Painting the living room & exterior lamp, finally!

We finished painting the living room! Boy, we're getting so efficient! It looks sooooo much better! We love it!! We still need to get the chair rail up, and we're debating a wallpaper border, but even with just the new paint the room is ever so much warmer and cozier....

In the last picture you can see a bell that is suspended from a pink cord. Daisy rings it in order to tell us that she needs to go outside. It works great! Except she always seems to ring it as soon as I get sat down or immersed in a project....

Dad was really concerned that this paint was going to be too dark. It's the color we had to have because it was called 'Wild Horse'! I knew as soon as I poured it into the tray that it was perfect. It looks good enough to eat, like chocolate mousse!!

Dad finally figured out a way to put an exterior light over the front steps! When he removed the alarm box from beside the front door so that I could paint there, he saw that the wires which he needed for the lamp were right there and if he put a hole in the outside wall, he would be able to connect to them. It has been unbelievable to us that no one had ever put a light out there, for safety sake, but we didn't know how in the world to do it. So, last night we ran over to Wal-mart and bought a lamp, which we installed immediately, even though it was FREEZING and DARK out there. We're so excited to finally have light out there! On cloudy nights when there was no moonlight, it was treacherous trying to walk down those steps...