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DIY On A Dime to Spruce up Your Home for Spring

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This guest blog makes us anticipate Spring even more. If you’re like us, Spring recalls fresh and bright colors, open and airy houses, and longer days of sunshine. Now is the time to start planning for your Spring DIY efforts. Give a read to this guest blog and maybe you can incorporate some of their great ideas!

Spring is right around the corner and for many of us, which means time to redecorate the house and breathe some new life into rooms that may seem tired and in need of a good refreshing. I recently took a tour of a few open houses and found some inspiration for budget-friendly DIY home décor projects. Whether you’re looking to add a small touch to a bare wall or looking to transform an entire room, you don’t have to break the bank.

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Use Found Objects to Create Visual Interest
One of my favorite touches from the open house tour I recently took was an especially colorful clock. When I walked into the room my eye was immediately drawn to the clock on the wall. Its starburst appearance looked like something chic and modern you might find at Urban Outfitters. When I swooped in for a closer look, I realized that I was actually looking at a regular clock with a variety of paint chips arranged around it. I’m not sure if the homeowner came up with this or not, but I thought it was a brilliant idea. Find a clock that does not have a glass or plastic face on it, and fan the paint chips out from the center of the clock. If you’ve already redecorated a room in your house, you probably already have a tower of paint chips lying around. Why not put them to use?

One of the big trends of 2012 is going to be color.
Play with color as much as possible in your redecorated rooms. A very cheap way of doing this is to go thrifting for fun picture frames, cut construction paper to fit inside the frames and hang them on your wall. Contrast real loud colors like red and green with muted tones like white and grey. If your construction paper is lime green, try painting the picture frame white or black.

Redecorating your home doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. You can probably poke around in the attic in the boxes you haven’t touched in years and find the perfect raw material for your DIY project.

Author’s Bio: Lisa is a guest blogger who likes to write about everything from interior decorating to real estate.

 

About Suzanne Lasky, Allied ASID
Suzanne Lasky, Allied ASID, is the owner and founder of S Interior Design, the exclusive provider of Pawprint Design Services™. Suzanne works with her clients to develop a winning combination of design elements that result in warm, comfortable and functional spaces that reflect each client’s personal style. Suzanne and her team specialize in residential, contract and hospitality interior design, from simple color selections, to office build outs, to restaurant, spa and hotel designs. Suzanne shares her years of expertise through the power of social media. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and at this blog. To speak to Suzanne about your interior design needs, please call 480-220-4659 or visit her website at www.sinteriordesign.com.

6 Eco-Friendly Options 4 The Office

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I am pleased to share a wonderful blog post from a guest blogger Angela Taylor a blogger and aspiring designer.   While there is a lot of information focusing on green/eco-friendly options for the home, this is a wonderful focused look at what we can do specifically for our home or small office spaces in that regard.  Take a read and implement some of the great ideas!

Bamboo Dry Erase

 

6 Simple Eco-Friendly Elements for a Visually Striking Home Office

Green products for an environmentally-friendly work environment

The home office combines your professional and personal life—so it should, rightly so, be a reflection of you. Unfortunately, the home office is usually an after-thought and designated to a corner in your kitchen or living room. If you’re concerned about the environment, there are green products that you can incorporate into your home office to make it more environmentally friendly and more visually appealing as well. Considering this home office will be where you spend the majority of your day, it would make sense to make it as comfortable, functional and attractive as possible.

Here are our 6 simple Eco-friendly product recommendations for a visually pleasing home office that you can get inspired in:

1. Eco-friendly wall décor: Green wall décor is offered in various patterns and textures—plus it’s better for your health than conventional wallpapers that can contain chemicals. Look into attractive wall décor and coverings like:

  • Glass whiteboards—or glass dry erase boards provide a natural and safe surface for brainstorming
  • Eco-friendly wallpaper— made from natural renewable bamboo, rice paper, flax, cork, arrowroot and a mish-mash of recycled papers
  • Reed, cattail and paper weave murals—make beautiful wall décor with delicate dried leaves and natural grasses twisted together and making unique wall art
  • Ceramic and mica photo frames—are constructed from natural sands in the soil and formed into a beautiful variety of colors and sizes

2. Recycled office furniture: You can find some really great eclectic pieces of second hand office furniture at your local thrift shop or Salvation Army. A lot of large companies also throw out their office furniture rather than repairing it during an upgrade so you can salvage some top quality ergonomic office chairs and desks and save it being thrown into a landfill site.

3. Eco materials for your home office: You can find an abundant of environmentally-friendly and recycled materials for your home office, for instance:

  • Wheat board – for the walls (and it can double as a posting board) as well as floors
  • You can buy 4GB bamboo flash drives as opposed to the plastic variety
  • Moleskine notebooks (made of bamboo pulp) are waterproof with washable covers
  • Sustainable timber – for your desk and storage units
  • Recycled aluminum – again, for office desks, storage units and office chairs
  • Recycled glass – ideal for walls and attractive office desk tops
  • Recycled upholstery – great for throw pillows, stuffed bean bag chairs and desk chair coverings

4. Harness the power of sustainable energy: Look to natural resources with these really aesthetic pieces of office equipment:

5. Recycled or refurbished electronics: Akin to finding used office furniture from large corporations, you can often buy refurbished electronics for a fraction of the cost. Many large companies will host a used electronics sale when it is time to upgrade their computers, laptops, fax machines, photocopiers, printers and office telephones. You can feel good rescuing that refurbished laptop from a life in the scrap yard. Keep in mind that your home office electronics give off VOC emissions as well as other chemical vapors that pollute the air in your home. Try these additional energy-savings tips for a greener home office:

  • Use a laptop instead of a desktop computer—laptops use less energy
  • Unplug the printer, fax machine and computer when your day is over
  • Plug multiple electronics into one power bar so that you can turn them all off with one switch
  • Leave office equipment on timers so that everything automatically shuts down overnight
  • Minimize the number of office electronics you use by purchasing all in one photocopier/printer/scanner/ fax models
  • Use online fax and telephone
  • And when you are finished with your home office electronics, donate them to local schools, shelters or for reuse where needed

6. Refillable/reusable office supplies: When you look for office supplies—such as pens, pencils, files and ink cartridges for your printer—seek out refillable and reusable varieties. And also:

  • Look for recycled plastic products such as pens.
  • Buy pens and printer cartridges with non-toxic inks like vegetable- or soy-based ink
  • Buy multiple packs of pens, Post-it notes and staples to cut down your packaging waste
  • Reuse all of your elastic bands, thumb tacks and paper clips
  • Set up a recycling bin so you don’t throw used up items away

 

S Interior Design “Pawprint Design Services (TM)”

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Today S Interior Design had a great opportunity to be the special guest on the weekly blog radio show-FURvently Speaking

Great discussion about how we can have a fabulous looking, feeling and ‘smelling’ home even when we have one or more furry family members.

Take a listen and hopefully it will give you some things to think about when ‘designing with pets in mind’

FURvently Speaking

 

THANK YOU TO THE RADIO HOSTESS EILEEN PROCTOR!!

 

 

Optimizing Natural Light In Your Home

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When I got asked if I would enjoy a guest blog post on the subject of Natural Light I immediately said YES!  I am a firm believer in the power of light and how it impacts how a room looks and feels, and often say to my clients that we need to leverage natural lighting in our design work together.  Of course living and working in perpetually sunny Arizona brings great options to work with natural light.  So assess your home and see where you can install a Solar Tube or get rid of heavy window coverings and let in some of nature’s bounty—LIGHT.

Guest post below:

The effects of natural lighting on a room can be very subtle, but that doesn’t detract from its importance. Ideally whenever you design a room you need to consider what light it will get from the outside and how best to utilize it. There is a large number of factors you will need to think about when planning the lighting for a room, too many for this article to cover. But hopefully it will give you an overview of how to make the most of natural lighting for your home.

The first and most important factor is the direction from which the light is coming from. Whilst I’m writing in the northern hemisphere, if you live in the southern hemisphere you can swap north and south around.

  • North: Because north facing rooms never receive direct sunlight the light often has a cold flattening quality. For this reason artists often prefer north facing studios as they allow you to see the true colour of your paints.
  • East: East facing rooms get direct light in the morning as the sun rises but far less light in the evening.
  • South: South facing rooms get the benefits of direct sunlight on them for most of the day making them warmer and better lit than others.
  • West: West facing rooms will be dark in the morning but brighten up as the sun moves to the west. They will often get the most heat as not only does the early afternoon sun tends to be the warmest but the setting sun will often shine directly into them.

Natural History Museum by Stephen Boisvert (used under CC licence)

This picture gives a nice illustration of how much stronger light from the southern window is. (South on the left)

You should take the factors above into consideration when considering the purpose of a room. For example east and north facing rooms will tend to be colder and darker than south and west facing rooms. This means that you will need use artificial lighting not only to brighten the room and to counter the flat effect the reflected sunlight often gives. For south and west facing rooms then window treatments such as blinds or curtains will help you to control how much light gets in and reduce glare.

South Facing Bedroom by Tom Parnell (used under CC Licence)

Functional rooms like kitchens and studies will benefit from large windows so as to let in as much light as possible. Often you can increase the drop of a window without affecting the structural integrity of a wall. Though if you want to replace the wall with say French doors then you will need to get a builder in. In rooms where you want to relax small and medium sized windows tend to give you a more relaxing atmosphere and privacy.

Natural light can have surprising effects on the colours that you paint your walls. For example you might well find that bright colours used in a south facing room are overwhelming, while pastels in a north facing room can appear washed out. In general though you can use paints to either counter or enhance the effects of the natural light. For example if your north facing room is too cold and dark then bright colours will help to liven it up.

East and west facing rooms need the most thought as the amount of light in these rooms will change dramatically through the day. In general you will to design east facing rooms for morning use and west facing for the afternoon. Therefore I prefer bright colours in eastern rooms to help you wake up and warm or darker colours in the west to help you relax.

Author Bio: Daniel is a UK blogger and copywriter with an interest in interior design. He is writing on behalf of Wooden Blinds Direct a specialist online supplier of wooden venetian blinds.

It’s Time—–Your Home Needs a Make-over Today

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Another guest blog post to share with you! An interesting point of view on the subject of when is the ‘right time’ to do some make-over work in your home.  A lot of us procrastinate because we are over whelmed or even scared to make changes to our home environment.  I am working with a client who read in her journal from January ,  2010 about what she wanted to do to her space and had put off for over a 1 1/2.

Yes, she is a bit scared to finally start making the changes she has thought about for so long.  I am guiding her and providing a design plan that she is comfortable with.  So, don’t put it off any longer, dive in or slowly put a foot in the water.  You may find out that if FEELS GOOD!

Guest Post-

Today I am being forced to put a pen, get a writing pad and write a nice little article to all my dear friends out there. You must be thinking who forced me to do so. Well, that’s a long answer you are asking for. It’s my home who has been screaming at me since a couple of days. It’s creaming out loud, ‘Please, My owner! My custodian! Look at me. Look closely as to what have you done to me throughout these passing years. Just imagine what I was when you moved in and now what a tragic death I am dying”. After hours of recollection I have reached the conclusion that yeah, what the hell have I done to my home. Every nook and corner of this place is crying, asking for attention, and demanding nothing but a make-over and some frequent touch-ups here and there.

Everyone likes change, nobody likes living a stagnant life. Same goes for the interior decor of your living place. A neat, trendy interior design is a must to compliment the good architecture of a building. This involves everything from the selection of color combos to the choice of furniture, from wall hangings to floor mats and carpeting. Also a special attention must be paid while deciding on the interior of the room keeping under consideration as to what the room would be used for. Bedrooms should always have cool light colors with comfortable and cozy fixtures. Living room should have a vibrant and energetic feel to it. These tips are not universal but can be molded per your own taste and requirements.

What is universal and vital is that Interior of your villa or apartment affects your life immeasurably so having a poorly designed home can be such a blow to your lifestyle which can’t be cured or reverted at any cost. Even if a place was given a brilliant interior at the start and was not maintained with changing seasons and passing time, it is of no use. This is something which needs recurrent consideration and refreshment. So be always vigilant about the interior design of your homes that whether they are prim and proper or not. If you feel that things are out-of-place and you are having concerns regarding your living place its time you get its interior modified and get a fresh one.

About Author

Gabriel Ryan is an artist who is passionate about http://www.juliasantengallery.com/

Check out his website www.juliasantengallery.com where you will also find http://www.juliasantengallery.com/go/vintage_posters.html”