Operation: Rainbow Bright

We are on a mission to overhaul our house, making it lighter, brighter, cheery and colorful! I think we should call this mission OPERATION: Rainbow Bright! Color + light is the goal!

For about the past week, I've been trying to tackle our kitchen. I have painted 4-5 coats of white paint on everything (OMG!!!) and I'm pretty much throwing in the towel! Let's just say the kitchen is like a Monet - looks great from afar, but a mess up close! LOL Oh, well. I know I'm the most critical because I'm the one who did it.

We are painting the walls yellow, although the color we wound up with is a little lighter than what I had intended. I think it will still work fine once we have colorful accessories in there. Here's a few of our kitchen things that show off the colors I'm wanting in there...yellow, green, blues and red. A little vintage, a little quirky with a touch of mod.

This is one of my favorite things - a platter with Alice in Wonderland. LOVE it! And it's the perfect inspiration for the kitchen! I plan to hang it on the wall somewhere with some other dishes I've collected.


Here are some "before" pics from our realtor. Everything was very dark wood. We've replaced the fridge and you can see in the lower pic the view from the family room. There is an eat-in area on the left there.


And here is the current kitchen. Sorry I didn't have a wider angle so that you can see it all at once!


Lighter and brighter? I think so!

I still need to paint the walls up high where the vaulted part is. You can see here the taupe color that it was before. There are also dark beams on the ceiling (and also in the formal living/dining area.) What are your thoughts on those? We intend to paint them white, which we've seen done in other houses. It creates a very cottage-y look. I haven't painted them yet because they are waaay up high!

Over the dining area is this light fixture, which has a hobnail glass cover on it. I have a small collection of hobnail glass, so I'm drawn to it, but it's obviously outdated. I've thought about painting the metal a fun color like turquoise or red, maybe white, but I'm not sure. What do you think? Should we change it up or toss it?? At this point in time, it only sometimes works. Haha!

So you've seen my new kitchen! When it's all finished, I'll post more pictures. Up next: the master bedroom!