how a crazy girl decides what color to paint her kitchen

I've shared with you guys that Tim and I are in the process of doing some painting and updating at our new place. Being renters, we are very lucky to be renting from my mom who said that we can do whatever we'd like in terms of painting and home improvement as long as we "either make it better than it was before or paint it back."

Remember this post where I showed you some of my decorating inspirations?  Here's the room that I'm using as my kitchen-color-basis:

I really want a yellow kitchen. I love yellow kitchens. I think all kitchens should be yellow. It just makes sense, right?

Yeah, um, it's hard to find the "perfect" yellow for your kitchen.

I have a bowl. It's yellow. I decided that it was the color I wanted on the walls. But, not really, because when I went to Home Depot and picked up the 72 different samples of yellow paint, the one that most matched the bowl was more of a mustard color. And trust me, our house has plenty of mustard going on. And I don't even like mustard!

So, I devised a system. It might be a crazy system -- when I told Tim "the plan," he shook his head and chuckled -- but I think it's going to work.

Here's what I did:

First, I put up all of our possible paint colors onto the wall. This is a wall that is shaded in the evening and gets a lot of sun in the morning. It seemed like a good spot to judge the different light levels throughout the day.

And, no, in case you're wondering, these aren't ALL the paint samples I picked up. There are about 30 more colors that didn't make the cut. After a while, when we were going through them, comparing them to the bowl, they all started to look the same. Hence my method.

Then I taped a "secret ballot" onto the wall near the paint samples. In order to make it secret, I put a blank piece of paper over the one where we were to record our "votes." Yes, it is fancy. Thank you.

Note: I have a thing about being influenced and how that leads one to make a decision or form an opinion. I think that suggestion is so powerful.  I actually avoid movie/theatre/music reviews until I've had the chance to see or listen to whatever is being reviewed. Then once I've seen the movie or play, or heard the record, I look up the reviews to see if I agree. It's a fun game I play with myself. I get points when I agree with the reviewer.

Ooh, votes, you might think? You get to vote. Heck yeah, you get to vote. That's the beauty of my process.

So, yeah, you vote. The nice thing about this is that you get to vote for more than one color at a time. It's just a way to measure which ones you like throughout the day. And if you like four colors at a time, so be it. My theory behind this is that at some point, one or two colors will emerge as clear winners and those are the colors that we'll get actual samples of to put onto the wall.

And, as you can see, it worked:

Here are the colors that have made it through to the final round:

Are you thinking that maybe we should just leave the kitchen walls the color they are? Kakhi? Yeah, me too.

I'm going to Home Depot tomorrow to pick up sample cans of the two colors, and I'll put them up in the same spot. We'll then decide which color to use. But, no worries, it's gonna be awesome.

Now if only I could decide on the perfect place for the chalkboard paint.