PLEASE NOTE: I actually started this post January the 29th.  I was so excited about doing orange stuff in the middle of winter.  Some of the zeal has dissipated – obvious by how long it has taken me to post this, but I am still very fond of tangerine and clementine and hot peach and orange crush and all things brilliantly hued in various forms of red with yellow.  I am just late saying so…Nonetheless…

I went on an orange kick. 

“Orange is the happiest color.”  Frank Sinatra

I have talked about orange before because I really, really like it (here and here).

Right after the Christmas of 2007,I decided the living room/sanctuary was too neutral and that pumpkin and eggplant would jazz it up nicely until I could go on an all-new-furniture extravaganza…which has yet to occur, btw.  I bought fabric to recover the couch pillows and then flew off to Maui  to cook for a film crew with Carol Ann.

During our winter snow this past Monday (and my sweet day of rest and Sabbath), orange fever hit me.  Dave called to see what I was up to and when I told him I was painting things orange he said, “I am coming home to a Dr Seuss house” but he was not one bit fearful.  The next day when he saw that I had painted a chair, 2 candle-holders, a tree branch from last fall’s pruning (which I kept because I knew I could use it someday somewhere) and 3 wooden religious icons orange, he said he was afraid if he didn’t hide the  brushes he’d come home to an orange refrigerator and stove.  It is addictive.

A year later, said fabric remains as it was – unused.  And maybe I won’t use it.  I’ll have to check to be sure, but I think the orange was more dull – like pumpkin pie filling before it is baked but it has lots of cinnamon.   And I am not really feeling the eggplant this year (leftover Tuscan~ishdays?), but would love to pair brilliant crayon orange with bright “tealish”-robin’s-egg-blue, although that is probably too big a jump for me right now.

Here is how some of it turned out/before and after:

I tried several different fabrics for the chair cover.  I kind of know what I want, but haven’t come across it yet.  So recently, I just took a scrap of painter’s canvas and painted some simple flower shapes on it for now (I used an old pillow sham of Stormie’s as the inspiration).  I wanted a lot of “white space” and a pretty modern perspective.

I am not sure exactly what I will do with everything or how I will bring the whole room together.  But I know I had fun with the orange paint and that I am not afraid of the process or awaiting the a-ha moment.  It will happen. 

For the moment…Jeanie