Half-RAST

I think my RAST makeover is about 40% done, and I need some advice.  

This is when I really, really hate living so far away from my friends and family-- especially my mom and sister.  They'd be able to tell me if I'm on the right track.  My husband, while being a truly wonderful person, is profoundly design-challenged (ask me about the time, perhaps a month into our relationship, that he picked out a black plastic TV stand from Wal-Mart and tried to convince me that it was "kind of Bauhaus.") and I think my friends here might be too kind to tell me when my taste level is what Zac Posen might politely call "questionable."

I started keeping this blog (and continue to maintain it) so our East Coast and Midwest loved ones could occasionally drop in on our West Coast life, but more and more I'm aware of the blog's limitations.  My photography skills are almost as terrible as my photography equipment, and I know the pictures I take and post aren't at all representative of what I see when I look around our little house.  And while I love having my own home to renovate and decorate as I please, sometimes it really makes me miss my family.

I texted my mom the following iPhone photo of an in-progress RAST to get her opinion, only later realizing that the color in the photo is CRAZY off:

I mean, it is SO CHARTREUSE in these photos.  It looks positively neon.  And the truth is, it's really nowhere near as bright as it looks in the above photo, or in this one (taken at the same time): 

It is, like, glowing in these pictures.  It looks like it just stepped off a spaceship.  And after I texted my mom and asked for her opinion, she said, "I like the color, but I'm not sure I could live with it."  I thought, "It's not THAT bright, is it?"  And then I looked at the photos and realized that the color she saw is totally radioactive.    

I wish I could explain this, but I know less than nothing about photography.  The horrible photo that follows is somehow a much more accurate depiction of the RAST color, but everything else looks much darker than it really is, and I really need to remember to turn off my lamps before taking pictures in my bedroom:

And you don't have to tell me how awful the orange flame-stitched pillows look.  I know.  I'm on it.

Even crazier are the photos I took with our actual (ancient, crappy) camera.  Here's one:

In the iPhone photos it appears neon yellow; in the camera photos it's grasshopper green.  I took both sets at the same time, by the way.  Here's a side-by-side of the birds' eye views:

In reality it is neither this yellow nor this green.  

So this is just a long way of telling you that I need someone's opinion on the color (is it too bright?  Too light?  Not brown enough?), but I can't get it.  Because the only way to show anyone the color is via photograph.  And I can't photograph the color.

Since I'm pretty much stuck floating out here in this cold design wasteland all by myself, I guess I'll go ahead and order the fretwork.  After doing some research, I realized that it'll be much cheaper for me to order two kits from myoverlays.com than to buy all the tools I'd need to cut my own fretwork, so I'm going to admit DIY defeat and go with the premade option.  I'm debating between these two designs:

 

I'm leaning towards the second one, which means it's probably hideous because every time I offer anyone an option like this she always picks the one I wasn't favoring.  Sigh.