Red Door, Blue Door, Front Door, Screen Door

It's been mentioned in past posts (here and here) that I have major problems making a decision on paint colors. Let's call it paint paralysis. Well I'm suffering from it yet again. Thanks to Kat over at Maple Leaves & Sycamore Trees, I've got the front door painting bug. BUT, yet again, I'm struggling to pick a paint color. And instead of the normal problem of trying to decide between 8 different shades of green, this time I'm having trouble narrowing it down from... um... every color.

Mostly I blame the current problem on the previous owners and their paint choice. Truthfully I've always drooled over those pictures of cute cape cod houses with grey cedar shingle siding - and I got halfway there with our first house... kind of.  It's a cute little cape cod and it has grey-blue siding... let's stop there. 

That grey-blue siding is my current hold-up. I wish it were more grey. Or more blue. Or darker. Or... just something... more.  Instead it's caught between grey and blue and it's restricting the creative side of my brain from choosing a color for our completely bland front door. 

So - that's why I'm here. Begging for your opinion.  Please.Help.Me.  

Maybe Bigger Really is Better...

... in the case of pictures.

So last weekend I finally gave into the fact that my cute arrangement of white picture frames above the buffet just weren't working.  You may remember from this post that the picture frames were actually just an assortment of random frames that I spray painted white and hung prior to getting the buffet.

Different sizes, different textures, and I couldn't even keep them straight long enough to take this picture.

They were... fine. Just... fine. However, slowly, the fact that they were never straight started to grate on me. The stairs are right behind that wall, and it seemed the the frames were never, ever, EVER straight - no matter how often I painstakingly straightened them. And yes - I know I could have used some sticky stuff to keep them straight, but I really just wasn't sold on the overall look anyway, so I didn't really feel like taking the time for that!  I also think I was still hating that the one anchoring spot on that wall continued to be that damn thermostat.

So. What to do?

Project: Backyard Beautification, Part 2

Whoa - I wrote most of this right after I finished Part 1, but other things got in the way (such as wedding and an unplanned trip to Canada and stuff...) so I'm just getting around to posting this! Pardon the tardiness - is it too soon to start blaming stuff on my husband?  :)

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As soon as our new fence was finished, we stepped back to look at the completed product... and became newly aware of how awful the concrete thing in the backyard was. I call it a 'thing' because we actually don't know what it is... though we're pretty sure it's a war memorial. We were told that the previous owner (the one who loved paneling and hanging swords on fences) was a WWII vet - so we're guessing he built this structure as a memorial to all of his fallen comrades, which is honorable and awesome. And we appreciate the sacrifice of his fallen comrades as well as his service. BUT - we really didn't want a war memorial taking up a good chunk of our already pretty small backyard. Not only was it a space hog, but it was also just really OLD looking. The top of it was painted white at some point, but that was all chipping away and the brick mortar was starting to fall apart... so against the new fence, it really just looked awful.