The Hot Heads Groupie: Color Me Happy

Since my blog’s primary focus is a local salon and all things hair and beauty related, you might make the assumption that the magazine which is most plentiful in my home is a fashion magazine. If that is your assumption, you would be mistaken. The magazine that is most plentiful in my home is Coastal Living. I LUUUV Coastal Living – just absolutely love it! I want to live in the pages of Coastal Living. This month I want to inhabit pages 86 – 93. The bedroom in the ad on page 25 isn’t so bad either. I can picture myself in that bed on a lazy Sunday morning, with my cup of coffee on that white nightstand next to the fresh cut flowers, sharing the paper with my handsome new husband.

To accomplish my goal of living in Coastal Leaving, I’m busily trying to create a home for myself that could be featured on its pages – IF Coastal Living did things like feature a sub $45K previously foreclosed condo in the center of the state on its pages – which AS OF RIGHT NOW :) - it has not done. I’m following the advice of my favorite Thoreau quote. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.”

My beach house is my Field of Dreams… I know if I create it, it will come. What is “it”? It is the life I want… a life where I’ll wake up to the sound of the surf and make my living writing and share my life with someone who believes in the power and the majesty of the one who first imagined the waves and the seagulls and the sand and all of the other things that have been making my heart leap with joy since my first encounter with them as a toddler….a man who I know will be able to make me laugh and who will make my heart race and who will walk the beach holding my hand and body surf with me down near The Jetties.

As I type this, I’m sitting in one of my favorite places in all the world – Chuckeyta’s Surfin' Sea Monkey Café, formerly The Flagler Ave Coffee House, in New Smyrna Beach enjoying a nice cup of coffee.

I attended online church here a short time ago and when I’m done writing and catching up on e-mails, I will be handing a $5 bill to a guy who works next door at Nichol’s Surf Shop – a young man who reminds me a lot of my 21 year old son – a Florida born and bred kid who likes to surf and skateboard and crank up tunes to a decibel that I fear may cause him harm in his old age. (Of course, neither of these guys can envision themselves at a point in life where the effects of decades of loud music will even matter, so it’s pointless to warn them. My son, whose first outing, at the tender age of four weeks, was to this very town, for a beach party cookout at a condo down the street, feels he’s invincible and I’m sure this young man with the sun bleached locks and the black concert t-shirt does as well.)

In exchange for my $5, I will have access to cutest little aqua colored beach bike for the next hour. $5 to fill my mental tank for the next week? Money well spent in my book.

I’m beginning to think of this bike as mine as I’ve rented it before. I’m beginning to think that my $5 is not a rental fee, but a storage fee. I’m beginning to think of The Nichol’s Surf Shop as the garage that, though it is a little far from my domicile, houses MY adorable vintage - looking Saratoga two wheeler - a magic carpet of sorts - which always manages to put such a big smile on my face.

This bike is actually the inspiration for today’s post. On page six of this month’s Coastal Living is a one page homage to the colors that most inspire the magazine’s editors. I read what inspired them and I thought of "my" bike. I love all colors coastal, but lately aqua is really making my heart sing. Here are some of the shades that have that same effect on them:

“Slate Gray: It’s the color of the waves on a rainy day in Prouts Neck, Maine, where artist Winslow Horner had a seaside studio and painted famous stormy scenes.” - Maria Ricapito, Executive Editor

“The fresh dark green of the pine trees along the coast of Lake Superior, where I spent summer weekends growing up.” – Kendall Cronstrom, Editor

“I love the pink-gray shade found on the inside of seashells – so much that I painted my entire den in Farrow & Ball’s Calamine.” – Steele Thomas Marcoux, Design Editor (Side Note: Isn’t Steele Thomas Marcoux the coolest name??)

“A pop of red with crisp blue like a beach umbrella against the sky and water, or those Bomb Pops we all loved as kids.” – Amy Mitchell, Managing Editor

“I saw my first brilliant orange Southern California sunset last April; it looked like mango sorbet – stunning!” – Sarah Latta, Assistant Features Editor

“The blazing hot pink you can only get away with on Lilly Pulitzer dresses, lawn flamingos and fruity cocktails.” – Katie Finley, Copy Chief

What’s another color that I love? The shade of blond, ever so carefully woven into my brownish tresses – a shade that Diane probably knows by formula and which is probably recorded on a card with my name on it in the back room at Hot Heads, but which is known to me as fountain of youth in a bowl – a shade that makes me feel young and alive and sun kissed and ready to frolic in the surf and ride off into the sunset with some fellow mid-40s/early 50s kindred spirit.