Part 2: Innovative Ideas for a Home Refresh in the New Year

Continuing from our previous discussion, let’s dive into more creative ways to refresh your home for the New Year. These tips will help you add a unique touch and make your living space more enjoyable.

Personalize Your Space

1. Create a Gallery Wall: Display a collection of your favorite artworks, photographs, or even memorable quotes on a designated wall. This not only personalizes your space but also serves as a conversation starter.

2. DIY Decor Projects: Engage in some DIY projects. Whether it’s repainting a piece of furniture, crafting your own throw pillows, or creating handmade decorations, adding your personal touch makes your home uniquely yours.

Lighting is Key

3. Layered Lighting: Experiment with different lighting sources. Use a combination of overhead lights, floor lamps, and table lamps to create ambiance and functionality in your rooms.

4. Update Light Fixtures: Changing old light fixtures can make a significant difference. Modern or unusual designs can act as a focal point in a room.

Make Use of Textiles

5. Refresh Your Textiles: Swapping out textiles like curtains, bed linens, and towels can instantly change the feel of a room. Seasonal textiles are also a great way to keep your home looking fresh throughout the year.

6. Rugs and Throws: Add or replace rugs and throw blankets. These not only provide comfort but also add color and texture to your living space.

Embrace Technology

7. Smart Home Gadgets: Incorporate smart home devices for convenience and modernity. From smart thermostats to voice-controlled lighting, these gadgets can significantly enhance your living experience.

8. Wireless Solutions: Reduce clutter by opting for wireless technology where possible. Wireless speakers, chargers, and home entertainment systems offer a sleeker look and more flexibility in arranging your space.

Refreshing your home for the New Year is about creativity and personalization. It’s about creating a space that not only looks great but also feels comfortable and represents you. Use these tips as a starting point and let your imagination guide you to create a home that’s uniquely yours. Happy New Year, and happy decorating!

Part 1: Revitalize Your Living Space for the New Year

As the New Year unfolds, it’s a fantastic opportunity to breathe new life into your home. Refreshing your living space not only revitalizes the environment you inhabit but also reflects a new beginning. Here are some innovative and easy-to-implement tips to give your home a fresh, exciting vibe for the year ahead.

Declutter and Organize

1. Out with the Old: Begin by decluttering. A clean and organized space creates a foundation for a refreshing change. Sort through your belongings and decide what you need, what can be donated, or what should be discarded.

2. Smart Storage Solutions: Utilize smart storage options. Consider multi-functional furniture with built-in storage or install shelves to minimize clutter. This step is not just about finding space for your stuff, but also about creating a more open, serene environment.

Update Your Color Palette

3. Fresh Coat of Paint: A new color scheme can completely transform a room. Choose colors that reflect your personality or the mood you want to set. Soft pastels or earthy tones can create a calm, soothing atmosphere, while bold colors can make a statement.

4. Accentuate with Accessories: If you’re not ready for a complete repaint, adding colorful accessories like cushions, rugs, or art can inject new life into your space.

Bring Nature Indoors

5. Houseplants: Incorporating greenery is a great way to refresh your home. Plants not only enhance the aesthetic of a room but also improve air quality. Choose low-maintenance indoor plants if you don’t have a green thumb.

6. Natural Elements: Use natural materials like wood, stone, or bamboo in your decor. These elements can bring a sense of the outdoors inside and add a touch of warmth and authenticity to your space.

Revamping your home for the New Year doesn’t require a complete overhaul. Small, thoughtful changes can have a significant impact. Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll explore more innovative ideas to rejuvenate your home!

Tips for Hanging Artwork

  • Has the time come for you to hang artwork in your beautiful home? Maybe you have even been avoiding it. The process of hanging artwork can seem frustrating and very time-consuming. To help put you at ease while hanging your artwork, we have composed a few tips and tricks to assist you. Let’s take a look! 

Placement:

  • You may find yourself standing there staring at a blank wall and find yourself unsure of where to hang your artwork. If you have only one or two pieces to hang, stand back and visually place in your mind where you want the artwork to hang.  Often people hang art too high; experts recommend hanging your art pieces at eye level. To help, you can physically take the art piece and place it on the wall in your desired spot. With a pencil, draw a short, centered line on the wall at the top of the frame. If your frame has a wire on the back of the art, simply measure from the top of the wire in the center to the top of the frame. Go back to your line on the wall and measure down from the top line to the distance of the centered wire hanger and mark. Erase the original top line, so you do not get confused about the proper placement mark. 
  • If you have multiple pieces of art, start out by placing the pieces on the floor for a symmetrical or asymmetrical look, whichever fits your taste. As you stand back to look at the items on the floor, you can visualize how they will look once hung. You can also move and mix until you get your desired look. 

Techniques for Strength:

  • If possible, drive the nail into a wall stud for the most strength. If you do not already own one, experts recommend investing in a stud finder.  Although in most cases, where you want to hang the art, a stud will not be present. For small and medium artwork, a 1 ½ or 2-inch nail in the sheetrock will suffice and hold securely. Always drive the nail into the wall at a 45-degree angle. This technique ensures a stable and secure hold. 
  • For large pieces of art, purchase hollow-wall anchors with screws.  Anchor sets will match the weight of the artwork. Use a small drill and choose a drill size to match the size of the anchor. Once you drill the hole, tap the anchor into the sheetrock and screw the screw into the anchor.

Straightness:

  • If your artwork is not hanging level and straight, you can purchase some small plastic bumpers that attach to the back of the frame with self-stick tape. What a simple fix for a challenge that will arise now or in the future. 
  • We would love to hear from you regarding any ideas and tips you may have for hanging artwork. What tips and tricks have you learned over the years that could be helpful for other readers? You can leave your responses below in the comment section.

7 Creative & Useful Ways to Use Baskets

Baskets can be one of the most useful and stylish storage pieces that you can use throughout your home. They are versatile and functional items that can work in practically every room of your home. Whether you prefer baskets or bins, we have seven ideas that can transform the way you currently view storage in your home. 

Seven Creative + Useful Ways to Use Baskets

  1. Guest Bedroom Necessities.  

Creating the perfect oasis for your guests begins by establishing a stress-free, relaxing environment for them to enjoy. Let your guest’s minds go to ease in the guest bedroom by having a place for everything. Supply baskets and bins for them to put their belongings and store guest room essentials inside of the baskets. To help their stay feel like a vacation, you can place a soap, razor, towel, lotion, toothbrush, and loofa inside of a basket for them to enjoy. 

  1. Living Room Essentials

Living rooms tend to be an open space where everything is out in the open. To help transform the current organization system in your living room, you can use baskets. Decorative baskets are perfect for storing bulky, unattractive electronics. Plus, they give you easy access whenever you need to pull out something. 

  1. Kitchen Possibilities

Reimagine your kitchen by using baskets and bins to organize your counter space, cabinets, and pantry. Home decor stores sell decorative bins and canisters to hold all of your items in a stylish way. This way you can display your condiments on the counter without worrying about them being an eye-sore. Finish off your pantry with baskets and bins to store and organize all of your food goods. Believe us, searching for an item will never be so easy with this solution! Simply print labels to place on the face of the basket for ease-of-use. 

  1. Child’s Bedroom Maximized

Are you constantly stepping on your children’s toys? Save your feet and time by organizing all of their items inside of playful baskets. Whether your child loves princesses or dinosaurs, there is a themed basket for that! You can instantly make clean-up time fun again with these decorative baskets. 

  1. Manageable Craft Room

Crafting can be a great hobby for homeowners who just need a break from their stressful life. Do not let the busyness of everyday life affect your craft room’s potential. Stash your items in organizational bins and baskets for an organized, functional craft room. 

  1. Laundry Solutions

No one loves dirty laundry and organizing it does not sound very fun. But with baskets and bins to help you sort, you can rethink the way you currently do laundry. Purchase a basket or bin for each load of wash. Then the next time you go to do laundry, you sort the items in the basket based off of their wash requirements. For example, you can have a basket labeled “Colors” or “Whites.” This will help save you time and minimize on extra loads.

  1. Systemized Mudroom

Keep your mudroom clean this winter with baskets to store shoes, coats, and winter gear. You can either make a basket per item or per family member depending on your preference. 

We hope you enjoyed these tips for staying organized with baskets! The organization does not start there. You can use baskets and bins in nearly every room of your home. Let your creativity take over and create a beautiful organization system to match your home’s decor. 

Laundry Day!

Staying on top of the laundry can easily be a tough goal to fulfill. There is an efficient way to manage it and accomplish a large pile that has built up. Read further for our tips on the quickest way to stay on top of this constant chore!

The first step is to gather all of the dirty laundry in the home.  Place it near the washer and dryer so you can assess the situation and start sorting.

Next, sort laundry into groups by the type of water used to wash each.  Make piles for light, dark and delicate clothing. This will allow you to wash full loads and get through the laundry faster.  If you have very large loads, separate clothing by weight as well.  Jeans should remain together, towels could have their own load, perhaps another for light-weight t-shirts.  Bedding items can all go in together.

Finally, sort the clothing during the folding process, keeping separate piles for each person in the home. This allows all clothing to be pooled together during the wash rather than individual loads per person.  Fold and put away as they come out of the dryer so that the clean laundry never piles up! 

In order to make the chore of laundry easier in the future, place designated hampers in areas of the home that make it simple for family members to discard dirty clothing. Searching for dirty laundry and gathering it up takes quite a bit of time. This can save you ten to twenty minutes each time.   The bathroom is a great place to locate hampers. This is the place where dirty clothes come off and where they can be easily collected.

We hope these tips will make laundry day more productive!

Feng Shui Home Design Principals – Color

When using Feng Shui principles to design the interior of your home you’ll also to give thought to what type of colors you’re going to paint each room. Yes, using colors based on how they mesh with your energy is crucial to creating a home that promotes well being and balanced energy. Just think. If you were to use all fiery colors within one space it would no doubt be draining and overwhelming.

The key to effectively using colors that harmonize with Feng Shui principles is to balance out the color scheme. Too much of a dominant color will have your energy in disarray. Here is a guide to finding the right Feng Shui colors for your home.

Yellow: In Feng Shui yellow is associated with sunlight and energy from Mother Earth. It infuses energy, hope and it increases mental clarity. The great thing about using yellow as part of your color scheme is that it creates a sense of stability. Try using yellow in area of the home such as the office area, living room or your bedroom.

Red: Red is a fiery color which is why it is associated with fire. This color has the power to increase the heart rate and blood pressure. Red also helps alleviate depressions and stimulates activity. You can use this color in areas of the home such as the living room and bedroom.

White: White is a pure color that’s often associated with serenity. White and metallic colors are also associated with metal which is one of the five elements of Feng Shui. White can be used in any area of the home.

Green: In Feng Shui, green under the wood element. It is a color that promotes growth, action and inspires internal change. Use this color in rooms where the whole family gathers to promote positive energy.

Black and Blue : Black and blue represents the element; water. Black can increase mental activity and inspire creativity. On the other hand, blue is good for the body because it decreases accelerated heart and breathing rates while lowering the blood pressure. These colors are ideal for private areas in the home where you retreat to for privacy and solace.

We could all use some balance and well being in our lives today so we hope you find this tips helpful and useful!

Furniture Shopping Tips You Should Know

In the process of furnishing your home? Whether you’re starting from scratch or simply looking for a few new pieces to update your home, shopping for furniture can be overwhelming. Picking the right pieces are essential because everyone knows that the decor can make or break a home’s design. Whether you’ve decided to take the hunt online or you’re shopping at your local furniture store here are some tips you should take into consideration.

Test the Measurements
There’s nothing worse than purchasing the perfect piece of furniture only to discover down the line that it doesn’t fit into the space. That’s why you should always check the measurements of an item before you swipe your credit card. The piece of furniture may look one way in a picture or in the store but the scale of it is totally different once it’s in your home. You can use blue tape to measure furniture in the store. Use blue tape to measure the width and length of the allotted space and see if it will be proportionate based on the dimensions of the item online.

Everything Doesn’t Have to Match
Although, you want your furniture pieces to harmonize with each other everything doesn’t have to exactly match. While it’s the safest decision it can be way too much and create a bland look. It’s all about finding a balance that works for your space. Since opposites attract you can mix styles. For instance, if you’ve opted for a traditional sofa you can mix things up with an eclectic recliner or a chic coffee table.

Sample Swatches
Don’t sleep on the sample swatches. The texture of a material can be completely different from what you thought it looked like in a showroom or on the computer screen. Get samples of fabric swatches just to see how the material would look in your space.

Impulse Buys
Avoid making the final decision on impulse. Just because you love the item at the moment doesn’t mean you’ll like it later. Buying furniture is a big decision so take a day to think it over. See what kind of pieces are out there before you make your final decision.

We hope you find these shopping tips useful!

Ideas to Dress up Your Hallways

In a lot of homes, hallways are just a connection to other rooms, and homeowners often overlook their decorative potential. With hallways often being narrow and short, homeowners may throw up a picture or two and call it a day, but we believe hallways can be so much more.

7 Ideas to Dress Up Your Hallways

1. Blended

When working with the design in your hallway, you want to be sure that it continues the current design onto the next room. Your hall can be a subtle preview of what guests should expect when they enter your home’s next room. The design flow should never stop in the hallway because that tends to make the transition feel awkward. Instead, you want to make sure that each room blends well into the hall and leaves seamless transitions. 

2. The Main Event

Just like in any other room, you will want to create a “focal point” that becomes the center of attention in the hallway. This item can be anywhere from a gorgeous light fixture to an extravagant mirror. It will depend on what you want to do with the space and what decor pieces you plan on incorporating. 

3. A Perfect Runway

As flooring experts, we understand that no room is complete without the perfect touch of flooring. For hallways, we recommend purchasing a “runner” for the floor. This simple addition can instantly make your hardwood floors feel more cozy and chic.

4. Chic Shelving

In hallways, you want to keep the decor light and simple. Since there is not a lot of space to work with, a simple, chic shelving piece can do just the trick.

5. The Gallery.

Gallery walls are a trendy, inexpensive way to decorate any room, but they work exceptionally well in hallways. When creating your hallway’s gallery wall, you want to be sure that you keep it simple. Depending on the size of your wall, you will most likely want to use fewer items than you would typically in another area of your home. Try and keep it simple and light to create a refreshing look.

6. Look Up

If you are looking for a creative way to make your hallway unique, you could try painting your ceiling a fun color. Once you have decided on a color, you can incorporate it into your hallway’s design. This will help tie together everything. 

7. Captivating Wallpaper

Graphic wallpaper is a current trend everyone loves. It is especially perfect for hallways because it will help bring them to life. We recommend trying to use vertical graphic patterns in your hallways. This will help make the room look more substantial than it actually is.  

Organizing an Overpacked Home

Is your home overflowing with unnecessary items? Do you feel too overwhelmed to even begin working on your house? Are you tired of not knowing where to put all of your things? If you answered “absolutely” to any of these questions above, know you’re not alone and we would love to help you. Ideally, you will find yourself reorganizing your home at least once a year. Every year we see ourselves buying more miscellaneous items and belongings to fill our homes to their brink. To help you achieve maximum organization and function, we have created a guide for organizing an overpacked home. Let’s take a look! 

How to Organize an Overpacked Home:

Search for Storage. Storing your items is the only way you will get them out of sight and out of mind. Decorative pieces can be left out, but things that do not serve a daily purpose should be stored away.

Clean out Your Cabinets, Closets, and Drawers. You can find a lot of unnecessary items tucked away in your cupboards. A best practice in organizing is clearing out your built-in storage containers before adding more items. After you have cleaned out your available storage, take advantage of these spaces that are provided by your house. You can then begin to put things back into your drawers and closets.

Buy Storage Containers. There is an array of home furnishing items that add style while providing storage to your home. Pieces that optimize storage and style are:

  • Bookcases
  • Benches
  • Baskets/Bins
  • Coffee Tables
  • Desks
  • Dressers
  • Vanities

Organize in Style. Organizing your home does not necessarily mean marking each item with a label and placing it into a clear container. Organizing your home can allow you to add more to spaces than you previously had. Things to consider:

  • Home offices hold a lot of storage potential. Having an office in your house will also help keep your home organized. You really only need a desk to make a space your home office. Once you have a desk, consider everything you have the potential to store in it:
      • Mail and letters
      • Notebooks
      • Office supplies (pens, pencils, paper, scissors, tape, etc.)
      • Books
      • Computer/Laptop
  • Pets tend to have a lot of their own belongings. Make a section in your home designated for their items. You can install a shelf or a cabinet to hold all their belongings. Storing the items up high is mutually beneficial; it guarantees your pet cannot get into something they should not, and you can decorate the piece to your liking.
  • Pet items can easily be stored in places like the garage or basement to help you maximize the use of your high-traffic areas.
  • Kids’ toys can be everywhere sometimes. Chests/bins are a stylish piece of furniture that can store your little one’s toys and activities.

Ultimately, the key to organization is cleaning. You must clean out your home before you can begin to organize it. Now is the perfect time to get started on cleaning out your house. Keep in mind, you do not need to throw everything away! Let us know how your organizing project turn out!

Building a Home Gym on a Budget

We are living through an uncertain time where the coronavirus pandemic has closed many businesses temporarily to prevent the spread of the virus. In a society where social distancing and home quarantine is becoming the norm, it can be very challenging to reach some of your fitness goals. In fact, many gym-goers have no had to create their own personal at-home workouts to help stay proactive and healthy during these challenging times. If the gym has been part of your structured lifestyle, you probably have been brainstorming ways to stay healthy at home. This factor is why many homeowners have decided to create their own home gyms. However, it will not take long for you to realize that creating your dream home gym is not always very budget-friendly. This factor is where proper planning comes into play. If you are planning on building a home gym, here is everything you need to consider:

Budget

The one variable that can be the most limiting is your budget. It is essential to create a realistic budget before tackling this project. As you explore the realm of home gym equipment, you can start to gather an idea of what the prices are for gym equipment. Going into any project without a plan can wreak havoc on your wallet, so before you buy, start to round up some prices of what you may want. You also want to consider, not everyone loves training at home. Gyms will eventually reopen. Do not blow your budget on something you may only facilitate for a month and never again use.

Space

Once you have determined your budget, you can begin to purchase your equipment. While equipment may fit your budget, it may not fit your home. Gym equipment can be bulky and need extra space to keep safety at the forefront. Maybe some equipment dimensions fit your space; however, do you have adequate space to perform exercises safely and properly in those dimensions as well? This factor is why it is good to consider multi-purpose equipment. Your home may not fit a squat rack, bench, and cable machine. Yet, Power Racks or other options can have multiple functions. Likewise, it may not be practical to invest in a whole dumbbell set. This is great for commercial gyms yet not always ideal for home gyms. You may want to go a more practical route and buy adjustable dumbbells or a couple of different pairs you will use.

Personal Goals

Lastly, determine your personal goals. Home gyms can take a little creativity. What did you do when you went to the gym? Consider your workouts. If you did Pilates or yoga, do not invest in a powerlifting home gym. Likewise, if you prefer free weights, do not invest in machines you will never use. This can be a big mistake! It may be wise to buy just enough to get started. Decide if you like the setup and can workout at home. After a week, you may decide the environment is too challenging for you, or you need to invest more. These tactics can help save you money.

Home gyms are great to have, whether gyms are closed or not! This investment is a great way to convert an unused garage or basement to a more facilitated room in your home. Remember to stick to your budget and consider your space. These are tactics that will help you buy once and enjoy reaching your personal goals.