Colorful Course Of Action

Now that the Christmas decorations are put away, I'm working on updating some of the everyday decorations in the house.  First up is the kitchen.  Back in November I painted it a fresh new color.  When the job was done, I put up enough decorations to keep the room from looking bland, but the rest of them stayed in the basement through the holidays.  Today after work I retrieved a crate of items and started going through it.

Sadly, many of the things no longer fit my new color scheme. How do I know what that is?  I'm using two different sources: the paint chip strip from the hardware store (which has my wall color and two other coordinating colors) and the Kuler Website, which lets you create color themes.

Son Brian introduced me to the site, which he uses at work.  He showed me how to do it when he was home for Thanksgiving. The process looked pretty easy.  First Brian took a picture of the wall and uploaded it to the site.  A few clicks later, he had results:

This is a compound theme, which combines colors from multiple hues. The middle swatch is the wall color.  The complimentary colors include dark khaki, yellowed green, and two blue shades.

Now that I have an idea of the colors I'm looking for in the room, I've divided the old decorations into three piles.  The first contains the things that I can still use.  The second includes items that are completely wrong; they'll be going to Goodwill later in the week.  The third holds the things I'll hang on to until I find something better to replace them with.

I'll be keeping an eye out at home decor stores and thrift stores for things that strike my fancy.  Based on past experience, it will take me months to get things "just right" in the room, but I enjoy the challenge.