Designer Touches for a Sizzling Summer

As the mercury climbs up the thermometer, find ways to cool off your summer while still turning up the heat on style.  Here are some ideas to do just that. 

• Serve up a casual ice cream bar with a self-mixing twist.  Instead of the standard candy additives, offer up a variety of summery fresh fruit pieces that will freeze when you stir them into your icy dish of ice cream or sherbet.  A tip: lime sherbet with fresh raspberries is a tasty seasonal combo that is already icing down my summer.  

•  Instead of soda or your regular iced tea for weekend dinner guests, mix up three different kinds of lemonades, limeades, or flavored teas and serve from frosty carafes.  Toss in thinly-sliced lime or orange rings for added flavor and a fancy drink top-off.

•  Using regular ice trays or the slender straw versions for plastic bottles, fill with a couple of blueberries, raspberries, or mint sprigs per section, top off with sparkling water or juice, freeze, and drop your decked-out ice cubes in tall glasses of chilled tea or punch at a gathering, showing you really pay attention to detail when entertaining.

•  Go all-summer with a dessert selection, opting for popsicles and watermelon wedges instead of heavier brownies or cake to accompany a backyard barbeque.  Fill smaller metal or plastic tubs with crushed, shaved, or tiny ice, and stick popsicles and watermelon wedges right in just before serving.  Don’t forget the napkins nearby!

•  Skip the stovetop, and feast on a selection of cold salads: pasta, potato, chicken or tuna, garden, and fruit.  Lay out your spread with crackers, and enjoy, minus the heat. 

•  When roasting corn on the grill, go beyond butter.  Why not go the way of the baked potato and offer up a “corn bar” with butter, cheese, crumbled bacon, chives, sour cream, and the like?  Have a serving area prepped for cutting corn off the cob (it’s harder to eat on the cob in front of others, isn’t it?), so all those decadent mix-ins can really blend in.

•  It doesn’t take a wedding reception to enjoy a “candy bar.”  Serve your own version at a 4^th of July party or other summer gathering.  Serve loose hard candy and retro favorites like rock candy in a scattering of plastic beach pails instead of dressy apothecary jars, scooping with small plastic sand shovels into little takeaway baggies.  Skip the chocolates for an outdoor event.  Why melt?

•  Go carnival for a weekend and rent a popcorn popper and a snow cone machine for a party - one for your appetizer and one for dessert.  They would make perfect bookends to a memorable night in the backyard, giving your guests a little throwback to summers gone by.

Beat the heat and stay stylishly cool this sizzling summer! 

DesignInMind column; appeared in the Valley Morning Star June 24th. 

In Honor of Dad: The Man Cave

In honor of Father’s Day, today we’ll tip our hats to that elusive area of a home that you may or may not make room for: the man cave.  When a guy gets that satisfying space to himself in a home to watch sports, display memorabilia, and not use coasters, that’s called a man cave.  To ensure any designated man cave in your home still has swagger, don’t pass on the style.

A man cave typically centers around a television and the entertainment it provides.  Now, the backdrop of this scene in my mind is not light and airy and bright; it’s darker, bolder, more masculine.  Painting this room or alcove a dark shade of gray or espresso can set the stage for proper sporting event viewing.  The seating should match that vibe of relaxed comfort.  A leather sofa and side chair in chocolate brown or ebony is a winning combo and does not need any fluffy extras.  A metal or lacquered coffee table that allows you to put your feet up can anchor the seating area.  Window treatments can stop at dark wood or faux wood blinds and skip the fabric panels and still keep the glare off the big screen.    

Blocky side tables can be great anchors for masculine metal lamps with clean white or dark drum shades.  Memorabilia – trophies, medals, souvenirs – can be displayed on thick floating shelves in solid wood finishes.  Picking favorites and cutting down on displaying too many pieces can keep a shelving area looking sleek and can highlight special pieces.  Work small stacks of books into your display, some standing up and some stacked up on top of each other.  To show off your showcase, can lights in the ceiling or track lighting can do the trick.  For memorabilia like sports’ jerseys, hanging them in frames gives them more purpose and gives your lighted walls a gallery feel.

A man cave can avoid descriptors like “slopping, messy, and dirty” altogether.  Keep DVDs and CDs organized in bins or specialized storage pieces, and then store them in entertainment cabinets or shelves.  Hide chords to sound systems or other entertainment or gaming equipment for a streamlined look.  Store magazines in magazine bins or baskets alongside your seating area instead of scattering them about.       

The ultimate point is to give a man a space of his own, minus the floral prints, paisley pillows, and feminine touches.  Bold and solid can be pulled off in a smaller space that still has that comfortable feel, perfect for your go-to weekend retreat.  After all, Dad deserves an opportunity to kick back and relax.

Happy Father’s Day!

DesignInMind column; appeared in the Valley Morning Star June 17th. 

Unity: A United Homefront

Unity, our last and final design principle, “is the feeling of harmony between all parts, creating a sense of completeness.”  Unity wraps up every principle of design we’ve covered so far and essentially says to put them all to work in your space for a harmonious end product that is the place you call home. 

 To me, completeness in a home is about layers.  When you look at a style magazine spread of a beautiful home setting, and then peer over the page at your own room in jealousy, the difference can often involve those extra “layers” in a professionally designed space.  Minus their high dollar price tags, you can put on your professional designer hat and think of ways to up the ante on your home’s style factor.  

Recall all of the design principles – balance, emphasis, movement, pattern, repetition, proportion, rhythm, variety, and now today unity.  Pick out something in each room that expresses the meaning behind each principle to create the most unity in the space you live in.  Find balance in the way you arrange your living room seating, maybe opting for a new configuration that highlights the pieces as a whole even better.  Choose a key color to emphasize that carries through different parts of a particular room.  Use your patterned fabric choices and wall hanging layouts to chart the course of how your eyes roam through an area.  Bring life into your décor through savvy selections and rearrangements that play off of each other well.  Plan out your space from the top of your crown molding down to the center of your flooring so that interesting and important things show themselves off on every layer. 

Ultimately, you are the best judge of how unified your home feels to you.  What invites you to gather your family around the dinner table and stay and visit awhile when the meal is over?  What calls you to curl up and rest in your living room with a movie or a book and gives you that space to just breathe and be at home?  Stark, stale, and uninviting is not what you want your home to project.  I believe we would all prefer to open the door to a home that instead expresses a feeling of welcome, calm, and warmth.  How you create that for yourself is entirely up to you on your united homefront.           

DesignInMind column; appeared in the Valley Morning Star June 10th.

  

Variety is the Spice of Your Home Life

Variety, design principle number 8, is defined as “the use of several elements of design to hold the viewer’s attention and to guide the viewer’s eye.”  It is your use of lines, shapes, forms, space, colors, and textures that adds those dashes of variety to your living area that creates visual interest aplenty. 

Variety can be enhanced by the art of the unexpected.  Think you need to stick to one pattern or print in an area?  Not necessary, actually.  You can mix a shower curtain with a curvy geometric print with clean-lined striped towels and solid colored bath mats.  Zig zag curtain panels can be paired with a multicolored, flecked rug and upholstered occasional chairs with a floral twist or a solid leather sofa with throw pillows of varying designs.  Layer different patterns to slather on the variety. 

When hanging a grouping on a wall, mix the shapes, sizes, and materials to create an eclectic blend with art gallery flair versus a streamlined grid of the same frames.  Hang round or sunburst mirrors with square and rectangular framed art or photos alongside unframed canvases or retro ceiling tiles.  When setting up a general season table centerpiece, vary the heights of candle holders, combine clear glass vases with solid ceramics, and blend wispy grasses and florals with smooth rocks or stones.  When you take in the complete scene, it is the melding of the different pieces together that makes it an appealing collection.

Variety is also displayed through a mixed bag of furniture pieces.  You can buy a set right off a showroom floor.  Or you can pick and choose a slew of pieces from different lines or sources to add a different flourish to the space.  A clean line couch next to a small, round end table, along with a loveseat or side chairs with feminine, curvy lines and nail head details gives a room personality.  In a bedroom, an upholstered headboard with a wavy shape to the top, plush, mini ottomans at the foot of the bed, and a masculine, blocky dresser keep the room from being one sided, but is diversified instead.

Variety can be the spice of your home life when you boldly mix and match and layer different shapes and colors and textures to ensure each area of your home expresses parts of your style in unique, creative ways.   

DesignInMind column; appeared in the Valley Morning Star June 3rd.