Tip of the Week - Decorating for the Seasons

I hope everyone had an awesome Memorial Weekend! I know I did! I went up to Idaho to visit family and celebrate my niece's 9th birthday and my nephew's High School Graduation! It is always fun to get with family.... not to mention that my little 21 month old daughter had an absolute hay day with all of the animals that my sisters has.

Anyway, while I was at my sister's house, I took some pictures to do some posts and now I can't find my camera!!!! I really hope it pops up somewhere... and if I left it, I hope my mom saw it and is bringing it home with her since she stayed up there longer.

But, it really does crack me up how a lot of us designer think the same on certain things. Ever since summer has come around (technically we are still waiting for it here in Utah, it doesn't seem to want to stay warm for longer than a day before the rain or snow starts up again) I have been getting the itch to lighten up my house. As I have mentioned before, I don't really have the cash in my pocket to work on getting things finished in my house yet alone to add a second design to each room. By second design, I mean that with each of the seasons changing I would change my home with it. SUMMER and SPRING I would add whites and creams to the house and then for the FALL and WINTER, I would add the darker colors back in to give the warm cozy feel. I was on The Nester's blog this morning and she blogged about this very thing that I have been thinking about.

We have very different design styles, her home is very clean and fresh and on the cooler color side where my home is more cozy and dark with the warmer colors, but her home is absolutely beautiful and I love her colors and what she has done with it.

I have 2 rooms in my home to be specific that I really want to lighten up. The first one being my office.

I have mentioned that these blue chairs are driving me batty! Now I want to correct something, I don't hate blue in general.... I just hate this blue! This blue seems to be quite masculine, and that is not the look that I want to go for.

Something that I have changed in this room since this picture was taken is that my husband took the black office chair out to use as his work chair so I had to bring up another blue chair.... Yes people... 3 of these blue chairs that I can't stand!

This room definitely turned out darker than I had visualized with the rich caramelly walls and then the massive black desk and these blue chairs just appear very dark also. So I am wanting to recover all 3 of the chairs with a white or off white slipcover and add some window treatments that will have white or cream in them also to help lighten this room up..... I think it will be a breath of fresh air.

The second room is my bedroom!
Now this is a room that I would like to change out with the seasons. I like the bedding I have ( I have also changed it up a bit since this picture was taken) but in these warmer months, I would like to change out my main comforter for an off white/cream comforter and some matching shames, change out the lamp shades and add some lighter pillows to the loveseat. I also have another idea to lighten up that hopefully I will post when I get it.

Do you have rooms that could use some adjusting with the seasons?

Tip of the Week - Design your Laundry Room!!!!

You know when you have one of those moments that you look at somebody else's home and you have that moment a jealousy?

Well I had that feeling the other day!

(Lindsi, didn't you just do a post about not being jealous or envious about what other's have and just being happy with what you have? Why yes, yes I did.)

So I let that feeling only last for a split second and then I decided I wasn't going to feel that way and that I was just going to be happy and excited for this person.

My neighbor posted some pictures up on her blog of her Laundry Room Redo that she just finished. I say redo but it was more like an OVERHAUL!

I have mentioned before in this post that you really shouldn't forget about the laundry room when designing your house.

Don't get me wrong, I love my laundry room! I love that it didn't cost me anything and it is still cute. It puts a smile on my face when I walk in there (and it should)!

But I wanted to highlight my neighbor's laundry room and hope that it inspires you to want to do something to your laundry room.

Her name is Amanda Skinner and she did this project with her husband (the best kind of projects)!

Here is her before picture and I bet this is similar to a lot of homes out there.

After finding a great deal on a front loading washer and dryer, she was motivated to redo the entire room. And here is what they did.

Does it not look amazing!?

They built the platform to raise up the washer and dryer. I think this is a GENIUS option to the pedestal drawers. I have the front loaders and I love them but I also have the pedestals. My mom however, she doesn't have the pedestals, and when I do laundry there, I sit on the floor to put stuff and in and take it out since it hurts my back to bed over. So I love that they built the platform so that they wouldn't have to bend over.

The cabinet on top, they purchased from the Habitat Restore. They purchased just the left side and her husband built the shelves on the right side. She painted it all the same color and then glazed on top of that.

She purchased the baskets at Walgreens and then made the liners to go in them.

The thing that I love about this whole redo.... She says that she LOVES to do laundry now and she loves to be in there!!! That is how everyone should feel. Laundry is an inevitable task for everyone, why not do it in style and enjoy what you are looking at while in there.

It doesn't matter what size of laundry room you have, there something you can do for any size of laundry room.

I dare you to go into your laundry room and see what you can start with.... You won't be sorry!

Tip of the Week - Living in REALITY!

So often we look at homes in the magazines and see how perfect they are and wish that our homes could look like that.

Everything is in it's place and perfect... I don't know about you, but I don't live in that world. I live in reality where I have an 18 month old daughter, a newborn, and a husband who works from home.

My husband is in the process of finishing part of our basement so that he can have a private office down there. If you remember pictures of my office from before, it is way out in the open and isn't practical for him to work in with my girls always being so loud.... SO, he has turned our bedroom into his office! What does this mean for me... I don't get ready until 1:00 in the afternoon because my daughter is to noisy to be in there while he is on the phone and she is always where I am.

More of my reality....

This is how my coffee table looks in a perfect world....

This is how it looks in my reality. I finally I had to move everything off because my daughter thought it was fun to climb up on it, sit on the books, and dig her fingernails into the candles!

Here she is climbing on the baskets under my console table.... She usually pushes the baskets off and puts all of her toys on the shelves.

Here are her DVDs stacked up on the console table because she gets inside the baskets and tries to pull the DVDs out of the their cases and breaks them.

Here she pushes all of the buttons on the equipment........

and here are her toys on the floor, (along with my husbands weights).

I took these pictures all within 30 seconds and she ran from place to place to place... this is our life everyday!

And we can't forget all of the newborn items that come with having a baby...... (notice the measuring cup on the floor, Brooklyn loves to get into all of my drawers and pull out my cooking items.

This is my reality everyday! I try to keep my house as clean as possible, and at night, I make sure that it is clean and I can feel good about it. But everyday, my house has toys on the floors and pillows in piles.... and you know what, I wouldn't change it for the world.

This house is lived in, which means it is loved in! It may not be perfect for a magazine cover, but it is perfect for me and my lifestyle. I have kids and that is shown in my house, you don't question that when you come in, and that is OK!

I hope that you guys don't look at your house and wish that you could change all of these things about it. Make it the best that you can for the situation and lifestyle you have and be happy with it. That is sometimes easier said than done, I know.

You may not have toddlers like I do, or even have kids. Maybe you have pets or a family member in a wheelchair. These are all things that shape our home and how it is lived in. Design it to what works with your lifestyle and what is perfect for you.... Don't compare it to what others have, they don't have your life and circumstances!

BE HAPPY! :)

Tip of the Week - Real or Fake?

Are your's real or fake?

Get your mind out of the gutter people... I am talking about house plants!!! :)

Some people wonder what should be used in the home for decorating... real plants or fake plants.

Here is my opinion and tip on the subject and that is all that it is, there is no rule on this subject, just personal opinions.

In my own personal house, I will only use REAL plants. However, I definitely have used FAKE plants in my designs and have nothing against them.

Here I have a real plant on my kitchen table (but that has since been moved into my spare bedroom)

And here is one behind my reading corner in my Family room.

I LOVE real plants in a room because of the life and energy they add to a room. There is something very livening about having a real plant in a room.

I'm not completely gung ho about Feng Shui, but there are a few things that I do follow and real plants is one of them. They say that the oxygen that real plants let off add some positive energy and agree with it. I personally just feel better with real plants versus fake plants.

BUT.... Not everyone has a green thumb! Some people are really intimidated by real plants and that is fine. If you are one of those people, by all means use the fake plants... but I do have a tip for you to follow.

Notice in this picture above that it is in a pot!

Now this plant is also fake but is in a basket.

Which one screams FAKE to you?

Obviously you wouldn't have a real plant in a basket, so always try and get your fake plants in a pot so they can at least give people something to wonder about for a few seconds instead of knowing it is fake right off the bat.

I LOVE plants in the home, they are great corner fillers. I would have a real plant in every room if I didn't have an 18 month old daughter who likes to eat dirt! Plants have to be strategically placed in my house!

If you do have fake plants, make sure to clean them regularly, silk plants tend to get really dusty & give a fake look.

So let me know, What do you prefer?

* If you are looking to sell your house, real plants are a much better idea to have on display vs. fake ones. Because fake ones do tend to collect dust, they are a distraction for the eye & you definitely don't want that when selling.

Tip of the Week - FlyLady

I was on my cousin's wife's blog the other day and she had posted about this FlyLady. She had some links on there and I decided to check it out.

This lady has a whole website teaching people how to create routines to keep their house clean and be productive through out the day.

I had more time today to really sit and read what she has posted on her website and she has some GREAT tips on there. Some of these tips I already do, but she has some stuff on there that will definitely help me out even further in my life. Now that I have another little baby in the house and a husband that works from home now, it definitely doesn't stay as clean as I would like. I am going to start taking some of these tips and applying them to my life and my daily routine to help me create a more clean, calm space for myself and I thought that maybe there are some people out there that read this blog that could use this in their lives also.

After all, if your house isn't clean and is in constant CHAOS, what good are my design tips going to be! If your house is in order and clean, then the fun design stuff comes into play..... and when the fun design stuff is going on, you want to keep your house clean! :)

Check out her website http://www.flylady.net/

This next link is the part of the website that I think is brilliant. I have always had it in my head of creating a weekly plan like this but haven't really done it, now I have something to follow and am more likely to get it done..... now my goal is to get my husband on board with me and keeping up on the routine..... I can't work on this routine and have him not be a part of it and making things dirty...... just wish my girls were old enough to jump on board with me, they seem to dirty EVERYTHING up around the house! But you gotta love them :)

http://www.flylady.net/pages/FLYingLessons_Routines.asp

Tip Of The Week - Making what you have work!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

I went up to our family cabin with my husband and my baby girl for the weekend!

We have to snowmobile to get into the cabin during the winter and that is always fun, not quite as easy when you are 8 months pregnant though :)

While I was up at the cabin I came up with this weeks Tip of the Week.

How many of you out there have something in your room that you can't get rid of and you don't like all to much? Example: cabinets, carpet, sofa, etc.

My family purchased our cabin about 4 years ago or so. This cabin was built in the mid 90's I believe and came with Teal carpet! It is not the most attractive color of carpet but it was in good shape and we didn't want to replace it.

I decided to take that color as my inspiration and make it work in the space.

The room I am going to show you is our basement t.v./ping pong room. I really made sure that in this room, the carpet looked like it was intentional instead of an old outdated choice.

Here is the carpet with the rug that was chosen.

We started with the sectional which is a reddish leather and we worked from there.

We found this rug that had the reddish color as well as the teal color in the design and it was the perfect starting off point to bringing our colors together.

Next we found these pillows at Target and brought all of the colors in with 3 different pillows but coordinate very nicely with each other.

Here is a better view of the pillows on the sectional,

and here is a picture showing the pillows on the sectional with the rug and the carpet.

Above the sofa we did this arrangement and once again, everything has all of the colors in them, even a hint of the teal color which brings that carpet in once again!

Here is a close up of one of the pictures. You can see that there is small flecks of the teal color in it and works perfectly with everything.

Here is a floral arrangement that I made and I intentionally brought in these teal pods to bring in that color once again.

The fabric for these window valances did not have deal in it but had the other colors in it, so we decided to take a small teal ribbon and sew it on the fringe to bring it in.

We found these vases

and plates that happened to have all of the colors in them!

We were quite lucky to find so many accessories with the reddish color, peanut butter color, and the teal all them and help coordinate and tie in everything.

I actually love the way that this room turned out and it actually makes you like the carpet when everything is taken in. I actually liked this room so much that unconsciously I realized that it was one of the inspirations for my living room that I am working on right now. The drapes are that I am using are the same fabric as the checkered pillows on the sofa, so I am bringing in almost the same colors to my living room as this t.v. room.

That's a good sign :)

If you have something in your home that you aren't quite sure about, see if there is a way that you can make it work and maybe become a piece that you love.

The best way to do this is probably to think about the colors that you are pairing it with. I don't want to go into a lot of detail here on that because it could take me all day to get into the color coordinating and to be honest, every room is different in how I would approach it. But there are ways to make something stand out or you can choose a color to help blend it in and not be so noticeable. This can be a really great way to save money to not have to replace that one thing in your house that you consider an eye sore. You may just fall in love with it :)

Tip Of The Week - Does Your Home Express Who You Are?

When people come into your home, do they know who you are right away?

This is something that I think is very important for each person to incorporate in their home.

Every single room in my home plays a part in expressing who I am as well as my whole family.

First off..... when you first walk into my front door, you see this sign....

If you can't read it, it says "Aloha, Please remove your shoes, Mahalo."

I am very big on people removing their shoes inside of the home so I found this sign in Hawaii a couple of years back and had to have it to let people know that is what is expected in our home and that we would appreciate them following it. :)

The next thing, and I think it is the most important thing(s) to us in our home are our religious beliefs and expressing those in our home.

Now I just want to state that these are things that are important to us and that we express in our home and are not intended to offend anyone if they believe otherwise.

But the very first thing that you notice when you walk into my front room is the large picture of Christ that is hanging above my sofa.

This is one of the few pieces of that we spent a lot of money on in our home and it was very important to me that it was placed basically front and center in our home. I want people to know that when they walk into our home, it is a Christian home with Christian values and we would appreciate it if everyone respected that when they came into our home.

When you walk into our family room, right in the corner against this red/orange wall is our Christus, so once again, a reminder of what is central in our home.

Here are some scriptures that are dear to us from our religion.

and a Proclamation to the Family that was put out by our church.

and here is a picture of where my husband and I were married.

All of these things are incorporated in our main living areas to remind us as well as let others know what is important to us as well as what is "expected" if you will, in our home.

In my living room I have this framed saying on my wall about being an Extraordinary Human Being

it is great for anyone to read as well as a reminder to myself.

Now you have seen this in a previous post before,

but one of the most important things in my life is my family and I want to make that known so I created this framed picture of it.

Now this is something that is in my kitchen window sill now and is a great reminder every time I go to the sink.

As you have seen in previous posts, I have pictures of my family all over my house as well as pictures of my travels up in my office. These are also great things that are up to show what is important to us and expressing who we are.

Because this tip is such a big deal to me in my own personal life, I don't really hang up a picture or something on the wall that isn't something that fits into being important to me or expressing who I am. I do not have any art work up in my home anywhere, I would rather have a picture of a family member or something dear to me than a random store bought painting that means nothing to me..... that doesn't mean that I am against having those in the home, I definitely use them when I design other people's homes if it calls for it. I just prefer in my own personal home having something that is dear to me.

Have you walked around your home lately and analyzed what people are seeing of you in it? If you haven't, I would suggest doing that and making your home personal and expressive of who you are.

Model homes or Parade of Homes type homes are great and beautiful, but every time I go through them, they lack that personality and personal expression touch that I personal believe that every home needs.

I love going into people's homes and seeing who they are. What's important to them... Who's important to them.

Don't be afraid of letting people know who you are..... Your home is meant to be your own personal sanctuary.. right!

Tip Of The Week - Painted Archways

I hope everyone is enjoying this holiday season thus far! It has been snowing here most of the day and has really brought the Christmas season with it!

It is good to be back home after spending over a week and half in Colorado with my husband's family and now I need to get in gear and get some stuff around my house done.... both Christmas decorating and regular decorating!

My tip for this week is something that I thought of while I was in Colorado. My mother-in-law has redone a big chunk of her house these past few months and I noticed that she followed this one rule perfectly through out her house and I thought I would share it with everyone in case they didn't know this little tip.

How many of you have an archway or a door type opening like this picture?

I know it is common for people to come to these when they are painting and not know whether they should paint it or not if they are doing an accent color and both walls on each side of the doorway are different colors.

Here is the rule *Paint it the same color as the wall as the flow of traffic goes.

So basically, if you were to start at your front door and walk through the rooms, your archways should be painted the same color as the wall you are looking at.

I happen to have a DON'T example of my last house!

I wanted to paint the archway and my husband didn't like that idea, I let him win this argument because I was lucky that he was even letting me in the first place. It really bothers me that it isn't painted here.... after I painted this, I did officially find out that it is a design rule and I should have gone with my designer instinct and told my husband it was a rule.

Oh well, we weren't there long and I have made up for it in this house.

Here is my living room when I painted the base color. Notice I painted the archway the same color as the wall.

Then here it is stained.

What you don't see is that the back side of this wall is the burnt orange/red color. This just really helps with the flow of traffic and is much easier on the eye as the eye looks around.

If you notice on the very top picture, there are 2 archways. The first archway is white because that wall is white.... the back archway is the warm chocolaty color to flow with the back wall color.

Hopefully this is useful to others since we happened to make this mistake in our own house at one point.

Tip Of The Week - Photo Gallery

In honor of the Thanksgiving this week, I wanted to do a post based around families!

I am HUGE on having family pictures in every room of the house and really displaying your life in this way.

People often struggle with how to hang pictures on the wall and how to display them so I thought I would show some examples.

Now here is a full on photo gallery. This is a wall next to our ping pong table at my family cabin.

The pictures on here are all in sepia tone, the frames are all different but they coordinating with each other.

The way to create a gallery like this, map out a section (square) that you want the pictures to stay within. We measured on both sides the same square section and had 4 frames create the 4 corners of that square. Then you just fill in the center of that with your remaining frames.

*Always lay your frames on the ground and map out how you want it first before you start hanging!

I really do love it when there are a ton of frames clustered together, they make a BIG statement and they show people what is important to you.

Now here is the photo gallery in my office. I had these 3 shelves sitting in my house from buying them at my neighbor's moving sale and I knew I wanted them in my office and I new I wanted them worked into a photo gallery. After contemplating on it for months, I finally came up with this arrangement.

It obviously isn't completely finished since there are frames still empty, but when I said and done, I opted to create more of a triangle shape with my pictures and that entirely came down to the very top painting of Cabo San Lucas that we got on our trip and I wanted to display it.

This gallery is entirely focused on our travels. I have to get a lot more of our travel pictures up, but I wanted to show people the things that we have done and have it as a constant reminder to us of our fun travels together.

The great thing about this arrangement is that not all of the pictures are hung. Why not lean them on a shelf and why not layer them on top of each other? Potterybarn is the master at photo galleries and I looked at a lot to kind of get an idea of how I wanted this one to be. The great thing about layering, you can usually get more pictures in a small space.

People LOVE looking at pictures when they come into your home so it is a great thing to have out on display.

Something that makes this work well is that because I wanted to keep all of the pictures in their original form and have color to them, the black frames help keep it consistent. If I had colored pictures and different colored frames, it would look really busy and take away from the pictures.

Now here is something a bit more simple.... 3 of the exact same frames clustered together in a row. Once again I opted for black frames (just worked in my home) and I framed pictures of our new little family shortly after my daughter was born.

These pictures are in my front living room so people can come right in and have something personal to look at.

Now on the same wall but in the family room I have this family picture hanging. I wanted to show you this to give you an idea....... Only hang a single picture if it is in proportion to the wall. So many people will hang a single picture like this on a wall and the wall will be much to large for that one picture.

Use your good judgement as to the size of the frame as to the wall.

Another thing to notice when hanging pictures..... Where you are hanging it. So many people will hang their pictures to high or right smack dab in the middle of the wall.

There is a rule that if you divide your wall into thirds horizontally, you should hang your picture somewhere on the top line.

Now I have created a rule that works great for me in my house.... James is a good amount taller than me but I have found that if I hang my pictures a bit high for my eye level and bit low for his eye level, it is a perfect height for us.

Hopefully in the future I can do another post on this and show more examples because I know that it is something that a lot of people struggle with.

Have fun with your photos and displaying them..... people really do love to see who you are on a personal level when they enter into your home.

Tip Of The Week - Hanging Stockings

Picture from HGTV.com

How many of you are thinking of getting your Christmas out already? Or how many of you already have? (like me)!

I am in the process of getting my stuff out and decorated and I am always looking for some new ideas. But how many of you have the same dilemma that I have every Christmas, we don't have a fireplace to hang the stockings?

In my last house, I had a shelf (same idea as this picture from the net) that acted as the perfect faux fireplace mantel and that is where I hung my stockings. Well this year in my new house, I have that same shelf hanging in my living room this time and it would work great to hang my stockings, but I have a 15 month old child in the house this time..... if you are a mom, you see the problem.... the stockings would be hanging within reach of my daughter to pull on them. Not a safe choice to go with. I have decided to do something else with that shelf for Christmas (which I will show you when I get my laptop back from my husband to upload pictures.. he's on a business trip with it)
But now I am trying to think of a way that I can hang some stockings.... I had the thought of hanging them from the curtain rods and just having them be part of the window treatment... the problem with that idea... I don't have window treatments in my living room yet so there is no rod to hang them from..... so I need something else to resort to this year...

Here are some ideas that I pulled from the internet

If you have the right kind of house, hanging them on the stairs is a great idea! It doesn't work in my house all to well, but I love the idea none the less.

I loved this idea, having a stand that you can hang the stockings on and then you can put it anywhere. If you have something around the house like this, that would be awesome!

Now here is an idea that is an alternative to stockings! I thought the mugs were a cute idea and something fresh to add to the mix. The only problem... you can't fit as much candy inside :)

Now here is something that I think is a great idea.... creating your own wall hook to hang the stockings from. This is such a creative idea... I am wondering if I can create anything like this somewhere in the house.
My only thing is trying to hang the pole without creating damage to my walls.... I hate making new holes in my walls when I won't have something there at all times.

I am still going to have to toy with some ideas and figure something out, as well as get new stockings this year (don't have any for my girls).

I hope this helps give you ideas if you don't have a traditional fireplace setting. And try something new this year with your Christmas design... don't do EVERYTHING the same as you did last year!