Joy in Smurf-Land and Other Places

My friend, Debbie, the Paint Lady, has been so helpful to me in tweaking the final color decisions on the house and casita.  Sometimes I get the color right on my own, but other times I have to see three or four samples painted on a piece of house before one of them clicks.  Or a particular color might look fine in one place and look entirely wrong in another.

Blues are particularly difficult to get right, she told me.  Get them one notch off and you can have a Smurfy color--as I did with last week's sample.  Debbie steered me away from too much of the particular blue (Behr's Brilliant Blue) I kept trying to make work, saying that it was likely to make the house look like Smurf Village.

With her expert eyes on the snapshots, from a thousand miles away, I've been able to find the right blue finally.  When Jaro and I stood back and looked at it, we both said, "Yes, that's it!"


I asked Debbie  in an email what I could do for her in return, and she said this:

What you can do for me..... be joyous in heart and soul, and love your creation!! It is wonderful to watch from afar :)

These are words I'd like to post in every room and on the wall of the casita for writing group: Be joyous in heart and soul and love your creation!   

Jaro is joyous in heart and soul.  As he paints, he is intent on the brush and roller strokes, but he's almost always smiling. I commented on that the other day and he said he'd given up a boring, but higher paying, job to do what he loves.  "You wouldn't want your house painted by an angry person!" he said.

His wife, also from El Salvador, taught him that.  "Never eat anything cooked by an angry person," she told him. "The food will make you sick."