New Paint

So today is my birthday, and our one day off. I've spent it doing something I LOVE, that lots of our customers told me they'd hate me doing. I painted two of the dining rooms!

I can understand the misgivings, I had some myself. I chose the original milky cream color, for the way that it would stay there quietly in the background. I wanted the whole world to be the center of the table; for the faces of loved ones and friends to surround the food. For the laughter and conversation to be a moment in time that would be remembered when friends left here and went their separate ways---stomachs and souls full of lightheartedness! It's been four years though, and the place has gotten to looking battle-scarred. Happy battle scars, to be sure! When we have earthquakes here, nothing rattles out of place! Everything is so well settled from the motion and the excitement of people coming and going...it has the well-worn look of a well-loved, well-used home. I LOVE that people feel so comfortable and possessive, that they beg me not to change a thing!

So since I had to paint anyway, I wanted to make a change...that I know you will all love eventually too. The front dining room is the blue of the inside of a quail egg. I race through a lot of quail eggs at lunchtime, and can't help stopping at each one to peer at that glorious blue in there! I'm astonished and grateful to nature for being so wildly extravagant! This bluest blue is lavished on a little creature that doesn't even have eyes open! I'm sure there's some really good biological reason for the color but forget that. It just is breathtaking; the most enchanting blue I know!

The main dining room is now the color of dijon mustard. I test painted a patch last night and decided I'd need to take the paint back and have it doctored. It appeared to be an insipid lemony color...I have nothing against that shade of yellow, but here, where there's so much variety and movement, a color has to be alive and vibrant---as we and our customers are---just to keep up! In the morning light though, I saw that it is perfect. It's bright without shouting, it's an elegant and respectful shade of yellow. It is a perfect companion to the blue room and will be a vivid light to all of those people who shyly wait for their lunch partners to show up.

It's a gray and gloomy day outside but that mustard yellow dining room is shining full sun! I have one more dining room to go...dusty rose...I'll wait until next week, to let you all get used to this change!