Lavender??

When I was pretty little, say eight, my parents added some new rooms on to the house. One was deemed the “girls’ room.” It was painted white and we decorated it with lavender linens—sheets, curtains, bedspreads---all were lavender. Well, it was not too many years before I had had enough lavender. I wanted nothing more to do with any shade of purple for decades. So it will come as a big surprise to my sister that as I am typing this, I am wearing lavender paint on my knees and forearms.

Now I did not start out to paint anything lavender, but that is how it worked out.

In my classroom there is a folding partition that doubles as a room-size bulletin board of five large panels. Many years ago, my predecessor in that room had painted the partition battleship blue-gray. Personally, I always thought it was rather depressing but once all the pieces of paper were on it, it really wasn’t noticeable. This summer, I determined that it was finally time to do something about the sad state that it had become through the years: the paint had gotten really scratched up.

Now the landfill here gives away free paint on Thursday mornings. They take all the latex that people turn in and blend it together into pastel colors. They put it in five gallon buckets and seal them with the color painted on the top. So a few weeks ago, I went to get me some free paint to paint the partition. I was planning on blue, which matches the royal blue counter tops in the room. However, there was no blue. I was back in my car, ready to leave when I thought again and went back. There was a bucket of lavender that I thought might just work. As the worker said as he loaded the bucket in my trunk, “Well, you can’t beat our prices, and you can’t beat our return policy.” This is true.

This afternoon, B painted the partition for me. I helped, but not much. (It mostly rolled on.) I mostly worked on putting the furniture back from the pile it was in after having the carpet cleaned.

Here you can see it going on.

Here you can see why I thought it might work.

All the trim in the room is painted lavender. The cubbies where the kindergartners keep there stuff are lavender.

The front door is lavender. The cabinets are lavender. And now the partition matches! It is brighter than the dark gray. And as before, when the papers (kids’ work, calendar, posters, etc.) go up, it will almost disappear anyway.

I knew when I first saw the colors inside our school, I was just going to have to get over my purple thing. It has taken a decade, but I guess I’m officially over it.

I'm even thinking of decorating the room with a theme of Harold and the Purple Crayon----a fabulous book and TV cartoon series.