Decorate Your Life

One of my three mantras for 2014 is “decorate.” My goals for this year so far are to paint the living room and hallway, paint the small bathroom, and hang all the pictures in the living room and hallway. I’ve been having fun looking at paints online. I think one of the smartest things they’ve done in the past few years is to make available small sample sizes of the paint. A little less than $3.00 and you can get a much better idea of what it will look like on your actual walls than from a little paint swatch on a small piece of paper. I know that what I see on my monitor and what the paint actually looks like might be two different things so I’m planning on ordering a couple of the shades of each color in the sample size.

I have to select a brown shade for the living room and hallway. It’s going to be a fairly dark brown which I know might make the room a little dark (and the hallway even darker than that) but I’m willing to take the chance. I want a deeper brown to really set off the turquoise accents. I’ve found a shade that I think might work and you can see it HERE. It’s named “Hot Chocolate” which I think is a sign because I love chocolate.

Another paint I need to choose is turquoise. I have some accents to paint turquoise for the living room and then I’ll use the same turquoise on the walls in the kitchen when I get around to painting that (the walls will be turquoise and I’m going to paint the cupboards white). I’ve also found a shade that I think will work. Take a look HERE.

So the living room will be brown with turquoise accents, my kitchen will be turquoise with white cupboards, the small bathroom will be white (it’s decorated with bright pink flamingos), the front bedroom will also be white (I have lavender bed linens and curtains), and the master bedroom and bath will both be aqua. Let me tell you, looking at samples of both turquoise and aqua can make you crazy after a while.

Ultimately I want to have laminate wood floors installed in the living room/hallway and in the master bedroom (which will function as a studio) and master bath. I haven’t really picked out flooring for the living room/hallway yet, but I do have something I think will work for the studio and master bath. Take a gander HERE and HERE. I think the white wood would look look good with the soft aqua walls. The flooring in the living room/hallway will be a traditional brown.

Obviously all these projects will not be done all at once or perhaps even in the same year. But I have my goals set and I plan to carry on with them. I’ve been watching the show “Knock it Off” and been getting inspired to actually get this decorating done. Not that I’ll be as creative or into DIY as they are, but it’s inspiring to see the before and after pictures of the rooms they remodel. My mother has also gotten bit with the bug and is thinking about redecorating her living room, too. I think it’s going to be an exciting year!

Here’s to Your Health

It’s a new year and so many people make resolutions regarding their health. I don’t really make resolutions, per se, but I definitely have goals that I work toward. This year it’s my year to work at losing weight. I need to do it because I need to get more healthy, but I also need to do it so I can have open-heart surgery. Unfortunately, telling me I have to lose weight in order to have heart surgery isn’t really going to motivate me because who wants to have heart surgery? But I do want to put the whole thing behind me and I do want to be more mobile and in shape so exercise, here I come.

In case I haven’t already mentioned it a million times, I HATE exercising. Hate. It. And now I’m a little scared of exercising very strenuously because I’m afraid I’ll have another heart attack. I’ve been going to cardiac rehab where they monitor your heart while you exercise. It’s been going fine with no heart episodes, but it’s not very strenuous exercise compared to what I used to do at Curves. But my time at cardiac rehab is coming to an end (insurance will only cover about 20 visits) so I’m being kicked out of the nest to find my own way. That’s scary. But I know I can make more progress as far as weight loss goes if I put more effort into it and exercise more than the three days a week I’m doing now. Do I really wish I could wake up in the morning and be at my goal weight and skip all the exercise? You betcha. But that hasn’t worked out so far so I doubt it’s going to come to pass.

The heart surgeon said he wanted me to lose 50 to 60 pounds before he’ll do surgery. I go to see him later this week and I think I weigh about the same as I did when I saw him two months ago. So I’m not really looking forward to his reaction to that. But I have to go face the music and let him know I’m going to be working on it harder than before. All I can do is the best I can do. So far I haven’t been doing my best and that has to change. I really need to get this extra weight off me because I don’t want the gastric bypass surgery to be for nothing.

My mantra for 2014 is HEALTHY. I’m going to try to eat healthy, exercise to get healthy, and take my medications to stay healthy. Oh! I just thought of another mantra that I totally want to focus on this year: DECORATE. I’ve lived in this house for about seven years and still haven’t really made it my own. I want to paint every room except one and I have wall hangings that need to be put up once the painting is done. I’m not planning on any big, expensive projects (like taking up the carpet and putting down a laminate wooden floor) but I think painting will be totally do-able. I’m shooting for early spring to get started on painting and I’m really hoping my bestie and her man will be willing to be hired out to do the painting for me. Not that I’m expecting to get all the rooms painted right away but it would be nice to at least get the living room and hallway painted. And maybe I can talk them into doing the small bathroom at the same time. I haven’t talked to them about it yet and don’t know what they’ll charge me for their services, but I’m hoping it will all come together. I’m also not sure where I’m going to get the money for the paint and primer but let’s not sweat the details yet, ok?

So there we go: 2014 is the year of being healthy and decorating my crib. It’s kind of all about surrounding myself with beauty; the beauty of a healthy body and the beauty of a well-decorated home. Hmm, maybe I should add a third mantra: BEAUTY. I think I deserve beauty in my life and it’s worth it to put some effort into creating that beauty.

Now that I have discovered my three mantras for the year I just have to dedicate myself to them. All of them are a little out of my comfort zone but I’m committed to making them work. I’ll check in here from time to time to let you know how they’re working out. Wish me luck!