A confession: when I was a little girl, I was addicted to shocking pink, and demanded that my mom paint my bedroom that color. I'm talking way beyond pepto-bismol pink. I'm talking vibrating, hurts your eyes pink. When we were selling the house so we could move to California, she painted it all over, which made me cry. I used to measure the heights of my stuffed animals with a crayon on those walls, to check and see if they were growing. My mom has always been a bit of DIY'er, so a lot of my furniture was mismatched and half-painted with sloppy, ambitious colors. Okay, so she was a depressed, alcoholic DIY'er, but it's the thought that counts. She gave me permission to be a slob. Which let me be very creative... but also, I'm still a slob!