to stain or to paint?

Now that I'm back from holidays, I'm totally into making my apartment feel more like a home. I haven't made up my mind about wall colours yet, so I'm starting small. I bought a dresser at a garage sale for $10...the same one as in the photo above. But mine is painted white. It either needs repainting (I'm thinking teal like in the photo below) but Cornelius might be more inclined with stripping the paint and using a stain like the picture above. Personally, I think it's a bit too staid. For me, painting just seems so much easier and much more fun. Thoughts? Both of these photos came from Apartment Therapy's fall colours contest entries.

i'm so green

I'm trying to pick out colours for our place. Originally, I wanted white but in all honesty, I don't think I can live that way. Maybe if we had hardwood floors instead of carpet, white walls could definitely stay...but with apartment beige carpets? White ain't working! We'll be painting our office the same robin's egg blue that we had in our old livingroom. I loved that colour so much that I can't wait to see it in our new work space.

The bedroom colour is tricky. In our last place, we had a very cozy and soothing latte colour but now I'm really thinking that green would be a nice change. Last month Decor8 had some great greens but it seemed they worked best as accessories and furniture colours rather than walls. Here's some great images I've found that could become my colour inspiration. If anyone can suggest a great green, I'm definitely interested. Oh, and I stuck that white kitchen in just because I'm totally digging that pendant lamp! And I also love the pendant lamps in the green kitchen too (maybe more so!).