My Secluded Garden Room

<sup>This was my dining room.  It has been my least favorite room of this house and I have been at a loss as to what to do with it.  The table is really big, but we use it a lot.  We sit in here for at least one meal a week if not more.  Mike also works in here two days a week.  The negatives are that the room is kinda small (or maybe that is just the table being so big/wide), it doesn't get good light which means it casts all kinds of funky shadows and it has a cold feeling about it that makes it not feel as comfortable as I would like.  I love my grandma's chandy, but I think it is part of the shadow problem.  It is an ugly room.  

That window looks right out onto my neighbor's fence.  We only have one neighbor in very close proximity of our house and they are directly outside that window.  They are so close that I think I could touch their house if I stuck my arm out of our opened window.  (Okay, a slight exaggeration, but not much.)
 


I've been browsing through art lately just because I like to, and that is when I saw this painting.</sup>

Look! There is even an arch!  My room has two arch doorways.

<sup>Oh my, how I love this.  It captured my imagination and I kept coming back to look at it.  I decided that I had to paint the dining room this color, hang all gold frames, set crystal all around, find a comfy chaise couch and buy all new fancy clothes, dye my hair and get a cat.  (Is that a cat?)  I simply could not get this picture off my mind.

Well, the next thing to happen was this:</sup>

^Buh-bye.

  
<sup>What is this, you ask?  It is my husband and my youngest son leaving town for something called Winter Camp.  Alone those two words, winter and camp, are nice enough, but put them together and they form a very unpleasant scene in my mind,  something akin to a Siberian prison experience.  Note that there IS snow on the ground so I am not exaggerating. But it makes them happy so whatever.  

I said good-bye to them, jumped into my car and headed for the local paint store.  And if you look closely in my first dining room picture you can see the two colors I came home with promptly smearing them on the wall. I chose the top one, Secluded Garden.</sup>
 

<sup>And here it is after I painted, shopped my house and attic and rearranged a few things.  This is what I came up with. This is now one of my favorite rooms! It still casts shadows, but now they are beautiful Secluded Garden shadows and I can happily live with that. 

There is still more I want to do but for now this is it, because my living room is upside down (more on that later) and I have Anna going through the box of British literature books picking out her favorites for this next semester which means I need to plan this next semester.  

Talk to you soon.</sup>