Fall has arrived in Shanghai. No longer are we damp and sticky the moment we step foot outside. We’ve bid farewell to the sweltering days of summer and welcomed the cooler temperatures. Good bye air conditioner running 24 hours a day, hello fresh breezes sweeping through the open patio doors. Goodbye tank tops and shorts, hello layers and socks. The sun is rising later in the mornings and fading sooner in the evenings. I’ve actually found myself feeling cold on occasion… this is going to be quite the transition after 4 years of perpetual summer in Dubai.
I can’t get enough of the fall season, and we so miss being in the NW this time of year! It’s such a festive season, and I love busting out the harvest and Halloween decor the second October rolls around. On a recent jog I noticed some gnarled branches that would look really neat in a Halloween display, so we stopped to pick them up and then continued on with our jog. As if the local people needed another reason to crank their heads around to stare at us!
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Like the weather, our apartment has also been going through some much needed changes. We just couldn’t live in a house filled with sterile white walls, so we tackled the largest wall in our living room and painted it a rich, warm mustard color. It’s a new color for us, but it works wonderfully with our furniture and decor. Also, with the number of gray, gloomy days that Shanghai experiences each winter, we knew we needed a bright, sunny color.
Mom was here during this transformation, and she was a great help when it came to picking out the paint and rolling it onto the wall. We ventured over to B&Q, a store equivalent to Home Depot to select our paint.
Mustard is a tricky color. There’s a very fine line between a rich, chic mustard and “school bus yellow,” as mom calls it. We put our paint chips under several tests. We compared them to our approximate flooring color…
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We compared them against black, since so much of our furniture and art frames are black…
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We tested them under all sorts of warm and cool lamp lights… .jpg "mustardwallblog04")
We even compared each mustard chip to shades of aqua, since that is our favorite color accent!
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Eventually, we selected a winner, collected all the necessary supplies and headed for home. While it was pretty late in the evening at this point, Isaac was itching to start the transformation. At a minimum, he decided that we could stare at our hideous curtains no longer! Here he shows you what they should be used for… =)
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There was time for a little test patch before heading to bed….jpg "mustardwallblog08")
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By the time I woke up the next morning, Mom and Isaac were already busy painting. We spent most of the day applying layer after layer of golden paint to our sponge-like wall, until we finally had achieved a uniform coat of rich sunny goodness! .jpg "mustardwallblog10")
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Isaac paused to make one of his delicious, on the fly crepe concoctions for brunch… yum!.jpg "mustardwallblog15")
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To get a feel for how things will look… .jpg "mustardwallblog17")
We found the wonderfully spunky fabric above at IKEA, and we will use it to have drapes and a few pillow cushions made.
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We’ve since purchased some substantial new furniture pieces, received our shipment from Dubai, rearranged, rearranged some more, decorated, and have continued to transform this apartment into our home! Keep on the lookout for more updates soon!
