T.G.I.F.

It's Friday, whoa, what the heck, how did it get here this quick? In my first post, I wrote that on Friday's Marie and I would be trading off with our Tips, Goodies, Inspirations and Frugalness ideas. T.G.I.F. Today is my day.

A few weeks ago I was rearranging my living room and noticed that after moving furniture around, the wainscoating was in huge need of a new paint job. A friend of mine had given me a can of paint about a year ago, that she'd picked up on the sales rack for $5.00. On the lid, the color looked to be a sweet Sage Green. Thinking this would be fantastic with my wallpaper, I grabbed it and started stirring and stirring. Hmmm....not green. More like a washed out yellow.

Being on a budget and knowing I could make this happen, I was not about to make a 40 minute trip to the store and spend money, when I had a perfectly good can of paint in front of me. I dug through my trunk of acrylic paints and found a few that I thought would help me achieve the color I wanted. Black, Royal Blue, Bright Yellow. I squirted a little in and kept stirring. It resulted in a fantastic Sage-ish Green color, that matches perfectly to my wallpaper. I love it so much, I am planning to use the rest of it to paint my dining room.

So, my Tip of Frugalness for this week is, before you run to the Hardware store and spend $20.00 or so dollars on a gallon of paint, look around see what you have and improvise. It's like being a kid again, fingerpainting and swirling all your colors together. It's fun to see what you can come up with, then give it a "flashy" name and when people ask what color your wall is, you can say, oh it's Sage and Celery. Pretty flashy, huh? :)

P.S. An extra tip, if you want the color to be a bit muted, add black. Do it slowly, while you stir, this will help to tone it down a notch.