the key to happiness is not key lime

we're ripping out all the existing floors on the main level of our new house and replacing them with hardwoods, a process that takes upwards of five days. so, even though we successfully closed on the house last week, the moving trucks aren't arriving until wednesday. this gives us a perfect opportunity to paint the kids' rooms and have at least those finished and ready by the time we get the furniture in. this house needs a ton of work ... so it will be especially nice to cross two rooms off our list. i've been working on susanna's "big girl" room for at least a year. after a gender-neutral yellow nursery and a blue sports-themed room for liam, i could not WAIT to do a girly room. her furniture is white, so i thought a lime green room with pink accents would be fun, and have been collecting pieces here and there since before her first birthday. i had a duvet made with fabric i found at a clothing sale, window treatments done in a cute green and pink paisley print, found a hot pink quilt at pottery barn kids, got some adorable flower wall cards at a children's boutique in asheville ... the list goes on. (and on and on, as chris says.) the last step was to get in that room and paint. after careful consideration and consultation with some interior decorator friends, "key lime" by behr seemed to be the perfect color choice. chris and i spent all of thursday night on the four walls of that room. everything seemed to be going well ... and then i walked down the hall to the bathroom. i came back and was almost blinded by the neon green hue pulsating from the doorway. i think the paint fumes had put us in a lime green coma or something, because all it took was a little perspective for me to feel like my eyes were about to pop out of my head. so, back to home depot i went, armed with the color palette and the need to go one shade paler. and back to the house we go tonight, to paint the four walls all over again. needless to say, chris is NOT enthused. but we girls learn from the first time we teeter on high heels that beauty is often pain. the pain of re-painting will result in a beautiful room that susanna will hopefully love (at the ripe old age of two, when she probably would be just as happy with mustard orange.) just one more thing that's been bothering me. key limes aren't even green, behr paint company. they're yellow.