Congratulations! You just moved to your new house! You’re thrilled to finally be in after months of jumping through hoops and standing on your head for banks and lawyers. Now, the house is finally yours, just in time for the stay at home orders… You’re spending loads of time on your furniture, looking at it day in and day out. As you look around, you’re beginning to feel bummed because it doesn’t quite look like the Pinterest board of your dreams. Maybe you’ve just been cooped up too long lately and you are just plain sick of your old furniture.
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How to Get a Fabulous Gallery Wall for No Money!
This is all about simplifying the compilation of a gallery wall. Learn how to unify an eclectic group of items in 3 steps with items that you have on hand right now.
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Don’t Just Sit There! Create a Vignette with Stuff Around the House
Here’s my 7 step process to easily and creatively get a new vignette styled with stuff from around your house. Now, this process can be applied to small spaces or big spaces, in any room of the house. There are no rules for where it should be.
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How to Plan a Gorgeous Room Makeover Online, Step by Step
This week I’ll show you my step by step method for tackling a room refresh in your home. You can use these steps to update your current décor by adding in a few new pieces or you can start from scratch and get a whole new room planned while you’re social distancing.
If you’d like to go a bit further than just planning, then this post is the perfect chance for you to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
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15 Easy Ways to Decorate Without Leaving Your House
As we navigate this strange time, planning out some little projects around the house can make a huge difference in how we feel each day. That’s exactly why I wanted to offer these 15 ways to decorate. They’re a compilation of easy projects – most of which can be done in a day or two. None of them will cost you much money, and some of the ways are even free!
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The 8 Most Important Things to Know When Buying Accent Furniture Online
Not too many of us are leaving home to go shopping these days. As you’re hunkering down, you might be walking around at your house and cooking up some ideas to add in some accent furniture. Maybe you’re looking at the entry hall and thinking a small chest could add some functionality or style. Maybe that corner of the kitchen is crying out for a tall cabinet with glass doors? Perhaps the landing at the top of the stairs could use a short bookcase to display some treasures? Whatever the case, finding great accent furniture online can be just what you need to make your space look refreshed and new.
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The True Cost of NOT Buying Sustainable Furniture. It’s Different Than What You Think…
Think about this, how many times have you bought new furniture instead of brought old furniture to a new place? There’s probably a pretty good chance that some furniture didn’t make the cut. Maybe it was too big or too small. If that was your experience, I would also bet that instead of donating it or passing it along to someone else, it ended up by the dumpsters or on the curb, right?
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8 Ways to Make Your Home Happier This Weekend
Think about the last time you took a walk through a beautiful park you love, or hiked a mountain trail, or strolled through a botanical garden. I’m sure you felt invigorated after, right? You may have chalked it up to the fresh air in your lungs and that is certainly a part of it but, the real reason you feel great after is because you satisfied your biological predisposition to affiliate with nature.
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15 Essential and Affordable Things Every Small House Needs
Small house living has a lot of positive implications: Cleaning can be a breeze, there’s usually lower utility bills because you’re not heating or cooling a huge house. If you’re well organized, then you probably have everything in its place and easy to find. Yes indeed, small house living can be awesome. But there’s always the exception, right? Like where will that third house guest sleep when you only have two bedrooms? Or, where do you put that mountain of shoes you just can’t seem to edit? Finding useful storage is the number one concern I get from clients living in small homes. The next is comfortable guest accommodations, followed by a myriad of functionality related questions. So, I thought what better way to cover some of these topics then by exploring some of my favorite ways to create more storage, comfort and function for your small house.
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From Blah to Fantastic: 7 Ways to Style the Wall Behind the Sofa
I’ve dragged my feet on this one for way too long. I have this blank wall in my living room and I have thought about filling it since moving almost a year and a half ago. It’s one of the last hold outs in my house and I just can’t seem to find the inspiration to get it done. The worst part is, it’s one of the first impressions in my home. When guests enter my foyer, the living room is immediately to the left and the first thing they see is my giant empty sofa wall.
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Moving into a Small House Doesn't Have to be Hard. Read These 5 Tips
There’s a lot of reasons to consider moving into a smaller place. Most of the reasons involve a life change: the kids are grown and on their own. A partner or spouse is no longer with you. You find that you can’t or don’t want to maintain a large house and yard. No matter what the reason, the potential to go small can be very appealing.
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What You Ought To Know About When Planning Your Living Room Makeover
Knowing how much money you want to invest in a room makeover is the not the creative part of the project. Budget engages a different part of the brain – the logical part. It’s the part that introduces doubt. Having a realistic investment range for your project is just as important as having an arsenal of Pinterest pictures that depict your goals.
Even though knowing exactly how much you want to spend is essential, it can also provide very important parameters that keep a project on track.
In my experience, there is no such thing as an unlimited furniture budget. Projects never failed to fall apart when the words, “If I like it, I’ll buy it” were spoken. It didn’t matter that they liked or even loved it, if the cost was over what they anticipated, the project would not go forward.
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How to Nail the Feeling You Want for Your Home’s Décor
Never underestimate the feeling you want to achieve in your space. That is literally the secret sauce for a successful design and a room that you’ll actually want to spend time in. This week I thought it would be fun to take you along on a creative journey to show you the process I use when beginning a new project.It’s all about feeling and the mood you want to achieve. In my opinion, getting the feeling of a room nailed down helps to keep you on track. It makes you want to get the project done. You’re excited to experience the way it will make you feel and that provides the momentum.
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Budget Decorating Refresh; How to Fix Up Your Living Room in 7 Simple Steps
It’s your turn to host Turkey day and your living room is blah. You’ve been meaning to give it a mini makeover for a while but the weekends have flown by like a like Phil Collins skipping across the pond for Live Aid in ’85. Time is not going to go slower and before you know it, Thanksgiving Day will be upon us and everybody will be at the door ready to get their turkey and pie on! Now is not the time to panic. There’s still plenty of time to get your living room Pinterest ready so that everybody gushes over it they won’t even notice if the bird’s a little dry. Here’s How to Fix Up Your Living Room in 7 Simple Steps.
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How to Accessorize Your Home Like a Pro Part 2
Call them finishing touches or final details, the accessories we add to our space tell the story of us. They show our friends and family what is important to us and what our personal style is all about. It doesn’t matter if your house is small, large, contemporary or traditional, these combined 20 tips will work. This is a follow up post to a piece I wrote in May of 2017. Just as in the first post, these new 10 tips for accessorizing your home like a pro will work for any occasion or season. I will be sure to link that original post below so you can check it out. Let’s get right into it.
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Why Dark Paint Color Can Make Your Small Room Feel Bigger
Sandy sent me a text message a few weeks ago. I had designed a room plan for her based on her answers to my questionnaire and talking on video chat. We agreed that light and bright was the way to go for her small living room. When she received the plan, she loved it but couldn’t shake the feeling that a super white space just didn’t fit her vibe even though that is what she thought she wanted.
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Don’t make this expensive common mistake in your small space.
I could hear it in her voice, total disappointment... My good friend, Anna had planned out and budgeted for her small living room makeover for months. She created Pinterest boards and visited showrooms for 3 Saturdays in a row. She moved all her old furniture into the adjacent dining room and painted the living room walls and trim. There was no going back now, the new paint colors didn’t go with the old furniture and so to keep things moving, Anna purchased her furniture and was thrilled that she was going to realize her makeover plans in a few short weeks.
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5 Essential Ways to Make Your Home Puppy Friendly
Getting a new puppy is exciting! If you’re like me, you’ve planned and searched for your new fur kid for a while. As soon as I saw her face I knew she was my baby. Those wrinkles, her coloring, the floppy ears, she was exactly perfect and I knew it. I’m pretty sure she knew it too! When I got to meet her in person, she walked right up to me, hugged my leg and wanted to be picked up right away. A few short days after that first meeting, she and I were in the car going home to our new adventures together.
Read More5 Quick Fixes To Improve The Feng Shui Energy In Your Home
If you’re feeling tired or stressed or unmotivated, indulge in this read because making a few very easy changes can help you achieve positive energy flow and a better understanding of how the arrangement of your stuff could be negatively influencing you. It’s about to get woo up in here but I promise you, if you keep an open mind, you’ll benefit greatly from these 5 quick fixes you can easily make to improve the Feng Shui energy in your home.
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Where to find inspiration for a room makeover when you’re stuck.
I got to thinking the other day about that Kohler commercial from years ago where this couple is being ushered around a sprawling Architect’s office and he’s going on about how amazing his work is, yada, yada. After his tour of self greatness he asks, “what can I do for you?” The woman pulls out a faucet from her purse and says, “design a house around this.” I used to laugh at that. How can a whole house be designed around a faucet? Fast forward years later and I’ve had countless meetings where clients have had inspiration pieces they want to incorporate into a space: treasured art, heirlooms, travel momentos, you name it.
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