20 Minute Grill Recipe: Chicken Sate with Ponzu Sauce

From: MyRecpies.Com

Cook Time:20 minutes
Serves: 4 (serving size: 4 skewers and about 1 1/2 tablespoons sake mixture)

Ingredients

4 (6-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup sake (rice wine)
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 garlic clove, minced
Cooking spray

Preparation
Prepare grill.

Cut each chicken breast half lengthwise into 4 strips. Combine sugar and remaining ingredients except cooking spray in a small bowl; stir until sugar dissolves. Combine half of sake mixture and all of chicken in a large bowl. Let stand 10 minutes. Reserve remaining sake mixture.

Drain chicken, discarding marinade. Thread 1 chicken strip onto each of 16 (8-inch) skewers. Place chicken on grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 2 minutes on each side or until done. Serve with remaining sake mixture.

Wine note: This dish calls for a wine that's bold yet refreshing. Dry rosé does this admirably. My pick: a chilled bottle of Chateau Potelle's Riviera Rosé from Paso Robles, California. The 2002 is about $15. -Karen MacNeil

Making the Most of a Book Shelve

Book shelves come in a lot of fun designs and if you’re the sort who likes to keep a few good books in your living area it may be just the thing. What’s tough is filling up the empty space on your book shelve or managing the different book sizes while still coming up with a clean look.

You know how it’s unwise (not to mention messy) to put all your best decoration items on the coffee table or on the mantle, well your book shelve can be the place where you can add as many things as you want. Some of your bigger and heavier pieces can act as dividers and can prevent books from falling over. If you don’t have anything that big enough to act as a book end you can always go out and find one. The book end variety is huge from classical to fun or elegant.

All the shelves don’t need to be the same size, it’s perfectly okay if some shelves are higher than others, that way you can fit the taller books and the bigger decoration pieces. Decoration that you can use in a book shelf aren’t limited to book ends, you can go so far as to put frames or tall vases (the bid slender ones look the best) in the shelves that are tall enough.

Always remember to keep everything balanced, don’t overcrowd one shelf with all the big and tall pieces and clutter another with the smaller ones. The size of your items should complement the size of the books.

Using Mirrors in Your Home Design

Mirrors have been a part of home interior for a long time, they’ve never been just used to do your hair,. Mirrors had decorative purposes even when they were used in castles and were used to personify light in a room. Although it’s widely known that mirrors can add to the light and balance of a room, not to mention make it look bigger and give it wider dimensions, the fact is that few people know how to use them in their home décor.

Mirrors can work two major effects in a room. It can make a confined space look much bigger than it is and it can increase the light in a room.

Some of the most common uses of mirrors in home décor is to use mirror panels in confined narrow halls. The effect is amazing. The mirrors can easily make the hall look and feel twice as wide as it is. Mirror doors are also used for bedroom closets. They not only save the space that would have been taken up by a full length mirror and they make the room wider. If you have a huge bed in your bedroom and you feel the rooms gives an overcrowded sense, then using mirror doors for your closet will help lighten things.

Another common decorative use of mirrors is on the fireplace. A framed decorative mirror is often used above fire places to personify the light in the area. As opposed to cluttering your fireplace with millions of ceramic decoration pieces, a simple elegant mirror well framed will give a rich effect to your room.

Mirrors can be paneled between small windows to make them look larger. One of the more contemporary uses of mirrors are mirror room dividers. They’re just like your ordinary screens only the mirrored surface can give a much more dramatic and open effect as compared to a plain furnished or fabric surface.

What wood works for your Kitchen floor?

One of the least frequently remodeled room in a house is the kitchen, people will redo their bedrooms and closets three times over before even thinking about the kitchen because once a kitchen been designed and eaten/ cooked in a few times, it develops a certain feel. You never change things around because a place where you cook or eat needs to feel familiar as opposed to new.

But that doesn’t mean that kitchens are never remodeled, they are and more often the budget for a kitchen remodeling is bigger in proportion to the budget for any other room. Kitchen changes are big like putting in new floors or new cabinets though there are small scale ones involving painting kitchen cabinets a new color or changing the knobs.
Should you decide to put in a new floor or new cabinets for your kitchen, a new wooden floor, here’s a breakdown of which wood works best for what.

Maple wood works best for kitchen cabinets because of it doesn’t stain easy and can hide most stains. You can get a rich range of colors in this wood and depending on the quality, you can several excellent finishes. The wood is durable stuff and works for most cabinet types. The best part is that maple is easy to work with so if you’re looking to fit in some design with your new cabinets, this wood should be your top pick.

Cherry is the wood you prefer if you’re looking for truly elegant and long lasting kitchen design. The wood weathers really well and as time goes by it tends to change hues. This is the wood to use if you’re looking for a nice rustic red color in your kitchen. The wood isn’t cheap though and is generally going to be used in a more upscale kitchen.

Oak is what you should use if you want something sturdy and durable but nice to look at. This wood has a fairly good finish and something close to 200 types of oak exist. This wood doesn’t swell up from moisture or humidity as much as other woods do.

Bamboo is becoming popular because it’s environmentally friendly, people who like to live green find it easier to use this wood because it grows faster than any other kind of wood and can be quickly replenished. Unfortunately the wood isn’t thick enough to be cut into planks and has to be more as a covering over stronger wood types; which makes it expensive to use.

Mahogany is the best wood when it comes to sleek and finish, it’s also expensive and not as strong as most other woods. It’s more suited for decorative purposes.

A Beach Wedding in Your Backyard

With summer and summer weddings in full swing, I’ve been trying to plan my life more around ‘save the dates’ then around my everyday work. I’ve been to some really great and some really weird summer weddings but there’s one that really stands out and I’m sharing the idea here for anyone crazy about the beach.

My friend (who got married last year) had always dreamed of a beach wedding and had everything set for a Florida beach ceremony when her flight was cancelled because there was a hurricane warning. Needless to say it was extremely last minute and she couldn’t so much as find a caterer in the time she had left. Her family really pulled through to give her, her dream wedding… in the backyard!

They pulled about a million strings (with time being so short) and managed to find construction sand, lots of it and had the entire backyard covered in it (after placing a tarpaulin under it). It was pretty convincing. What they needed next was the sea and that actually proved more difficult than the sand. They fiddled with using a large kids pool but it wasn’t convincing and the sand kept spilling into it. Instead they got some old foam (one with lots of holes and stuff) and painted a nice sea rock color and set up a waterfall with the help of an extremely handy local plumber, they added the painted foam rocks for effect. The aisles were outlined with wine bottles and instead of chairs; they used huge cushions, picnic umbrellas and beach towels to seat the guests.

The whole thing was encircled with candles that were sunk in the sand and the archway where the couple was to marry was made out of more foamy props to look like moss covered stone. It was then covered with different shape and sized shells and pieces of glass that had been rounded off.

The end result was a very happy bride and a beautiful wedding! They managed to find a caterer after all but had to bake the cake themselves.

Outdoor Wedding Decoration Ideas

In the moths of June and July, summer isn’t the only season in the air; there are also weddings and you may as well call it the wedding season. The next best thing to getting married in a church is getting married outdoors and while most people dream of somewhere next to a stream or in an apple orchard, they’ll have to settle for places like open fields or sometimes even their grandparents’ backyard.



Here are a few ideas for a nice outdoor summer wedding. They might not be a complete wedding plan but they’re bound to help you sort a few things out.

Wedding aisle
You can try renting trees to mark the start and end of the aisle and to frame an archway where the couple will get married. Use lights to mark the aisle (much like the landing strip for airplanes) using fun lighting options. It’ll work best for the weddings that are held after noon. Make sure you add a runner, don’t leave the aisle bare. If you’re really in the mood for colors, you can scatter flower petals down the aisle. The only problem with the idea is that it doesn’t leave much to do for the flower girls. Balloons are never really a good idea because they can pop or even charge someone’s hair. You can mark the end of each row by using either low flower stands or making small bouquets that can be pinned to the chairs and wrapping some string lights around them.

Center stage
The place where the couple exchange vows is center stage and it needs special attention. One of the best ways to combine color and elegance is to use drapes over the area either with or without arches. If the wedding is in an open field where there are few trees, you should rent some trees to mark the area. It’s best if you can get an arch though, ordinary and possibly ugly arches can be covered in fabric and flowers to look spectacular. A fun thing to do with the arch is to put lights on the inside and then cover it with fabric to give it a glowing look.

The center pieces
Center pieces may be a small part of the wedding in retrospect but a lot of thought goes into making them. One of the best things to include with the center piece is a personalized message from the bride and groom. After that you can use anything from seashells and marbles to flowers and floating candles. A fun idea would be to make edible center pieces from either fruit or chocolate.

A Backyard and Porch for Every Day of the Year

Summer is undoubtedly ‘the’ time for parities, sure you have your end of year holiday parties but they’re all meant to be had indoors and summer is a time when you don’t need an excuse to go out and enjoy your backyard. It’s time like that when you’re grateful for any and all gardening work that you did in spring. So while the landscaping that you did will work wonders for the outdoor parties you plan on having this summer, you might want to consider doing the following for to make the partying even more fun!

A theme
It may be outdoors but that doesn’t mean it can’t have a neat design and theme to it. You can decorate your porch to match your garden. You know what flowers are going to be blooming so find fun some cushions for your lawn chairs that match or try painting your wood or wicker chairs a fund color like bright green.

Something fun
If you’ve got some cash to spare and are in the mood of really giving your backyard a fun factor, add an archway or a trellis to it. It makes the perfect entrance for the party guests. You can plant a vine or climbing ivy (these plants grow fast), and before you know it, you’ve got a beautiful archway. If you already have (and most people do) it would be a good idea to repaint it. If you’ve got ivy climbing up the archway already, give it a nice trim. If it’s been there for a few years, cut it off and let it grow all over again. It keeps the arch from being damaged and prolongs the life.

The old red, white and blue
One thing that I always love seeing on a porch is the American flag. With the 4th of July coming up in a few months and Memorial Day around the corner, it’s that perfect thing to have on your front porch.

Homemade lights
You probably have a lot of wine bottles lying around from those winter parties, and even if you don’t you can find them easy at local stores or recycling centers. You can have the bottom cut out and wire small florescent lights through it or cover a bottle completely in paper and then peel it off some places to give it a fun look.

Stepping stones
The good thing about stepping stones is that they never go out of style and you can make them in any shape or color you want, if you have kids, this can be a fun summer project. Stepping stones don’t necessarily need to be used to mark the way to the back yard or the front door, you can make them in smaller sizes to outline flower beds. If you’re making them at home, add marbles (whole or broken)in fun colors that match the color you’ve painted your porch.
Summer parties take a lot of planning and even more decorating because even if they begin indoors, they’ll end up outside and you need to provide a relaxing environment to your friends.

Downsizing Your Living Space- How To Get The Sofa Through The Door

Moving out of your parents house and in to your own place can be exciting; it brings the kind of independence that only living on your own can but it can also create problems for you if you’re moving in to a living space that’s smaller than the one you’re used to

Being independent and finally getting to live on your own in some place other than your college dorm is one of the pinnacles of adult life. You never forget your first apartment because it’s the one you work the hardest on. You measure your success by the quality of your living space so you work hard to make it just right. Unfortunately not everyone manages to make their apartment in to a comfy cozy place to live in for the next five years but here’s some helping tips to give you a good start.

Measure everything:
Measure the space you’ve got to decorate before you do anything else and if there’s a room that has a slanting roof or other odd angles, decide how you intend to deal with them instead of just stuffing the room with furniture and hopping it’ll all turn out to be a good fit. One thing that you need to measure is the door, all the doors, so you know just how wide a sofa (or any other furniture for that matter) can fit through.

Furniture should be practical and comfy:
As opposed to chic and overly expensive designer furniture, your emphasis should be on practical pieces of furniture that’ll help you avoid clutter and organize your things better. What few people realize is that good design has a lot to do with a clean look. Using the room measurements that you’ve taken make sure that everything can fit comfortably in the room. Make a room map to be accurate and if the rooms are small, don’t buy huge pieces of furniture.

Find a focal point for every room and find the dark spot:
For every room, find a focal point which will determine what direction the furniture will face. It might be the window or the part of the room with the best light. It could be an ordinary wall where you put up fixtures and frames or just your TV. As for the dark spots, they’ll be areas that you don’t want to attract too much attention to. Decide how you’re going to phase them into the background either by using less lighting in the area or by concealing it with furniture. This area could be the odd angled wall that I mentioned earlier.

Don’t forget; you need to be able to move around
Don’t fill every space you’ve got with furniture. Whether your rooms are small or big, the space to move around conveniently will have to be planned out. Make sure you’ve got a good flow of the traffic and the functionality of the room isn’t affected in any way.

Three basic functions:
Your living space should provide you with three basic rooms for three basic functions. A bedroom and bathroom, a kitchen and a living room, to sleep, cook and eat and entertain your friends. Don’t clutter the rooms with additional functionality if you haven’t got the space for it.

The Basics to Decorating a Room

How to get started with an empty space and build it into the room of your dreams

What do you want the room to be?
Always think about the functionality and use of the room you’re setting out to make. You may know that it’s a bedroom or a living room or a dinning space but that isn’t enough. You shouldn’t buy furniture based on the general purpose of the room. Let’s say you like a nice bookrack and think it’ll look good in a bedroom but there’s a possibility that the book might never be used. It will depend entirely on the person who uses the room. Just buying pretty furniture will never help create a functional room. It’s more likely that the furniture will take up useful space instead of giving the room the look you want.

Make an outline … and stick to it
Decide in advance what you plan on getting for the room. This means you decide if you want paint or wall paper, a carpet or a rug. Decide the color scheme before you go out to buy furniture. The color scheme shouldn’t be based on the furniture available in store but rather on the size and amount of light in the room as well as the purpose of the room and the person who’s going to be using it.

Will you need to add something and are there any constraints?
If you’re renting a space (as opposed to living in your own home/ apartment) you might be faced with some restrictions to the improvement you can make to the apartment. You may not be able to put up more shelves and things like. If your rooms lack storage you’ll need to buy furniture to make up for it. You might also be restricted from changing the flooring and if you choose not to have a carpet put it, you’re floor will influence the room’s color scheme. If you need to put shelves up make sure that you keep in mind how much space they’ll take up (it’s better that you put them up first).

Can it be a multipurpose room?
Is there a chance that the room will serve multiple purposes? A lot of people combine the kitchen and the eating space or a spare bedroom with a sitting room so you need to take in to account if the room can be used for more than one purpose. There’s never anything wrong with using a room for more than one function, most interior designers try and give rooms maximum functionality and buy furniture specifically for it.

What do you need?
Once you’ve got this all mapped out, you need to make a list of some basic furniture that you’ll absolutely need, like a bed in a bedroom and sofas in a living room. Decide what size of furniture will work for the room. If your spaces are small, don’t buy big furniture, it’ll make the room look overcrowded and claustrophobic.

You’re ready to shop furniture!
Now that you’ve got this basic outline in your head, you can start shopping for furniture. If you want a better idea of what your room should look like go online and look for ideas that fit your room. Never worry about not finding the furniture you need in the right color, colors are always out there you just need to hunt for it.

A Hobbit’s Tale… Of Home Making

It isn’t as much a Hobbit’s tale as it is an insight into a diehard LOTR fan’s awesome project. I found the link to this on StumbleUpon and I had to share it. While completely unrelated to home décor, it’s worth spreading to the far (and remote) corners of the World Wide Web for the sheer craft of it. It’s a simple blog by Maddie Chambers who created a miniature of Bilbo Baggin’s home with incredible detail. I'll let her pictures and her blog http://madshobbithole.wordpress.com/ do the talking.

How to Organize your room: Organizing Tips

Simple ways to clear the clutter in your house

Identify your biggest source for clutter
Not all rooms are cluttered for the same reason. Your bedroom may be cluttered with clothes, the garage may be cluttered with tools and projects that you began or planned to begin but never got around to it, the living room may be cluttered with books or magazines. Furniture itself can be a source of clutter, you might have too many chairs or cushions piled in one small space or you might have too many decorative items on the shelves. As much as you like all the funky stuff you have around the house, it still needs to be organized. As far as clothes are concerned, pick them up off the floor and put them where they belong. Reserve a special space for the books or magazines that are creating a clutter and don’t leave old editions of any magazine lying around your living room. The best was to organize a garage is by putting up some shelves.

Use Hidden Storage
In places where it’s difficult to put up shelves, make use of furniture with hidden storage spaces. Even if you don’t have that kind of furniture, use whatever you have to conceal some of the clutter. Take your mess of magazines and put them simple wicker baskets that can be placed behind a couch or can be used as a flat surface for putting stuff.

Elegant shelving
Elegant shelving works best in the bedroom and the family room. If you have too many electronics or books or decorative items all cluttered in one spot, shelves will be a better way to organize them. For things like CDs, its best to go out and buy a CD rack.

Throw away the stuff you don’t need
Not everything in your house has a purpose anymore. There may be tons of clothes that you never wear and books and magazines that you don’t read anymore. There may be CDs that are scratched and unusable or electronics that you think you can fix. Throw them out! If you haven’t fixed all that broken stuff or worn those pair of pants in years, you aren’t going to miss them. A big part of de-cluttering is to recognize the things that don’t have any use anymore and throw them out. another huge part is to change the place of some things. You may have bought around fifty crystal decoration pieces for your living room but they can’t all fit in there, move some of them to another part of the house.

All wires must be tied down!
Although not really a huge source of clutter, but still a kind of mess, wires dangling or trailing from electrons give the tidiest places a messy look. Tie down all excessive wires and try to conceal them as much as possible.

How To Make A Small Room Look Bigger

If you have huge rooms, high ceilings and an unlimited budget, it isn’t very hard to decorate it, or to redecorate it often. What proves to be real challenge is to make smaller spaces less claustrophobic and more livable. If you have a small space that you need to turn into a usable room, either for studying or into a guest room, here are a few things you can do to make it look bigger and better.

Hidden storage
No matter what you use the room for, you’re bound to need to put stuff somewhere. Since you’re space is already small don’t try putting up shelves or buying racks and stuff. Find furniture that provides hidden storage space. Beds and tables with storages spaces can easily be found.

Mirrors
To make a room seem less claustrophobic, use mirrors with lighting. Mirrors against any one wall, whether narrow or wide can help to make a room look more open and fools the eye into thinking it has bigger dimensions.

De-clutter
Since you’re going to be using hidden storage spaces it only makes sense that you keep any and all clutter out of the room. Don’t mount too many pillows on the bed if you’re making it in to a guest room, or if it’s a reading room, don’t do overboard trying to fill it with too many rugs, pillows, chairs, and any other kind of seats.

Lighter colors
It’s okay if you use a dark color sparingly but keep most of it in a lighter shade. Lighter shades in the carpet, on the walls and in the curtains will make a room seem bigger and less overwhelming.
Smaller furniture
If you know you’re room has limited capacity don’t fill it with the biggest beds or sofas or racks. You can find nice modern and functional furniture in smaller sizes. Even sitting chairs come in less space consuming designs.

Find space saving furniture here (with lots of ways to arrange it)

Taking Your Paint Palette Outside - How To Decorate The Backyard

Decorating inside may seem easy if you consider the daunting task of decorating an outdoor area. Inside, where you have a four or three walled room, you hang pictures and decorative lights and you don’t have to worry about the rain or snow ruining the shine on your new table top or the color running in your new cushions.

Whenever you plan a party you know where you’re going to hang the streamers and where the guests can set their drinks down (you’ve placed coasters accordingly) and when it’s time to eat everyone can sit where they see their place card on the table. All of this goes out the door once its summer and most if not all parties are likely to be held outdoor where decorating ideas on a budget run somewhat thin.

Here are a few things just to help you start out slow and steady so that by the time summer is full on and school is out, you can start the partying.

Lawn chairs
You may already have a lawn chair, you may have two of them but it would be nice if you had an entire outdoor sitting arrangement much like your living room in your backyard and lawn chairs are best for it. Here’s something that might surprise you; buy/ make cushions to match your lawn chairs. You can put cushions outside as easily as you can put them in. Make/ buy an outdoor storage baskets or cabinet to put them in when the weather is likely to get rough. If you have some old wicker baskets lying around, bring them outside and use them for storing the cushions.




Lighting
People have had the sense to create lighting for every room in your house and they’ve also had the sense to create outdoor lighting. If you try shopping online, you’ll find that there are all kinds of unique lightings available, ones that are decorative and that can stand any kind of weather. You’ve probably heard of tiki torches, well there just in a huge variety of outdoor lighting options available like Chinese lanterns. If you plan on having a party, it may be a good time to bring out all those scented candles (don’t forget to place them safely) to create a nice ambiance.

Outdoor accessories
Give your back yard a cozy look by adding ‘backyard accessories’ like a hammock, a nice table; one that can stand rain and excessive exposure to the sun and is preferably a darker color and don’t forget to mow the lawn! You can use place mats made of bamboo (instead of the regular doilies you use inside) and give you flower beds a unique look by planting different flowers in uniquely shaped bottles.

Simple Tips To Give Rooms A Refreshing New Look

The number of people that I know who can change the look of a room by altering everything from the furniture to the paint is an absolute zero. That’s right; no one redecorates all the time. On those rare occasions when people do decide to redecorate, they still try and fit some of the old stuff in or to re-use it somehow. On the other hand the number of people I know who’d love to have a free remodeling of their homes on an annual basis is infinite. Who doesn’t like a new fresh look to their home? Just think how great the family pictures will look with a different background each year and without the cost of having to Photoshop a fireplace into the background?

Since the chances of anyone offering a free annual home remodeling to someone for the rest of their lives is pretty small here are a few modification that you can make to give a fresh look to a room.

Change the knobs on the cabinets

Not just cabinets, but most fixtures, when replaced effect how the room looks. Even if you change the handle on a chest of drawers or give it a new color, it’s going to look wonderful and brand new not to mention it’ll be the change that you want.

Wall paper trimmings

Instead of re-papering an entire wall or repainting something, find a nice elegant wall paper and use it on the edges of a wall or create a frame in frame effect. The trimmings will give the room a new elegant look. It’s also a great way to bring out a wall or complement any frames you may have put up.

Change the lighting

Try changing out the ordinary wall placements with something unique or changing a lampshade. Things like that end up having a profound effect on the room. If you don’t feel like changing any lighting that you’ve installed consider adding some angular wall decorations like shadow boxes to a wall.

Add a funky shelf

Although this technique can’t be used in the living room or the dining area, it’s a great way to give a new fresh look to those parts of a house where you do routine tasks. Take the laundry area or the ironing space. You can brighten it up with some unique shelves (you can also paint the cabinets a new color).

Wall Paper To Go With Your Sofa

Ever have one of those irresistible desires to change how your wall looks? I know it sounds strange but when you’re walking past a store (or idly browsing its isles) you can’t but help imagine how great some of these patterns would look on your wall. I’m a sucker for anything with gold or silver trim because to me it gives the ultra sophisticated look (not to mention a hint of royalty). To satisfy my wall paper desires I have one wall reserved in the entrance hall where I change a panel of wall paper whenever I feel like it. There’s a nice little varnished table that sits there and I put a matching vase or some other decorations piece on the table and it looks just wonderful. For someone like me, whose compulsive at best whenever I see a new pattern for anything, this is the only thing that can be done. However, if you’re the calm and sensible home maker who doesn’t get giddy just walking past fabric you can do so much more to bring out any old room with a simple wall paper change.

You’re probably thinking that you’ll need to make some serious changes in your furniture if you decide on a wall paper that doesn’t go with your current scheme but there are a lot of other options. If you ever look closely at how rooms are made over, you’ll notice that the designers create a more sensible color interval to bring out the furniture. Color interval isn’t something official; it’s what I call it when there is a neutral color between any two matching strong colors. Say you’ve got a bold wall color, your sofa and cushions will be less bland but the center rug is going to be just as flashy as the wall.

When you re-paper the wall you just need to add something at a good interval. Let’s say you’re entire room is furnished in pink and you suddenly decide on sky blue or green wall paper. Add a matching decoration piece in the center of the room and at all corners that draw attention. You can purposely place something that matches the new wall color under bright light or add one or two cushions on the sofa to match the new color and tie in the whole theme.

Arranging Furniture…Rearranging Furniture

Where to put the Sofa? Rearranging the rearranged furniture

I spend countless hours going through magazines, catalogs and exploring sites just looking at chic sofa sets and cushions and stunning furniture layouts. There was a time when I thought that the look that came from these arrangements could only be achieved with that kind of furniture and that it’s pretty useless looking at interior design catalogs since I’m never really going to be able to afford a living room revamp as it is. upholstering doesn’t appeal to me because I can’t do it myself and the economy being what it is, I can’t dish out cash to have someone do it for me. so what I’ll normally do, when I’m not even up for changing the cushions and throws is rearrange the furniture.

A good way to start out with furniture rearrangement (from what I’ve learnt) is to always define your must haves, for example if your living room leads to the backyard, you can’t have anything blocking the way. You might want to avoid carpeting the area and just do with a simple rug in order to avoid having to clean dirt off later.

Someone once suggested that I should inventory all the furniture in a room before rearranging it, Just so I don’t forget to pick out the place for something but I find making a nice illustrated layout for it to be better. It’s what HGTV suggests. I prefer it because it gives me an entire picture of where I’m going to put what instead of just giving me the number of furniture items that I have.

Then there’s the whole question of just how many ways can I rearrange the same sofa and coffee table? Furniture galleries have always been my aid when it comes down to it. Interior warrior has some fantastic furniture and a really great gallery. Even if I don’t follow the layout as it is, I can usually pull something good off.

Take these two furniture layouts from Interior Warrior. While the two sofa sets are almost the same, they’re arranged different and look amazing either way.

Wall paper to go with your sofa

Ever have one of those irresistible desires to change how your wall looks? I know it sounds strange but when you’re walking past a store (or idly browsing its isles) you can’t but help imagine how great some of these patterns would look on your wall. I’m a sucker for anything with gold or silver trim because to me it gives the ultra sophisticated look (not to mention a hint or royalty). To satisfy my wall paper desires I have one wall reserved in the entrance hall where I change a panel of wall paper whenever I feel like it. There’s a nice little varnished table that sits there and I put a matching vase or some other decorations piece on the table and it looks just wonderful. For someone like me, whose compulsive at best whenever I see some a new pattern for anything, this is the only thing that can be done. However, if you’re the calm and sensible home maker who doesn’t get giddy just walking past fabric stores you can do so much more to bring out any old room with a simple wall paper change.

You’re probably thinking that you’ll need to make some serious changes in your furniture if you decide on a wall paper that doesn’t go with your current scheme but there are a lot of other options. If you ever look closely at how rooms are made over, you’ll notice that the designers create a more sensible color interval to bring out the furniture. Color interval isn’t something official; it’s what I call it when there is a neutral color between any two matching strong colors. Say you’ve got a bold wall color, your sofa and cushions will be less bland but the center rug is going to be just as flashy as the wall.

When you repaper the wall you just need to add something at a good interval. Let’s say you’re entire room is furnished in pink and you suddenly decide on sky blue or green wall paper. Add a matching decoration piece in the center of the room and at all corners that draw attention. You can purposely place something that matches the new wall color under bright light or add one or two cushions on the sofa to match the new color and tie in the whole theme.

Crossing over to the White light- Planning the Lighting in a Room

Furniture isn’t the only thing you need to plan when you think of decorating a room. A lot of furniture depends on the amount and angle of light in a room to give the complete effect. Which is why when you plan to redecorate an entire room, you should always consider lighting as a factor. If you have a room that’s already arranged the way you want it and you’re thinking of improving the lighting then here are a few tips.

Who?
Always think of who’s going to be using that room and what they’re likely to need. If it’s a children’s bedroom for kids that are still young enough to knock over a lamp, you should go with overhead fixtures and/or track lighting. If it’s going to be used as a reading room make sure there’s at least one table lamp and plenty of over head light. Always keep in mind the different kinds of functions that are going to be performed in that room. The room’s usage will define your where you need the light.

What?
Always find out what different kinds of lightings are suggested for your usage. You may need a table lamp but there are all sorts of table lamps, some are meant for bedroom reading, keeping the light concentrated to a very small part of the room while others are meant for reading at the desk. They cast brighter and better light. Lamps for bedrooms are likely to have a lamp shade while desk lamps will not. Wall fixtures are best for areas that get little sunlight and places that you’d like to illuminate or set apart from the room like a wall with a special or unique decorating piece. If you’re choosing lighting for the living room, you should use a unique or eye catching wall fixture. Not only will it contribute to the room’s décor but also if you have a wall that you can’t get inspired enough to decorate, or one that you feel is too blank, a unique wall fixture will bring it out.

Where?
There are some general areas where you need light; by the bed, next to the comfy arm chair where your read ‘The night before Christmas’ to your kids, above or beside the mirror where you get ready in the morning, in the dining room. If you think you’re lighting needs for a room can change through the day then you need to use dimmer switches , not only do they help conserve energy but they’re also an easy way change the look of the room for special occasions or parties.

An In House Paint Job- Getting the Colors Right

When the kids throw cereal at the walls the stains are going to stay forever

A home maker that I’ve always admired once told me never to paint the walls in anything other than a neutral shade, ‘when the kids throw cereal at the walls the stains are going to stay forever!’ that home maker was none other than my mom who in my opinion kept the house award winning clean with us four kids running around and me having an odd fascination with drawing on the walls. Since moms are always right, I never really experimented much with paint and was deeply thankful to God for giving mankind the genius to invent wall paper.

When reality TV took over as America’s highest rated programs, I too joined in to watch rooms, offices, apartments and entire homes get remodeled. The one thing that stood out was the paint jobs. I’d always used wallpaper in the living room and kept the rest of the house in a neutral shade. After my first month of watching stunningly beautiful and dramatic home makeovers, I decided it was time for change, (I should’ve had ‘yes we can’ patented). One trip to the paint store however and I retreated back into my neutral colored shell (no offense meant to turtles). I couldn’t figure out which shade of any color was good for any room! They made it look so darn easy on TV! Since I already had the house ready for a new paint job I ended up giving it a fresh coat of beige which did absolutely nothing for the room except give it an Adam’s family look. I’m proud to say that I’ve grown wise now as far as paint is concerned and I’m going to share what little I know about rooms and paint jobs.

Choosing a paint type:

Paint type refers to either latex based or oil based paints. Latex is better for the exterior of your home as opposed to the walls because it can take a lot of weathering and oil based paints are easier to clean stains from.

Choosing a paint finish:

Paint finish is how glossy or matte a paint will look once it’s dried. When you pick your finish, keep in mind the amount of light in the room you intend to paint. If you’ve always wanted to brighten up the room or give a dramatic light effect choose a high glossy finish. Take two slightly different shades of the same color in a high gloss finish and use them on parallel walls to create a unique effect. Finishes come in flat, eggshell, sating, semi gloss, high gloss and ceiling flat. Egg shell and satin will work well for bedrooms and the living room. Ceiling flat is meant for the ceiling (a no brainer) and other textures are more suited for rooms where the cereal and or ketchup is less likely to be thrown at the walls.

Choosing the color:

What you need to figure out before you enter the paint store is your color. The color doesn’t depend on what available in the paint store but rather on the furniture you have in your room. So sit down and take a good look at the colors. When deciding on the color you need to come to one of two mind sets; either match the color or make a contrast. This all depends on how you want your room to turn out. If you decide to match, pick the color that’s least prominent in your room for example the color of the cushions or the rug. If you decide to make a contrast then pick shades that will make your furniture stand out. And pay close attention to any wall that may be covered with frames or shadow boxes. It may be a good idea to paint that one wall a different color. The shade will be decided once you pick which way you want to go. If you have light colored cushions and you’re looking to match with the furniture try going with a darker shade of the color of your cushions.

Once you’ve made these three critical decisions, you’re all set to visit the paint store, happy painting.

This is an excellent example where the paint matches the furniture, you can see more images here.

The Top 5 Interior Design Websites

My fascination with online interior design resources began when I realized that there was virtually tons and tons of ideas out there for the average home maker, just begging him/her to them a chance. I kind of always thought that people would be kind of secretive and copy right protective about their work but people, bloggers and companies are more than generous, just another reason to love the World Wide Web.

The only problem that I had was with finding a reliable source of constantly updated work. I don’t even rearrange the things on my dresser very often let alone my house, but for me looking at stunning rooms is eye candy.

The list I complied is based on how much information is available on the site, how well it’s arranged and the quality of the content. I didn’t go looking for the sites myself though, these are the top ten sites cited in some list on the internet and I’m taking them for a spin.

IKEA

The site and blog are excellent. The site categorizes the furniture you’re looking for into appropriate rooms like living room, bedroom, kitchen and a kids’ collection. The layout is excellent and the site features items that emphasis practicality and modern design. There’s another site worth mention IKEA hacker, a blog features IKEA furniture redesigned , with a before and after shop. This site has a lot of credibility of online users and several mark it as the number one site.

Apartment Therapy

This site is really great if you’re trying to turn small spaces into practical functional and chic rooms. This is a great site to explore if you’re stuck living in a ‘this is all I can afford’ apartment where the plaster is coming off the walls. The site can help transform ugly walls and ridiculously small claustrophobic spaces into open and easy to live in rooms. their solutions aren’t just practical but very very affordable.

DeZeen

Dezeen is definitely less practical and more modern design. The featured rooms and layouts are for those who’ve crossed over to the side where having weird shaped things poking out of your wall is considered gorgeous. The rooms they have can look good when they’re complete and you’d need a lot of imagination and ingenuity to take any one part that you like and add it to a room of your personal design. As far as the rooms in their modern charm are concerned, they’re excellent. Even someone like me, who hasn’t really crossed over to this kind of contemporary design can appreciate how great the rooms are.

Design Sponge

Design Sponge is the place to go if you’re looking for fresh and innovative products and tips on keeping your home décor looking modern and chic. The site features multiple posts about everyday design. The posts go into details for room accessories and even feature ‘Before and After’ shots of rooms redesigned. If nothing else, the site is fun to explore for the wide range of ideas they feature.

Inhabitat

This is the only credible site I found that promotes green living and eco friendly designed and is highly revered online. The site has everything from eco friendly home décor to energy conservation ideas and green fashion! The site has one too many ads but the ideas are good and worth the effort of finding them. The site features products reviews and fashion tips while keeping the mission to stay green in mind.

Gorgeous Day Beds from Home and Bedroom Furniture

Home and Bedroom furniture have just released some new daybeds in their already huge line of existing furniture. For me day beds have always been an excuse to sleep in the middle of the day for no apparent reason so the fact that there are beautiful and highly affordable daybeds out now is encouraging. I might throw out a one of my comfy relaxing chairs for one of these:

You can see more day bed designs by Home and Bedroom Furniture here.

Eating Out is Still In!

After creating a backyard or Lawn space, the next step to having lunch outside is setting the table and setting the tone

Decorating for a nice kids party is easy and difficult at the same time. while I don’t have care much for everything being chic and giving a neat touch to every little fabric I do have to worry that a prop may end up falling on a kid or a prop or decoration will be too tempting for a child to leave it alone. With a grown-ups party or a nice outdoor lunch I have other things to worry about, for example, I can’t decorate the backyard with balloons and invite the book club over. What’s more, if conversation runs short, I can’t inhale helium and squeak out a song for general entertainment, a gag that works great with the kids.

I never realized how very demanding we, as women can be when it comes to creating a ‘festive setup’, until I hosted my first ever party, (it was an exemplary disaster). Since then, except for the rare times when I have stroke of genius, I’ve kept most formal lunches in doors. What really got me panicking was the whole idea of square plates! I couldn’t imagine it ever looking good on my table, especially since every dish and vase I owned was circular or cylindrical. So in addition to not being able to set up a nice lunch in my own backyard, I became inept at setting the table until last year when I found this amazing post on table decorating and table arranging ideas and it occurred to me that the plates were meant to go with my food and not with each other or my center pieces. Since then I’ve become fairly open if not experimental to the point of being a mad scientist with my outdoor summer parties.

I’ve found some really nice layouts online that I’ve managed to replicate to a great degree, here’s a new find below

A New Living Room for Every Season

Giving a new seasonal look to your living room is easy and not as expensive as you would think. I actually manage to follow the trendy season colors on a nifty budget

I have a fairly distant aunt who lives in Colorado and who I visit for a week once in summer and in fall. She has no kids and a seriously ridiculous amount of money to her name which she gets to spend on redecorating her house on and off. I must have seen at least five different couches and seven different curtains sets in the last two years. Needless to say, I’m more than envious of her. For me the decision to change the way any one room in my house looks takes a long time to make. It’s an ongoing battle with myself. Part of me is comfortable with the way everything’s set and has its own ‘proper place’ but the other part, (the one that I suspect has always led me to believe that I too can model homes and arrange furniture like a pro) is always calling my other half a ‘boring stooge’.

What settles this argument that I have with myself is the fact that I don’t have the money to redecorate a room whenever I get the whim to. When I think I can pull a few corners and fit it into my budget, I recall the horror movie that was buying my curtains. I’ve found an easier way to pacify these redecorating impulses; with cushions!

I get to keep my curtains and my couch and my carpet, I change the cushions to different hues that fit with the room. Luckily my sofa is a fun dirty brown so a lot of colors work with it. I don’t know what all the patterns are called or what ancient wisdom lies behind them but I can still mix and match colors. You can add the brightest of colors to a living room this way.
At Designers Guild there is a huge gallery dedicated to couches, sofas and cushions and it’s always helped me out. The patterns they recommend there are just wonderful and when I want to spoil myself I go for something by Jonathan Adler, just looking at these cushions make me happy enough to float.

The best part of this design is that I can find some nice textured fabric in different colors and sew it together (much like a patchwork quilt) and I have the whole thing for far less!

The Seed Cathedral Is Revealed

Architectural design isn’t exactly the same as interior design, but I saw this image of the seed cathedral and I couldn’t help but write about it. I don’t exactly have a degree in architecture so all I can really say is that it’s really pretty and darn neat.
According to the Daily Mail, the project cost £25million to build and is 60ft-high in a cube-like formation covered by 60,000 quivering, transparent acrylic rods. I hope they have small miniatures at their gift shop soon. From the little I know about interior design, it’s bound to give a room a nice ‘modern’ look. Each rod is filled with a vegetable seed and it’s going to be the center piece at the Shanghai millennium expo.
The concept behind the design is to make a modern and cutting edge country. I hope it works out to accomplish that, and even if it doesn’t, it’s still fun to look at. I can’t wait for the National Geographic channel to do a feature on it, (I’m hoping it does, the one on Beijing’s Bird’s nest was amazing).





The design is by Thomas Heatherwick and the following abstract rendering of the complete project is featured on his site.



Images Source

Home Decorating Blues… and Greens

I remember back when Top Design used to air and I’d go gaga over all those rooms they made, the office spaces that were renovated by the contestants took my breath away. I always thought that the bright colors they used could never fit in an ordinary home or an apartment, or should I say, my home/ my apartment. The main problem I had was with how bright the colors were. I love bright colors but when it comes to decorating a room, I think once the new feeling of a room wears off, it begins to look pretty much like a circus side show which is probably why I’ve been just a few steps away from buying floral grandma type furniture. The little color that I do add is always, as I learned on Top Design, a splash of color in an otherwise blandly decorated room. I have a coffee table that has a transparent glass top and as long as my sofas were a murky brown, I put some fake turquoise flowers under it. (I later learnt that Oprah frowns on fake flowers)
I’m slowly coming around now to the idea of using brighter colors and I owe it to some really great ideas that I’ve found online, ones that use two of my favorite colors ever, blue and green.

Like this image I found , it got me thinking that I could combine a bright color with a darker one. I think black gets a bit gloomy but I think brown and turquoise should work just as well. Maybe someday I really will have a brightly colored living room. A room like this would need to have a lot of lighting though so it’s still in the maybe pile. Redoing the fireplace to look like that is out of the question.




This other image that I found seems to me a bit more practical. It’s easy to do, if you have a sofa that you like and don’t want to lose. All you need to do is change the curtains and get cushions to match. It’s all in the colors!





(Pictures are linked to their original source)