Color your world mustard

It is possible, if you have been paying close attention to the blog lately, that you noticed the Princess and Hero are renovating. It's grueling, constant work as we schlep materials in and out of the house, move things around, consult experts.

And that's just picking out the paint colors.

Okay, so our contractor has the really hard jobs. But I have been through every sample of yellow, gold, and mustard paint ever conceived of -- although I admit I have not extensively researched any original paint in ancient cave paintings -- and can come to only one conclusion: They are all the wrong color. There is one color strip missing in the yellow family, and that is the one we need.

Experts advise looking to your surroundings to find inspiration for color. Perhaps there is a certain object from your childhood that brings back pleasant memories, such as the old, beat-up stuffed bear that continues to live with us despite making no useful contribution to the household. It, however, being done in Early Ugly Brown with Cottage Cheese Innards, is not exactly inspirational.

Inspiration for color may even be found in your workplace, such as the refrigerator, which may hold just the right shade of yellow in someone's months-old jar of brown mustard. Whenever you find a color that calls out to you, you should take the object straight to the paint store to show the paint store person. If you were to take in the months-old jar of brown mustard, your conversation might go like this:

You: Can you match the color of this?

Paint store person: (looks inside and shudders)

You (apologetically): Well, without the mold. Green sort of clashes with everything else in the room.

Driving presents a perfect opportunity to observe one's surroundings for color inspiration -- the sky at a certain time of day, the bright gold leaves of autumn, the gray concrete barriers on the highway, the bright yellow Stanley Steemer truck. If you do see such a truck, and it contains the perfect shade of yellow that has eluded you to this point, waste no time in getting the driver's attention: "Hey, would you mind following me to the nearest paint store? I just wanna get a color analysis on your truck. It won't take very long, although we might have to take a panel or two off the side, you know, to do the analysis, but we should be done in like, oh, five, six hours."

The Hero has a simple philosophy about paint, particularly where I am concerned. Whatever color I choose, he believes I will, in the end, find fault with. This is unfortunately more than somewhat true. And yet I am determined to prove him wrong, at least once. After all, if the months-old jar of brown mustard and the Stanley Steemer truck don't work out, the stuffed bear does have a bit of yellow on its tummy...