Thanks all, and Tibbrix, I hope I remember re: beaters! I know, the dog blends into so much around here. Malabacat- I thought it could use colour too, but the brightening up seems to help. I have a teal/cream throw I'm going to toss somewhere in the living room. That should spice things up :) thanks lynn2006-I do see how it balances better. I just hate covering up the hardwoods. DH was opposed as well, but he's already been seen cuddling with the dog and the kid on the rug a couple times today :)

I don't know if this is good or bad. I went to the local BM paint store today. I was going to grab some paint chips of Hawthorne Yellow (is that what you call the paper strips with three or four or five colors on them?) to put next to "stuff". None in the rack. The only slot out of the 47,000 they have that was empty. I went to the 2 oz. sample rack. Nope, no Hawthorne Yellow (didn't think I'd get lucky). Not a lot of other neat colors, either, but the paint mixer-upper did tell me they are not restocking the small sample jars. The pints are only $7 and the 2 oz. sample jars were $5, so all of us cheapskates around here just buy pints. I did have them mix up a sample pint. Dang, it looks oh-so-different in the can than it does on the chip. Wonder what it's gonna look like on the walls. Guess I'll find out. So do you think in my neck of the woods, it's the color slathered on everyone's walls? Here I thought I was going to pick something unique :-) Now for something completely different: saw these euro shams on clearance plus an additional discount plus free shipping. They didn't have anything else in the pattern which was probably a good thing :-) Does the bicycle print go with anything else in my universe? Nope. Do I care? Nope. We haven't had a car in years, so DH and I rode bicycles everywhere. I saw the pattern, it brought a smile to my face thinking of our many bike rides together so, for somewhere around 12 bucks, I got a much needed dose of temporary happy. I put green sheets on the bed, the blue in the two shams make the icky turquoise on the walls look almost palatable, and the yellow matches Hawthorne Yellow almost exactly. Sometimes it's just little things that put a silly grin on my face :-)

Oh my gosh, I'm so surprised. Thank you. I really thought I'd be criticized for ravaging my brand new rug - so glad you like it. Linelle, I got these colors from e-bay and they come in small plastic bottles. For the most part I didn't water anything down, although I did water down the lighter green color a little bit. However, having used these same products in my last rug, some of them may have been watered down at the time and I've forgotten. I put down practice patches of paint on white paper and then decide whether the consistency and color are right. It's good if you can work on a small, not so precious project for practice before you go on to more costly items. peaches, I understand why you would feel that way because our tastes are so different, and my husband generally doesn't like pale carpets. I'm happy with what I have now but still plan on purchasing another rug more along the lines of what you envision. In fact I saw one on overstock that was paler and we both liked, but I'm almost afraid of ordering from them because their description will say "brown and green" and all I can see is gray and beige. That makes it seem like a crap shoot and they really charge a lot when your return a rug. On erugsale their colors are very true to life on my laptop so it's not me. There's no hurry, but by summer I want to have the lighter-colored one in hand.

Since I usually hunt things for a long time, I rarely have regrets. But sometimes I'm being impulsive. For example I'm saving for a bed for my daughter(she has where to sleep no worries..she just dreams about full size bed instead of twin). Yesterday they have all sorts of deals, in honor of Mother's day..I see some nightstands and I fall in love. We don't have matching nightstands in our master; we have other things (huge end table and bookshelf ladder lol) that work nicely and look fine, but it's been years that I wanted to get matching nightstands because I think our bedroom, as much as I love it, might use some relief:) So I buy these nightstands..sale and all, but it's not really cheap. And I know-it's not that I chose wrong, they are adorable, and in worst case if my husband hates them or I have an unexpected bill to pay-they're lightweight and the store is 20 min from us, and we can return it. But could I go without them for another year or two or three or..? Yeah I could. So sitting here full of remorse and guilt.. Also they were new. I know old nightstands that I really tend to love are more expensive than these. I even checked our CL once again, to make sure before making the purchase. But still. Who knows, maybe I'd eventually find a bargain. And now I still have to find this full size bed. I can't even tell myself I gave myself a Mother's Day gift..because I already got a HUGE orchid... Thank you for giving me this great opportunity to confess..because I didn't say a word to my unsuspecting husband yet..:)