In a nutshell, the trouble is photographs lie. You aren’t really that fat (promise), the perfect gray paint color that looked amazing in a magazine looks like shit on your walls, and those pink curtains I lusted after weren’t even pink.

Remember this room? I was all, Oooh ahh magic! over it and how such a sophisticated room could pull off those pink curtains. Well get a load of this:

Same room. Not exactly pink pink, more of a rose…

Huh. Well I might consider that to be more of a clay red — something with a fair amount of brown in it.

Not pink at all.

So, you see, I was doomed from the start.

Witness:

Oh me. Oh my.

The other trouble with photography is that it’s awfully labor intensive. I almost turned around to shoot the back of the room so you could see my secret piles of toys and laundry drifts, but I wanted propagate the myth that I keep a semi clean house. Still, why didn’t I move the speakers? Or restyle the fireplace? Or hang those curtains higher and replace my chesterfield and find a new place for the tv?

I have a lot of work to do. Focus.

Yet another problem with photography is that some of you are probably thinking, Those pink curtains are bananas, dawg!

Well, I hope your brain doesn’t think in those words, because that may be the trouble with you.

Anyway, those pink curtains were like eight year old sparkly bubblegum pink unicorns riding rainbows to My Little Pony land.

Hell. No.

It’s not like the flax curtains fared much better. Once again — they may look ok in the picture, but they were green in real life. Not pretty with my peachy pink walls.

So I took that crap back and now I have two totally different curtains up. Plus I just ordered two more.

And I’m trying to stop myself from ordering sandy beige… I think I’ll save super neutral for the double height curtains I might get around to someday.

The trouble with me is I am so used to taking photographs that I expect my house to look like one.

Also I am extremely overwhelmed and indecisive.

Will report later on the ever expanding curtain conundrum.

In the meantime, let me tell you why you aren’t as fat as you look in pictures. It’s because humans see with two eyes, and we can sort of see around objects to the background behind. Cameras only see with one eye and they flatten everything onto one big fat plane.

So there you go. You are 10 pounds thinner.

That’s something, right?

It’s all dreary today and I just don’t have the energy to reveal my crazy painted fireplace yet, so I’m going to rely on all the fabulous people out there in pinterest land to write this post for me. Thanks, guys. You’re the best.

The one thing I don’t like about pinterest is how easily sources are lost. I try to be careful about crediting the people I borrow images from, but who knows where many of the images originally came from? I wish there were a better way to track things.

[You Have Been Here Sometime, Elle Decor, This is Glamorous, My Interior Life, YHBHS]

I’ve been living with a caliente red dining room and a tequila blue living room for so long that my eyes were bleeding from the Mexican Restaurant strain of it all (not that I don’t love me some muy delicioso Mexican comidas!) when I looked from one room into to the next. One of those colors had to go, and after much agonizing DH and I decided to keep the red. The living room was painted a soothing pinky gray and I am hoping to post before and after pics very soon, but first major accessory shifts are needed to restore Casa Erin to top form.

In the meantime, I’ve been cruising color palettes for inspiration, and despite disparaging pink and red in my last post, that combo is still feeling very fresh to me. My favorite is Miles Redd‘s living room (Sorry Miles… I’m turning into such a stalker!):

First of all, how sexy is that couch? I know it probably cost a bazillion dollars, but I think I’d give a tooth for it. Maybe even a front one. Anyway, Miles went for broke with this… NOT a subdued pink. NOT a subdued red. Full frontal nudity here. Raunchy.

While I totally want Miles’ entire apartment, I think pink and red are easiest for us mere mortals to pair when the furniture is kept streamlined. Check out this mod combo designed by Aussie firm BKH that was featured at the Kips Bay Showhouse (photo courtesy of Elite Choice):

How much do you love that orangey red painting on those coolly pink walls? It just pops and clashes its little heart out, and the black scaled down furniture helps keep the look modern instead of 1980′s mauve disaster.

Y’all know by now that I’m a Jay Jeffers fan… That guy can go from kooky to classy in 2.2 seconds. This San Francisco apartment is carefully neutral, but the dining room has an ultra glam pink ceiling paired with pops of red for edge.

The beigey walls go a long way toward keeping this look polished instead of claustrophobic. Here are a couple more examples of careful accessory choices to keep the look edgy, but not cluttered:

(Domino paint palette on the left and Kelly Wearstler‘s office on the right)

Simple black fireplaces add some much needed geometry to both spaces. I really hate those sconces in Kelly Wearstler’s office, but she shows (once again) that she is master of the plate wall, and the lime green apples are fabulous with that pink.

My friend Hope Perkins of Hot Pink Pistol fame had this amazing pink (of course!) house that looked gorgeous in pictures but kinda made me feel nervous in real life. So, I think that to be able to live in these spaces, I personally need some neutral air to breathe. Therefore I present to you this most appealing mix of space and color that I found whilst reading Habitually Chic‘s awesome blog:

This is the gorgeous Palazzo Ducale di Sassuolo in Modena, Italy, featuring color block paintings by Winston Roeth which were donated by legendary collector Giuseppe Panza. I love the gold, white, pink and red combo (with a teeny flash of lemon yellow) and I totally think I’m going to steal it. My new wall color isn’t white-white like this, but it’s pale and cool enough that I think it’ll work. I’m going to have to fake the gold fretwork, since I (sadly) don’t live in a 17th century castle, but I’m hoping the look will still be edgily sublime.

Stay tuned!