While it takes a brave soul to paint one’s living room a vibrant shade of persimmon or yellow, the kitchen is often a room in which one feels more courageous when it comes to decorating vibrantly. It is truly the best room for it, especially if one subscribes to the beliefs about the effects of colors as used in the home (although if everyone subscribed to that, we would never see the gorgeous red rooms that leave us breathless on the pages of design magazines!)

As the kitchen is essentially a creative place, use of colorful decor can only intensify the mood and give the room a vibe of powerful positivity. There are several ways to add color to your own kitchen, whether you choose to take the route of permanent change with paint or simply using colorful accessories for accent, it’s all up to you!

Via Tsuga Studios

Adding Accessories

Painting your kitchen a strong color is a definite commitment. No matter how long you spend staring at your color swatches and envisioning the new walls, it never quite matches up to the final product. For the decorator uneasy with a complete overhaul, colorful accents in a plain white or neutral kitchen go a long way when it comes to making the room “pop.” Best of all, if you tire of the look they can be removed, or if you want to try a different color all you have to do is change your accessories and you have an instant new look. Here are a few fun pieces that can make immediate impact:

Via Pottery Barn

Via Williams-Sonoma


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In reading through the COLOURlovers’ blog, it’s easy to see that food is a common inspiration for color lovers of all kinds, as well it should be! Color is probably one of the oldest tools for knowing how to navigate the ancient grocery store of the forest.

Yet as many people know, our mono-culture food system is also going monochromatic. With so much variety out there, why are our apples and tomatoes almost all red? And how did our corn get so yellow?

Why Red?

“Apples of New York,” a 2 volume encyclopedic listing of apples grown in New England during the 1800’s, lists over 1,000 varieties of apples, yet today we’re lucky if we find 10 in all the grocery stores across America and almost all of them red: Honeycrisp, Cameo, Red Delicious, Braeburn, McIntosh, Jona Gold, Fuji, Gala, Courtland, Empire, and Golden Delicious.

In the early 1900’s Washington State Apple Growers launched an expensive promotional campaign to market just one apple: The Red Delicious. Their campaign to sell the Red Delicious centered on the idea that the color red is an indication of ripeness in apples, regardless of variety.

Photo by Gracie

Growers all over the country started to select trees that produced the reddest fruit without selecting for taste or nutrient value. Because of the mono-culture around apples, today the Red Delicious is among many apples plagued by diseases and pests, making it very difficult to grow organically.

The Washington Growers didn’t choose the Red Delicious because of it’s nutritional value, or even because of it’s flavor. They chose it because it doesn’t store well and doesn’t show bruises. They chose it primarily because Washington State has the best climate in the country for growing Red Delicious apples.

Too Much Maize

Corn is another crop that has gone the way of the mono-culture. A quick internet search finds you over 100 varieties of corn, or maize, yet all we grow in this country is sweet corn and feed corn.

Photo by Jimmedia


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Two artists are taking some of our favorite colorful treats and turning them into a new medium for their artistic expression.

Liz Hickok has taken each flavor of America’s favorite gelatin desert and molded it into colorful models of San Francisco and Scottsdale. Since JELL-O isn’t the most durable of materials, as part of the project she has two videos that capture these wonderfully sculpted cityscapes. You can see them here and here.

Working with gummy bears, Yaya Chou has created some of the most fascinating sculptures, the best being, of course, a bear skin rug.

San Francisco In Jell-O

This project consists of photographs and video, which depict various San Francisco landscapes. I make the landscapes by constructing scale models of the architectural elements which I use to make molds. I then cast the buildings in Jell-O. Similar to making a movie set, I add backdrops, which I often paint, and elements such as mountains or trees, and then I dramatically light the scenes from the back or underneath. The Jell-O sculptures quickly decay, leaving the photographs and video as the remains.

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Leafy. Floral. Nutty. Fruity. Smooth, Smokey. Buttery. Vanilla. Woody…Mmm…

These are just some of the adjectives used to describe the wide, wondrous range of Scotch whisky and on the surface it seems tasting whisky is similar to tasting wine.

Just as there are wine experts, there are whisky experts and within that title is a plethora of even more specific expertise claims; most of which becomes a dizzying array of advice and rules. I claim to be none of the previous. I simply like to enjoy a glass of Scotch whisky every now and then especially during the cool winter months of the calendar year.

It’s purely an emotional thing to prefer Scotch whisky during the winter. And the preference has everything to do with the colors.

by rubicon

Shades of Scotch

Contrary to what some may believe, the colors of Scotch whisky generally do not give an indication of quality, but may help narrow down personal preference after having tasted a few samples.

Photo by Markus Wichmann


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I’m quite obsessed with delightfully delectable French macarons. Last summer we went to Paris on our honeymoon and it was the best vacation we’ve ever had! If it weren’t for our families and the petty but rather hindering language barrier I was ready to pick up and move there. One of the main reasons was the colorful and heavenly macarons. I wish I had taken more photos of them but we were too busy having them for dessert after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

1 Paulette Macarons in Cali via happy cavalier.
2 Payard Patisserie in New York, Vegas, Tokyo etc.
3 Of course Laduree in Paris.

The History of The Macaroon

Some say they were Created By Italian Monks, Refined By French Pâtissiers.


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