A Touch of Yellow... accd' to Eleanor McMillen Brown and...me

Rosey-wishes DO come true when wishing for a touch of cheerful yellow today :)

Forget the subtle nature of butter creme...this is a Bright Yellow crave! (as in Van Gogh's delightful "Still Life Majolica with Wildflowers" from the Wikimedia Commons site)

On such a gray, rainy and bland winter's day as is today...I've been thinking about yellow!

Not my usual preferential hue of yellow which can best be described perhaps as a soft butter creme: more lightly-sitting as would be a glaze rather than a thicker paint pigment- that's the kind of yellow I adore and always enjoy having about me. No, the yellow I think I'm viscerally craving right now in this weather and within the kind of health challenge I've been dealing lately with is....bright, bold, in-your-face yellow!

Tennis ball yellow, Lily Pulitzer print yellow, lemonade yellow, L.L.Bean rain slicker yellow, Hunter wellie boots yellow, deviled egg yellow, lemon square bars yellow, large citrine cocktail ring yellow, Kate Spade leather handbag yellow, potted daffodils and tulips yellow....yes, those kinds of bright, cheerful, pretty yellows indeed.

One of my all-time favorite lifestyle quotes is from American interior design maven, the late Eleanor McMillen Brown's quip (and universal truism to be sure) that, "Every room needs a touch of yellow."

Every room, every life does indeed need a touch of cheerful yellow, I so agree !

Growing up, my mother dictated what my "room of my own" looked like and it was beautiful in each house we lived in from Georgia up to Wisconsin and even to the guest bedroom out here on this SC lowcountry island she set up for me since I came down here once a month to visit when James and I were still living in North Carolina pre our UT ski-bum years and....it was always in the tones of a rosy pink, subtle greens and cream with but of course the dark English antiques in mahogany, walnut woods and ever a four-poster bed that seems to be as part of my life as my own set of teeth are- a permanent fixture! (My childhood bed, only a full-size and not a queen, is now designated as one of our guest bedroom beds so it's still very much happily-still-around as they'd say. I'll will it to a niece...it can follow her around then...)

And so I loved, and still with the guest bedroom here, very much enjoy this pretty blend of Preppy meets English Country House meets Southern Belle' in the Garden kind of decor styling. Pretty, timeless and so restive...how many a bedroom should be.

However, as to the first "grown-up bedroom" I ever had, well the master bedroom of James and my little cottage-house in North Carolina was immediately...painted yellow! All the walls and even the attached master bath were swathed in a richer hue of yellow than I usually gravitated towards and our first married-life comforter set to fit the married-life four-poster Tobacco Leaf bed we bought and fitted out with a queen size mattress was Ralph Lauren's "Evelyn" pattern. Remember that one? Yes, soooo yellow with the bunches of roses n' blue ribbon patterning scattered all over it :) Oh, yellow!

This bedroom had a large bay window at one end of it where I tucked my writing desk and chair nearby and put a large but low chest of drawers in front of it to "filter" so much of that bright sunlight streaming past the curtains on into our very-yellow room. It looked out onto one of my garden areas where I had placed a tall wooden birdhouse which was painted white and had a mellowing copper-roof: a busy place for a family of birds I loved seeing flit in and out and out n' about. A water birch tree provided the dappled sunlight n' shade to one side which further diluted the sun's glare however....we did indeed have quite a sunny master bedroom all those years ago and to this day, I still get cheered-up thinking about it.

And so then......maybe that's why today I am craving a bit of bright yellow while lying here in this rose pink, soft greens and cream room with it's proverbial four-poster bed and dark wood antique bureaus, side tables and such....a window's sashes opened up to watch the rain pour down from the grayed skies above my beloved marsh and woods being blurred beyond the rain's movements and the one lone palmetto tree I can espy from my bed-perch looking so lonely standing there drenched through......

James went to the grocer's today and maybe, just maybe, he'll return bearing something bright yellow to brighten up this day for me. I'd love a bouquet of hothouse tulips perhaps or a small potted arrangement of daffodils but heck, even a couple of lemons that I could plunk into one of our pink china bowls would be stellar! I'd sit it to the side of my bedside table and just drink-in the color's cheerfulness.

A spot of bright yellow in the winter time is just as refreshing as a cool sip of lemonade is within the heat of the summer so here's three cheers to....yes....yellow!

UPDATE: Beautiful roses are what James brought me back! So pretty yellow with the tips edged in pink- what a sweet, sweet treat and they're now on the bureau across from the bed facing me so that I can thoroughly-delight in this "spot of yellow"- YEA JAMES! (see first picture above)