Amiable's Blog

Citron is, so far, about the worst color on me.  Olive is a not-so-distant second worst color, but I find it almost irresistible in a thrift store and keep trying it.

This is the most recent olive acquisition - bought in the 10/$10 Goodwill sale a couple of weeks ago.  I like the dress (and when it's not over a bunch of layers, I think it fits well), but I'm not sure I can pull off the color.

Now that my hair is red though, I figured I may as well try olive again when I saw the ensemble today.

So here's two attempts - worn over my skirted leggings and a thermal tee, and with my black leather jacket and boots.

I doubt I'll wear it out today, but is there anything about this that works?  (pic 3 shows the color more closely with my hair and complexion)

Okay, I'm needing either some consolation or some hard truth here.  I finally got up the courage to dye my hair burgundy, and not only bought the proper herbs, but used them.

And I don't think I really thought through what to expect.  There's a girl in my church with purplish hair and it's lovely - she looks young and healthy in it (of course, she IS young and healthy - that probably helps).  Anyway, I think I thought I'd look like her.  I didn't consider that my little sister used to dye her hair about this color, and looked like death warmed over (she has sallow skin, is overweight and wears lots of black eye make-up).

Now, my husband likes the color - which makes me think that perhaps my shock is just shock (and maybe some baggage), and that it's not really that bad.  

But it looks clownish and un-natural to me, and I'm tempted to scrub my head with dish soap to make it fade as quickly as possible (it's a permanent dye - henna, but there's some ways to fade it).  

So tell me, do I mitigate the color as much as possible, dye it a bit darker (henna only goes darker, not lighter - so I could go dark brown), or live with it as is?

Pictures are in natural indirect light with no make up,so probably as close to "real" color as possible, I think.  I also washed and air-dried my hair, so this is about the texture it would have most of the time too.

What's your take on it? 

(p.s. these specs are chipped, so my next "style" project, after figuring out what to do with my hair, is to replace them.  So it's okay to discount that the specs and hair are different shades of "burgundy")

I suppose that one of my favorite things about redoing an old house is the wide variety of how things get accomplished.  (For the back story on the house, see here).

This last Saturday we had a "Painting Party", where my husband fixes up a bunch of reasonably nice food (which in our world seems to mean lots of meat), and we invite everyone we know to come join the fun (and by fun, we mean  hard work).  We generally have 15-40 people show up to "join in the fun".  This time we had 25-30, plus the seven of us.

We worked for about 8 hours (people came and went through out the day - only my hubby was there for all of it), and managed to prime or paint (sometimes both) everything but two of the three bathrooms in the house (one we needed to keep functional, while in the other we stored all the stuff that couldn't be in the rooms getting painted).

It won't surprise you that we're overly frugal with paint, so instead of buying the shades we wanted, we bought lots and lots of mistints, and my "can do everything" husband custom mixed shades to my request.  The main floor is a sedate gray, the upper story is a light greyed-out blue-green that I've dubbed "russian sage" after the plant.  There's a bright orange room (why he bought that mistint, I must admit I wonder, but it'll be canning and freezer storage, so much of the wall won't be seen), and about half of the lowest level (a walk-out basement) is in murals.  

Here's the pictures, which are posting in a rather random order:
#1 a tree, painted in the hallway leading to the kids wing
#2 a city-scape painted on the edge of the laundry room (and a planet from the solar system painting which is around the corner)
#3 the city-scape in process
#4 flowers on my older daughter's wall
#5 a cousin, painting a tree outside the basement bathroom
#6 beware of little boys with green rollers!
#7 the solar system on my middle-son's bedroom wall
#8 the tree in progress
#9 The sedate gray of the living room.  This also shows the trim woodwork my husband is installing to reinstate some age and character into the house.
#10 Another shot of the living room gray and trim work.
#11 flowers and butterflies painted by my sister and younger daughter
#12 my older daughter, singing as she paints a mountainscape.  The blue tape line is the level that her loft bed will be, so she'll see the mountains when she's in bed.
#13 Walls weren't the only thing painted.
#14 The closet in the library is red.  It dried darker and bluer - almost somewhere between dark red and dark purple.
#15 Is the painting of the very tall stairwell.  I helped with that until it got to precarious for me.  My hubby got to finish it up on a very tall ladder.  The color going on is the "russian sage"
#16 the pantry.  We've dubbed it the "sun room".  Not because there's any windows, but because it hurts your eyes to look at it.
#17 My office - "Russian sage" walls and the pale maple floor.  There will be white trim added.  I'm loving the combination.

I just realized that I didn't get a picture at all of the biggest mural - a woodsy mountain scene that has rivers flowing down the mountains to a lake.  And one of my kids (oldest boy) opted for a completely solid green wall.  That's also not pictured - it's the color of the roller in #6.  

Rebecca recently posted about matching her personality with what she wears.  She polled her family members for adjectives that described her, and learned that her look was too quiet and soft (my words, not hers).  In order to match her personality she needs to look a little more edgy.

That post, and a comment from her to me personally (that my wearing dark colors makes me look less friendly than I am) prompted my own thinking - does the way I dress match my personality?

So I polled my facebook friends and family members for adjectives describing my personality (a mix of near strangers and some very close friends and family responded), and compiled their results.  From there I chose a few frequently recurring adjectives that I would like to express in the way I dress:  smart, laid-back, hard-working and considerate. 

In correlation with this, I think Rebecca is right that the colors I wear generally make me look more harsh, not more friendly.  This is somewhat by choice (using the clothing as a bit of armor), but I think the time is right to soften up my look and look friendly (after all, I am, usually....)

This may be a spring feeling - so I'm not purging all my winter black and leather or anything :)  But I am wanting to lighten up my look.

So here's two outfits that make minor attempts toward lightening up.  Is it working?  Suggestions for improvements?  (It's likely to be another month or so before I do any major shopping, but I may fit in small refreshes before then)

#1 is navy and lavender
#2 is gray, brown, blue and black - an Angie ensemble of four dark neutrals.

In house news, we painted last weekend - over 7,000 square feet of wall and ceiling space in about 8 hours.  It was a whirlwind, and I'll put an off-topic post in with pictures (because there's many of them)