I pity the people whose job it is to come up with names for paint colours. It must be difficult to come up with positive-sounding names for some of the toxic shades they're faced with. After our experiments with paint swatches last night, we have decided that a more realistic name for Tuscan Terracotta, for instance, would be Radioactive Salmon. And Earth-baked Terracotta looks more like Mud. As for Natural Paprika ... just call it Hideously Bright Orange and be done with it.

After a fair amount of angst, we eventually settled on the rather sticky sounding Honey Drizzle for our livingroom and kitchen walls, with a paler variant on the same theme for the hallway.

After the girls were in bed this evening we went over to the new house to start the dreaded re-decorating. Didn't get to any actual painting, but we have polyfilla'd up the holes from old picture hooks etc and put tape along the skirting boards, so we can start painting tomorrow night. If we feel strong enough.