Colors Make Me Happy

I've had a few comments on color on my blog. I guess that I have always loved colors. When I was a child...getting ready for school and buying new crayons to start the year was the best. I would open that box of beautiful crayons and just look at them and smell them. I can still smell them,if I close my eyes. Crayola brand crayons were the first kids crayons ever made, invented by cousins, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith. The brand's first box of eight Crayola crayons made its debut in 1903. The crayons were sold for a nickel and the colors were black, brown, blue, red, purple, orange, yellow. A few years later a box of 64 with colors that I had never heard of. I couldn't wait to use them. Pictures took on a whole new light.

My parents house was always colorful. In the early years my Mom was one of the first to paint her walls dark green for a while, then cranberry. In those days...everything was usually wallpapered or painted a neutral color. Not for my Mom, she loved to decorate. Cranberry walls, white woodwork, off white carpeting, and slipcovers in a print with a white background, and cranberry and dark green floral design. She made the slipcovers herself. Speaking of color...I spilled red paint on the off white carpet and made my Mom cry. It never came out, so there was a throw rug there forever.

My kids were always dressed in bright colors. They had very colorful toys to play with. Their first craft project was always something using the big fat crayola crayons in their little chubby fists...drawing a colorful picture to put on the refrigerator. Those precious little fists held the first bouquet that they ever picked...dandelions for Mom. We put them in a colorful jelly jar and put them on the windowsill in the kitchen.

As I got older, color was important to me. It always made me feel happy. I started painting and was using oil paint. I would buy a new color and show it to my husband, "Look at this alizarin crimson, Prussian blue!" He would pretend excitement. I started to really notice the colors in the landscape as we were driving. I pointed out the different colors in the browns along the roads and fields in fall and winter. He said, "Mmm huh."

As all the women in my family...I went through a blue period. My furnishings were due for a change and blue was the color. Blue sofa and blues in china and blue everything...even clothing. My daughter said that when you start loving blue...it's a sign you are getting older. I think that this was because both of her Grandmas were blue nuts and I was following in their footsteps.

A little later, I started really getting into gardening. I went with a friend to buy annuals. She took forever...running around matching this and matching that. "No that doesn't go with this," she would say. I looked at my assortment of colorful posies and thought that God put all these colors together and it worked...so somehow my garden would "work too."

Now, my tastes have changed from the pale blues of the past to brighter colors once again. I love color in my home and garden. Even the books on my bookshelves add color to a room. My clothing is colorful....I like to think it makes me look more cheerful. When I make a meal, I always remember my Senior foods teacher telling us girls to make a colorful plate. I really pay attention to that. I hate to see a drab dinner plate.

I guess that color will always be something I love. I am going out to the kitchen now and prepare a colorful breakfast. A beautiful orange will be on my table, a bowl of oatmeal with some blueberries, and a piece of toast all served on dishes with red apples.

Balisha

I had to add this....I have just selected the outfit that I will wear for our picture to put in the Church directory.....beige...go figure!