Warming Up To Fall

In case you hadn’t heard, it’s officially fall. I live in the Midwest where everyone can be heard proclaiming with excitement and glee about the arrival of fall before it even begins. I love fall too for its’ moderate temperatures and beautiful changing leaves. I also love that folks who have no business walking around half naked finally stop doing so and start wearing clothes (sorry, but it had to be said). What I hate about fall is that it leads directly to WINTER. Winter here in Ohio lasts about….well, a good six months. I hate winter.

Okay let’s move on to the more positive subject of ideas to warm up your home that even a frugal, lazy crafty girl like me can get behind….

I love this BHG idea as it is super cheap and easy to duplicate and easily qualifies as lazy girl décor (my specialty).  Use a can or pillar holder to elevate your candle if it isn’t tall enough.

  You can also swap out the green candle for a beautiful caramel or pumpkin colored pillar and surround it with these acorns from Pottery Barn.  If you live in an old neighborhood like me, you can probably get the acorns for free from a tree in your neighborhood.

Also from BHG, this is super easy and you can use one of the fake pumpkins sold at places like Michael’s and JoAnn’s.  Just be sure to weight down the hollow ones with sand so it doesn’t tip with the candle in it.  Instructions for duplicating this with a real pumpkin here:

http://www.bhg.com/decorating/seasonal/autumn/fall-pumpkin-candle-centerpiece/

These branches with colorful leaves are also easy to find at Michael’s and JoAnn’s and I see wooden bowls like these at TJ Maxx and Marshall’s all the time.

  Placing small pumpkins on top of a pillar holder you already have in your house is about as cheap and easy as it gets.  Still, I would dress it up a bit with some fall garland - it just looks a little bare and unfinished to me as is.

  I love the idea of pumpkins in place of flowers in your outdoor urns as I seem incapable of keeping anything green alive for longer than a week. 

 

Love the tiny pumpkins and squash, scattered all over flat surfaces for bursts of color in this black furnished room.  It would still work if your furniture is painted or wood stained.

What are you doing to decorate your space for the season?

It's baaaack....Wallpaper reappears from beyond the grave

So if you love design as much as I do you've heard the word on the street...it's BACK!  The thing I despise, the thing I peeled untold yardage of from so many walls the first year of owning my home.... the evil that is WALLPAPER (cue dum da da dum music).  Actually, it started making it’s come back a while ago, but now there’s simply no avoiding it.

Why do I diss the paper?  All those pretty designs and no love you ask?  Well, for starters, prints that are that in my face (large quantities you have to stare at day after day after day after day after.... well, you get the picture) bore me to distraction (or drinking or whatever your vice may be) after a pitifully short time. A pure saturation of beautiful color (aka…paint…preferably the honorable Ben Moore if I can afford the best) on the other hand, satisfies my heart and eyes and everything else for many, many years with no hint of boredom.

Having established, albeit a little too vehemently, that I won’t be purchasing any wallpaper for my humble little home, I have seen some pretty fresh and pretty designs that didn’t make me want to drive a spike through my head….

 This harlequin design is kind of cool because duplicating it with paint would be a pain.  In addition to having to measure and tape with precision, you have some kind of cool color wash going on here.  Love the greens used here too.

Called Floral Sidewall, this might be cute in a little girl’s room.  The soft blue with ivory flowers would be pretty in a nursery too.

 

Appropriately titled Various Sayings, this one might be entertaining in a small bathroom...

This white on charcoal number is called Lollipop Leaves.  I could see this in a very modern space with all white mod furniture. 

This paper was designed by Jon Burgerman and is actually a coloring book that can be applied to  any wall. This would be fun in a kids room - you could keep them entertained for hours.  

Here’s a use of wallpaper even I could love.  Just one small alcove in a home office – beautiful, like the inside of a gift box from a super exclusive boutique…sigh…

Along the same lines, how cool to open your closet and see a beautiful wallpaper...like unwrapping a treasure.  Here are some I'd love to see in my own closet:

Called Kelly Deco Velvet Flocked wallpaper, I love the color and designs of these papers found on http://www.designerwallcoverings.com

  

Although I hate the paper used here, I do love the idea of using wallpaper to simulate a headboard.  It’s cheap, easy and you could change it as often as your little heart, budget (and energy) permit.  I would love to do this for a client.  Maybe I’ll do it in my guest room that’s just begging for a makeover.

This is actress Chloe Sevigny’s home and though many interior design aficionado’s much more knowledgeable than me no doubt find it tres chic, it would make my head throb after …well, I might be able to hold out for about 5 or 6 hours (if properly medicated).  Via Design Sponge

If you have some wallpaper brilliance you want to share, please leave a comment....or just comment because you can.

Small Space Living Tips from Nate

Who better to feature in my first post on living well in a small space than the oh so cute Nate Berkus. The latest issue of Glamour gives an overview of Nate's transformation of his little sister Marni's tiny one-room apartment in New York. Notice Marni is perched on Nate's very own HSN love seat, here in grey (they call it pewter) velvet. Also note the back of the bookshelves are painted a gorgeous blue. Love the magenta and orange pillows.

Next is Marni's living room that has a great mix of neutral core pieces spiced up with bright accessories.  Nate comments that regardless of "whether you're living in a dorm room or your first apartment, resist that transient feeling.  Save up for the one or two pieces that you will still love in 10 years."  That might be a stretch for a college kid (certainly would have been for me in those days), but I absolutely agree that you should treat your first apartment as a home.  I saved up and invested in good quality pieces back then that I still have today.  Another thing I love about this room is that the core uphostered pieces are all in neutral colors that allow you to completely alter the feel of the room through changing accessories.  Also, with the exception of that flat screen TV, pretty much all of the accessories in this room can be replicated on the cheap.  That table by the window that looks like a branch with glass perched on top might be a challenge, but I'll bet if you have a handy hubby, BF or relative they could figure out how to it.

This is all stuff you could score at Pier 1, TJ Maxx, Marshall's or World Market.  Also, if you ever want some great coffee table books to dress up your tables, don't forget Half Price Books.  They have a great selection and are so cheap.

Marni's bedroom area is directly across from living room.  Nate used the sofa to divide her living and sleeping areas, commenting that he chose the sofa because screens are "so old-school." Notice the same soft neutrals used in her upholstered pieces in the living room are used in her bedding. 

The shot above also gives a better look at the branch table.  Hmmm...it's tough to duplicate, but I just know some clever DIYer out there can do it.  Make sure you send me pictures if you do and I'll feature your work.

Accessories, like the silver lamp and small box, gilded mirror and sequin trim on the pillows, are used to add sparkle for a touch of glam. 

This is her work area where Nate customized a corkboard by using a roll of cork and moldings from Home Depot.  You can actually buy one just like this if you troll the aisles of TJ Maxx and Marshalls long enough.  I found a huge one with a much prettier frame at my local TJ Maxx & More for $50 (no, they are not paying me for advertising their stores - I'm just a frugal junkie and they have the best cheap stuff).  This is a super tight work space so you would have to be uber organized (or maybe she shoves everything into that ratan basket under her desk?).

 

Remember that blue in the back of her bookcase?  Here it is again in an inexpensive painted chest.  A cheap and easy project to duplicate.

 

Lastly, in her closet Nate used magazine files to organize her clutches and Huggable Hangers from HSN (yep, he is getting paid by them) to increase storage space. "Let me tell you, Marni's closet did not start out looking like this," says Berkus.  "We started piles: 'keep,' ' charity' and 'resale.'"

I remember visiting a girlfriend living in Conneticut a few years ago when we stayed at her friends apartment in the city while she was away on an extended trip.  That apartment really made a huge impression on me, not because of the decor (which wasn't particularly memorable), but because of the amazingly efficient use of space.  The living room and dining room were one long space, there was a tiny galley kitchen, a tiny bathroom and a very small bedroom.  In the bedroom, there was just a queen sized bed pressed against the wall, no night stands, a bureau in the closet and a large rolling rack for her hanging clothes.  Her clothes were kept to a three color palette and were spaced neatly apart.  I asked my friend if that was her whole wardrobe and she replied, "her summer wardrobe."  Of course, she was on an extended trip, so I'm sure a lot of her wardrobe went with her, but apparently she stored the out of season clothes at her dry cleaners.  I've always been aware most dry cleaners offer this service, but with my worst case scenario mind, I always feared the place would burn down, go out of business or they would give my wardrobe to someone else.  Anyway, that tiny New York apartment gave me a whole new perspective of my small house.  I suddenly appreciated the need to edit your stuff to fit your space as opposed to allowing your stuff to outgrow the space and force you into bigger (more expensive) diggs.  I still have to work on maintaining the balance, but I get better at it every day.