No, it's not Valentine's Day (yet) but here's to ringing in the new year with luck and prosperity - paint the town RED.  A powerful, bold color, red is also associated with good fortune in Chinese tradition. It wards off bad spirits and it's associated with celebrations of great joy. So for the first post of the new year, the Magpie says, ring it in with red. 

Hear that rumble in the distance? It's the Year of the Horse, galloping towards us! Even if you don't celebrate Lunar New Year/Chinese New Year (which is this week), it's still fun to read what your astrological sign is on the paper placemats in so many Chinese restaurants. It's the Year of the Horse (1930, 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002, 2014), which is quite an elegant and strong symbol to put you in a fashionable Mood. If it's your year, extra lucky wishes to you, and for the rest of us, there's no reason we can't celebrate in style and wear a brilliant crimson hue, to keep the bad luck away!

So one can either give credit to or put the blame firmly upon the shoulders of InStyle magazine for putting the Inspired idea in this Birdie's head to paint an old bookshelf bright red. More specifically, it was InStyle's April issue focusing on bright colors. Apparently shiny-shiny sparkle isn't all that catches the Magpie's eye. I blame you, Gwen Stefani, with your brightly colored ensemble and subliminal suggestion using the power of your bright lipstick hue!

To be fair, I had an old particle board bookshelf that was begging to be a guinea pig and I was curious about the Krylon spray paint that makes the boast of not needing to prime the surface and that it was specially made for being applied to plastic. All these claims seem true enough; the paint went on fine and didn't peel off (yet). The only blunder was spraying a can of clear sealant over the finished paint. It was raining, I was spraying the shelf in the garage, and there was enough moisture in the air to make the sealant cloudy, so a couple of hasty trips to the hardware store were necessary to pick up extra cans to fix everything.

I go through odd phases of home improvement, but instead of buying new things, I'm trying to work on updating and changing what we already have. The newly-painted red bookshelf has given rise to inspire new projects, and if all goes well, they may show up as an Inspired post as well!

Jaunty Fine Print: Bookshelf photos by Denise Sakaki; magazine cover taken from InStyle.com