learn a few phrases before we met her family. It is a hard language to learn. My DS is fluent in 4 other languages but struggles mightily with Turkish. He & DIL have lived in Denmark for 7 yrs. With my 2 yr. old GDD they speak English at home as a family, and DIL speaks Turkish to her and she Skypes in Turkish with her other grandmother. At daycare they speak Danish. Surprisingly, GDD, seems to be grasping all 3 languages and answers in the language spoken to her. That's the time of life to learn easily, it seems. Holly-Kay, go for it! And thank you for the inspirthing post!

I took adult educations classes at City College in San Francisco for Spanish and French conversation, and the classes were completely oral - nothing written - which is what I wanted. I went there to learn Spanish (I had already had French at university), but I signed up for French conversation to improve my pronunciation. I felt that as long as I was going to take the streetcar that far that I might as well take two classes while I was at it. There is no shortage of people to practice Spanish with in California, and that helped. Also, I rode the streetcar back from my Spanish class with a young woman from Paris who lived only a few blocks from me, and we practiced Spanish on the streetcar ride, which took at least 20 minutes. She refused to speak French with me, however, because she said I had a horrible American accent, and she wanted to practice Spanish. It helps if the other students in your class are have good pronunciation skills. I dropped my second Spanish class because I got tired of listening to students who spoke with extreme Brooklyn accents. The students in my first class were much better. My French conversation class had wine and cheese parties from time to time, and I found that drinking wine made speaking French a bit easier for me. For Spanish, you might need Tequila.

I think the stone in the fireplace will have to be taken into account unless you plan to do something drastic with it. Do you have any left over Swiss Coffee? If so, paint a square of it in the center of a white piece of poster board so your wall color doesn't interfere too much and see how it looks next to the fireplace. The FP appears cool with lots of lavender, which I assume influenced the current wall color. Here are a few rooms where navy, lavender and warmer whites were used. If you like any of them, you might load the pic into the major paint company sites that have color matching programs and see what the wall colors are.