I’ve been in an orange mood lately.  Well, it isn’t all that unusual that I’m in an orange mood–it is my favorite color, after all.  

But, I must confess, for years I tried to hide my love of orange.  It stems from a bad experience in the mid 1970’s.  For those of you who remember, “earth tones” were the buzz word of the day.  That usually meant avocado green and harvest gold.  Insert gagging sound here.  But, along with those two colors came burnt orange and rust.  Yes, rust.  As in, “See that old old hulk of a car out there in that field?  The one that hasn’t run in years.  Yes, I’d like that color for my home decor.”  I got married and got my first house in 1974.  (Okay, really weird thing happening right now.  The Moody Blues Nights in White Satin is playing on my radio!  Flashback to the Seventies!)  But, I must proceed.  In my new-to-me ranch house, I redid the kitchen/family room.  The carpet–indoor/outdoor patterned carpet in brown and orange.  The wall paper–also orange.  But not the pretty orange that I truly love.  It was BURNT orange.  That sounds almost as appealing as rust.  We lived in that house for three years.  When we moved out, I turned my back on orange.  

But, hard as I tried, I still really loved orange.  For years I denied it.  If I’d see something cute that was orange, I’d say things like, “Oh, that’s so cute–even though it’s orange.”  But, slowly, with the help of a twelve step program in my mind, a few years ago I finally started admitting that I liked things BECAUSE they were orange.  A whole new world opened up to me when I let orange back into my life.  

Now I’m surrounded by orange–happy orange–bright orange–gay orange!  I have astudio full of orange.

And have I mentioned that I have a great family and great friends?  They help feed my orange obsession.  Here are the things I got for Christmas this year that are orange.

And yesterday, when my friend Robin came by to spend the day sewing, she even wore orange!

Life is good when you love orange.