Jungle Fever

You would think that because I hand paint eyes for a living that I could paint my own walls; this is not the case. When we bought our house four years ago everything was beige and every room had a town-and-country style horse border. I immediatly started picking out colors for rooms- I knew I wanted each room upstairs to be a different color and so the painting frenzy began! One room is a deep lavender, another pumpkin orange (sounds hideous but it's really fabulous), one room is a light yellow and another a bright canary yellow (where Art was allowed to put up his dirt bike border). Once I had all the rooms painted I moved on to the hallway. I decided I wanted green and after weeks of several little paint squares taped to the wall I picked "meadow green". I painted one wall and thought, 'well, this isn't bad', but I wasn't in love with it. At this point a smart person would stop painting, think about the color for a few days and then continue or find a different color. But I bucked convention and I continued painting the other two walls...then down the stairs....then over the stairs (At which point Art had to stand on a precariously placed 2x4 to help me).
Everyday after I have hated the color. It looks like a Jungle Green Crayola crayon threw up on my walls. When I go to other peoples' homes I am always so impressed by the colors they have picked out and I wonder how the hell they did it. I asked one friend how she picked her colors and she said "Oh, I hired a decorator to do it." I briefly considered this but I can't justify paying someone a lot of money just to tell me what color I should paint my hallway. Art says that the color has grown on him and he really likes it- I think he says this so that he doesn't have to help me re-paint.


I'm not really sure what to do- but here's a picture of the atrocity:


If anyone has any ideas they are certainly welcome because god knows I don't have any. I think my color esteem has hit rock bottom. The dining room and living room are sorely in need of a paint job but I'm afraid to pick out another ghastly color. Few people see the upstairs which is one reason why I have waited to so long to re-do it but many people see the downstairs and I don't want them to come in and abruptly turn and run for the hills screaming "My eyes! My eyes!!"



And for those of you who don't believe that Pumpkin orange is a fabulous color: