Create a Little Ambience

Enlist your senses to help you create a little ambiance in your home, whether it’s the dinner table you sit down to, the couch you snuggle up on, or the bedroom you retire to at night.  Set the scene for peace, relaxation, and a warm feeling of home amid hectic schedules and jam-packed days.

Sight is a strong element in an ambiance of calm and comfort.  Candlelight is a given for creating a mood of both soothing relaxation and playful romance.  Lighting some taper candles may seem a little formal for the everyday, so find some three wick candles in glass cylinder jars in colors and fragrances you like.  One lit in the middle of the breakfast nook table for a weeknight dinner or on the coffee table while you watch TV in the evenings adds a pleasant scent and a nice glow.  Additionally, installing dimmers on often used light switches can give you the flexibility to have both bright and low lighting in the same area.  I love dimmers for the lighting fixtures over the dinner table, in under-cabinet mount lighting, and over bathroom vanities. 

Smell is also a key ingredient to generate the atmosphere you desire.  Just like a batch of warm cookies baking can enliven a kitchen, great scents are both welcoming and warming.  Alongside a hot bath, soothing candle fragrances like vanilla, lavender, and honey set the sudsy mood.  Many candles, room sprays, and oil diffusers come in scents that resemble perfumes and colognes that add a clean, high end touch to any room and make for a great addition to an entryway.  To wake up the senses, consider fragrances like peppermint, apple, and lemon.  To raise the bar on your nightly turndown service, mist your bedding with sleepy scents made for linens.  I even found an amazing French bread scented candle l like to accompany Italian dinners at home; it makes the kitchen smell like the crusty bread was baked right there.  Seasonal fragrances of candles, burning oils, and room sprays are perfect in the fall and winter, making any room smell like apple pie, cinnamon, fall leaves, pine, gingerbread, or your favorite holiday version.    

Sound sets the tone for the vibe you want to create in any setting.  The background music you play can swing any direction, from classic to jazz to instrumental to dance.  CDs, iPod playlists, and radio stations on your TV are all easy accompaniments, whether you’re having people over for dinner, are cooking in the kitchen, doing household chores, or relaxing on the back porch.  I love the soundtracks set to many movies and figure why can’t we have “a soundtrack to our lives” for both special occasions and the everyday moments?     

Whether you’re invigorating an evening gathering, settling in for a relaxing night at home, or somewhere in between, let sight, smell, and sound help you produce the ambiance you know will be just right each and every time.  

DesignInMind column; appeared in the Valley Morning Star August 25th.

Do-It-In-a-Weekend Projects

For those with kids at home, time is about to feel more structured with busy weeks and calendar squares full of jotted notes about each day’s to-dos.  But as we transition into the fall, a hectic schedule won’t keep you from wanting to work on projects around the home just as carefree as you could during the long summer days.  The key is knowing how to pull it off, and that can be accomplished if you spread them over a few weekends.

Make a want-to-do list with a whole season to finish them all in mind.  This will take the pressure off to hurry up and allow you to enjoy little home upgrades.  Consider what you would like to have done before the holidays versus what could wait for after.  Spread your list out over the weekends to come, making notes in your planner for shopping for supplies and blocking off some DIY time. 

What are some good weekend home projects?  Here’s a list to look over:

1)  Upgrade the front door.  Enhance the backdrop for your future display of pumpkins with a new coat of paint in a look-at-me color on the door, spruce up the door jam with a fresh coat, add a pretty welcome mat, install new house numbers in a visible spot, and add some seasonal potted plants to soften the entry.

2)  Rework your entryway.  Make sure where you enter is not a dumping ground for backpacks, shoes, sports equipment, and jackets (one can hope).  Consider installing a wall unit with cubbies or locker-style openings to organize those items always going in and out.  Boot trays, hooks, an umbrella bin (again, one can hope), and a place to sit for shoes all come in handy when added to your system.

3)  Paint a room.  If you can stand to have all the furniture pushed to the center of a room for a day or so, you can change the whole look of a room with a couple of gallons of paint and a roller.

4)  Organize the bathroom cabinets.  When speedy, overlapping morning routines are showing your bathroom organization’s weaknesses, change that by taking the time to organize the cabinets, drawers, and shelves.  Throw out old and unused products, streamline each person’s products in separate drawers or bins, and make sure your stored towels are easy access, right along with cleaning products and extra essentials.

5)  Mark something you skipped off the spring cleaning list.  Didn’t get it all scratched off on your lofty spring cleaning list?  No problem.  But you don’t have to wait for March to roll around again.  Take your pick – clean all the ceiling fans, wash all the household blankets, shampoo the rugs, vacuum the drapes with the cleaning attachments, or so forth.  Dirt, be gone.

6)  Detail the car.  You can do it – pull out the bucket, sponge, and hose, and roll that vacuum cleaner right to the nearest outlet.  Give the family vehicle a good washing outside, a good vacuum and wipe down inside, and add a new scent.  You’re likely spending a lot of time in that car.  Do it cleanly.

7)  Makeover an item.  A pint of paint, some contact paper, a can of spray paint, a few yards of fabric, and other crafty accessories can totally makeover a bookcase, end table, bench, cabinet, or chair.  Give an existing piece a new look in the next season.

Your own list could entail home projects all your own for a few months that can make a big difference, one little weekend project at a time.

DesignInMind column; appeared in the Valley Morning Star August 18th.

            

Custom and Crafty

You can get just about anything these days customized, personalized, and completely fit for your style and desired look when you delve into online shops.  They go beyond the big box stores and department stores to offer products you can handpick from creative designers who are both operating their own storefronts somewhere as well as those working out of their homes.  If you have something less mainstream in mind, just see what all you can find online.

Websites like Etsy.com provide an online marketplace for custom shopping.  From home décor to clothing to jewelry to wedding accessories, designers are selling products in their online Etsy shops they are making themselves.  You can search by any number of things, from item type to colors and styles and pull up pages and pages of goods to choose from. 

Etsy designers are great sources for sewing projects, especially if you are not crafty at that skill yourself.  Can’t find throw pillows in a store to suit your fancy?  Someone is sewing them somewhere, and they will ship you what you want right to your door.  Want to give a baby shower gift personalized for the recipient’s nursery style?  You can find outfits not sold in stores as well as wall art you haven’t seen before.  Working on a wedding, shower, or other big event?  You can find neat products and work with the designer through email to custom design the item you want.  The purses I gave to my bridesmaids to carry down the aisle came from an Etsy designer, and I selected all of the components.  The beaded sash I wore on my wedding day was handmade by an Etsy designer, and the vintage buttons added to part of my wardrobe came from an Etsy shop all the way from Ireland.

Zazzle.com is my source for all things of the paper goods variety and more.  Invitations, stamps, stationery, and a slew of other products like t-shirts, mugs, office supplies, canvas art, pillows, and so forth can be customized and bought without leaving your home.  Again, there are a ton of products in the galleries to choose from and customize if you like, or you can start from scratch using Zazzle’s easy software and work on your own designs to both buy and sell.  I create invitations and custom stamp designs in Publisher and then upload my finished products into my gallery or order for both personal and professional use.  For your next shower or party, you have options you can fully personalize for a look that’s all your own from what you mail out to what guests see when they arrive, all without struggling with printing on your own.

It’s fun to shop in person, we all know that.  But it’s also a real treat to find something new, different, and even something you had a hand in designing without ever leaving your computer.

DesignInMind column; appeared in the Valley Morning Star August 11th.

Sharpen Those Pencils

Summer has flown by, and the school bells will be ringing again right around the corner.  As you soak up what remains of this sultry season, finish it off in style while looking to and preparing for the months ahead.

If your family took any trips since May that now have your camera’s memory card chalk full, take the time now to turn those images into memories well kept.  It’s a good idea to transfer the files from the camera to the computer, and then on to a backup system like an external hard drive. The more often you do this, the less likely you are to lose your photos due to camera loss or a computer crash. 

Plus, while the details are fresher in your mind, work on a photo book now using online book making software to have a professional book of your vacation or summer memories printed.  I know the difference between a book I work on shortly after the images were taken versus a book I try to pull together much later, and the difference is in the details: captions, dates, and a storyline come to you much more easily the sooner you get to it.

As school supplies are topping the shopping list, add a few more items that can take you to the front of the class.  Now is a good time to plan for another year of school keepsakes by buying file boxes, project cases, or archive boxes to hold artwork, papers, and awards.  Utilize the sales on back-to-school supplies to restock your home office with the essentials.  And if you are really on the ball, buy additional school supply type items to hold for church donation projects at Christmas time.

Look into plastic storage containers for summer gear to keep your garage shelves or attic space tidier as you eventually put away pool and other outdoor toys.  Consider items you might need to get or replace to transition into the school year setting more easily, like a gentle alarm clock, study desk lamp, new printer ink, or a family wall calendar or organizer pin board.

The staples of each cycling season come and come again, and it’s always nice to be prepared as well as excited by the renewal.  It makes me think of a movie line I have always loved, spoken by Tom Hanks’ character, Joe Fox, in “You’ve Got Mail” – “Don’t you love New York in the fall?  It makes me wanna’ buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”   

DesignInMind column; appeared in the Valley Morning Star August 4th.