Colourful progress.

Last night I pulled all our books off shelves and stacked them by colour family on our living room floor. Karl was horrified. I was in love.

I made two or three orange and brown piles which included yellow and gold books, a towering purple pile, three black piles, a grey pile, a white pile, several pink piles, blue piles, and green piles, and, last but not least, a couple red piles. I referred to the internet picture for guidance and felt pretty good about my choices. Sure, my books aren't quite as uniform in colour as those used by the pros, but I'm feeling good. I'm about a third of the way through the shelving process already, although I think it's going to be redone a few times until I find something I'm happy with. Remember, my wall to wall library is just a pipe dream and doesn't actually exist. Yet.

I like how there doesn't seem to be any perfect order to how it's done and if you look here you'll see that there are so many different ways to actually make your bookshelves rainbowified. They don't have to be neat and tidy to look good and can be a little chaotic. I'm leaning away from general chaos because that used to be the way around our place but you never know. It might add to the effect. I also like this image where they've added similar coloured things that aren't just books to make it pretty. Like the creepy naked baby doll. While I don't plan on giving the living room the dead baby treatment, I have been spray painting picture frames and even a vase different colours. It's inspiring! My blue vase might looks really nice next to my blue books. The possibilities are endless!

By the way, have I told you how much I love spray paint? It is my new favourite thing. I was really into acrylics and painters tape on canvas last week, but after seeing what some other people I know have done with acrylics and canvas I kind of want to hide my "works of art" in the closet with our pillows. You know you suck at art when it's something elementary schoolers could do better. Yeah, I have low art esteem.

Yeah, my Friday night is going to consist of organizing my bookshelves. You got a problem with that? Didn't think so. You're just going to live vicariously through me and my rainbow books, I can tell.

Actually, I'm having a hard time deciding what to do with my black books. Obviously there are a few of them that are just plan old boring black and will fit nicely together in the "dreary" part of my rainbow but I'm really torn about the rest of them. Most of my black spined books also have big pops of colour on them, usually miniature versions of the front cover sitting right in the middle. I found this random picture off the internet to show you what I mean. Do I just put those all side by side with the other black books, do I make a little mini rainbow out of them, or do I try and integrate them into the greater rainbow scheme to minimize the amount of blah in my rainbow? I'm starting to lean towards incorporating them into the greater colour scheme of things. Hopefully they don't ruin the colourful effect. Actually, books are the easiest things to move around so if they do I'll have it sorted in jiffy.

There are so many pictures of this being done out there, successfully and unsuccessfully, that I am just truly glad that most of my books aren't white or black. Bring on the pinks and blues and greens! I think I'm actually the most excited for the greens. Don't ask me why.

Is it wrong that I'm still so darn excited about this? I can't wait to get home, throw on some sweat pants and have a glass of wine while rolling around in mounds of books. Like Scrooge McDuck except with books.

I'll probably listen to some Jars of Clay and Hawk In Paris, too, in honour of Dan Haseltine who nearly gave me heart attack today when I looked at the Jars of Clay Facebook page. I'm not a big famous person fan, but when I read that yesterday's family emergency was actually him having heart issues and then surgery, well, if the next sentence had been anything but "he is doing well and recovering" I think actual tears might have happened. Since I don't know more than that, nor do I need to, I think we can safely say that God is really looking out for people this week and keeping them going, even when the odds seem piled up. Can I get an amen?