Flowers and Butterflies, the Perfect Combination!
March 23, 2008
Spring is coming fast and with it the colors of the world come to life. The spring season is not just a time for the gardens to bloom, but a season for the butterfly to come to life as well. Your garden is an ocean of color and to keep this ocean of color coming back in the spring, your use of perennial bulbs, flowers, seeds, and shrubs will lessen tasks in the early spring. Butterflies that add that complete ’special touch’ to your gardens will eagerly look for homes in your gardens if you can provide what it is they are searching for.
So what are the colorful butterflies searching for arriving at your garden? Flowers such as the Butterfly weed, the New England aster, Blue false indigo, Cheddar pinks, Blanket flowers, Shasta daisies, Garden phlox, Showy stonecrop, Orange cone flowers and the Red valerian are a few of the most popular plants that butterflies will seek out.
Tips for Choosing Log Furniture
March 22, 2008
If you just love that rustic look, and are finally ready to finally buy log furniture for your home, there are a number of "rules of thumb" that can help you in making good choices.
Begin by considering the overall style of your home. Do you have a log home that is overwhelmingly rustic? Or are you seeking to add a rustic touch to one or more rooms of a more conventional home?
Size is Everything
Homes that feature large logs, spacious ceilings or are roomy in general require a different flavor of rustic furniture than their more conventional counterparts. If large logs make up the walls of your room, or you have a fireplace made from monster rocks from Montana, you’ll need a massive log look for your furniture as well. Otherwise, your log furniture will seem dwarfed and insignificant.
Even if the home for your log furniture is a cabin with 8-inch logs, a few large pieces of furniture will look better than many small ones. Larger furniture makes a room feel full without being cluttered.
Design Elements
March 21, 2008
A well-decorated room can still lack personality. To give your room a personality, choose from among these basic design elements, modify them to suit your tastes and implement them in a way which is just right for you.
1. A Theme - A ‘themed’ room says something about you, the person who has done it, your family or the place where you live. A theme will also provide you a place to showcase your collections, prized possessions, arts and crafts.
There are endless possibilities for using themes, but once you decide upon one, it will give you focus, as it will eliminate many things which don’t fit into it. This results in great ease in shopping, planning, implementing etc. Some best decorated rooms have had themes like Water, Nature, Eighteenth Century England, Contemporary, Ethnic, Pastels etc.
2. Artifacts - A piece of artistic value will always give your room that special touch you have always wanted. It can add texture and depth to a room. Depending upon your theme, the artifact may be an an antique chair, a painted bookshelf, an original painting or even an original watercolor by your local artist.
Who Has Keys to Your Castle?
March 20, 2008
One area of home security that is often overlooked, and one of the most visible, is the common key. Even if you are the owner of a new house, or the first tenant of your apartment, you cannot be sure that no one else has a key to your door.
Many times new locks are supplied to a building site that are keyed with special construction keys and pins. The theory is that when the builder turns the property over to the owner of the property, inserting and turning the owner key will trap the construction pins, rendering the construction keys useless. The reality is that not all projects receive locks that are construction keyed, some manufacturers do not offer the option, some builders may buy their hardware from a regular hardware store, etc.
Others who could have a key to your home include, the builder or a construction worker, real estate agent, ex owner or tenant, friend or relative of last owner or tenant, any of a dozen or so service people, or a neighbor who still lives next door.
Using Colors in Your Room
March 20, 2008
Colors play an important part in your Home Decor process. Colors are what give life and personality to your room.
Here are some quickies to keep in mind when deciding over colors.
1. If you are using many colors in one single room, make sure you use a color at least three times in the same room. You could use shades and tints of that color. For eg. your curtains, pillows and tablecloth can be of the same color. This gives a look of harmony and help avoid the ‘too much’ and ‘confused’ look.
2. For filling space, use warm colors like reds, yellows and oranges. They tend to grab the eye and fill the space and are soothing and warm.
3. For giving an illusion of more and open space, use cool colors like blues, greens and violets.
4. For a serene and comforting look, use pale pinks. The closer pink gets to red, the more energetic it becomes.
5. Use vertical stripes on walls and curtains for an illusion of height.
6. Light colored walls and ceilings make the room look larger and more spacious.
How to Attract Butterflies to Your Garden
March 19, 2008
The flittering of the butterfly through your garden is no accident if you planned your garden carefully. The adult butterfly flitters from flower to flower - sipping nectar from many flowers in your gardens, while other adult butterflies search for areas to lay their larvae. It is good to take note that the butterfly garden is going to differ from other areas of your garden. Your natural instincts will be to kill off pests, larvae and creatures in the garden, but in the butterfly garden your best results are noticed when you use organic gardening: Which means no chemicals at all.
In you want to include the use of butterflies in your landscape you will need to create a safety zone for your butterflies to feel safe. Butterflies frequent habitual zones, where they feel safe and where areas of the landscape meet with the tree lines. Creating your butterfly gardens near or around trees will help in attracting even more of these graceful creatures to your gardens.
Operation Closet
March 18, 2008
When the wife comes to you one fine day and says, "dear, I think we need a new closet for the bedroom", the heart surges in joy. Immediate thoughts of grabbing the coat and rushing off on a mission to the nearest DIY center enters the mind before realization dawns that first must come a shower and then work. Thursday today, Saturday would be best! A whole day of fun and joy to look forwards to! "Yes dear", you say casually, "I will get the car out on Saturday and look for something nice".
What a shame it was not Saturday when she had told you this. That would have meant immediate action. But this way you have two whole days to plan and work on OPERATION CLOSET. Two days to think about where to search for the perfect piece in all of the hundreds of shops surrounding your town. Two whole days to dream about buying this closet, taking it back home and assembling it and afterwards proudly displaying the finished product to a proud and satisfied Wife.
So Youve Decided to Finish Your Basement!
March 17, 2008
When a family decides to finish a basement space, there are so many factors to consider it can seem overwhelming. What does your family want to achieve within the new basement? Are you looking for a play area, a family room, a work-out room, home theatre, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, wet bar, etc? Do you have the square footage required to accomplish what you want? How do you get started and how long will it take? How much will it cost and is it worth the money? What if there is a huge beam in the center of you basement? Do you have to have a building permit? Do you have to remove the items you currently have stored in your basement?
If these questions make your head swim, try this approach: look for the right team of design/build consultants to navigate you through these waters.
Light Up Your Life With Feng Shui
March 16, 2008
Feng Shui (pronounced Foong Shway or Fung Shoy) is the ancient Chinese art of luck management, which works by maximising the flow of energy (known as ‘Chi’) in your environment. Every object, inanimate or living, possesses its own energy field and also has an affect on the flow of Chi in your environment.
The orientation and layout of your home, garden or business and its contents can impact your career, personal relationships, health and wealth. Whilst observing the basic rules of Feng Shui can greatly enhance your lifestyle, ignoring its principles can similarly bring misfortune and sorrow.
The most familiar method of Feng Shui is the compass method works on the principle of each sector of your house falling into a different area of your life, depending on its orientation. These sectors are identified by placing an octagonal, nine-sectioned diagram over a plan of your home. This diagram is known as the Ba Gua and is always aligned with the wall containing the front door or main entrance to the premises, with the compass points corresponding to those of the house directions. For example, if your front door faces North, then you should place the Ba Gua diagram on a plan of your property with the North sector (relating to career) aligned with the front door.
Bottle Gardening or Terrarium - Design and Maintenance
March 15, 2008
Women take pride in home decoration and gardening and want some unique and prized possessions that are not part of the neighboring dwellings. Gardening offers opening as there is no end to creativity, especially in the fields of flower arrangement, bonsai, mini-rock garden etc. But a sure and unique possession is a bottle garden. Many of us have seen a ship inside a bottle. This creative craft has given rise to the concept of bottle gardening. Bottle gardening can be compared to an aquarium where fishes survive with regular inputs of water and feed. Like wise, a bottle garden has the essential requirements of soil and water for the survival of plants that are housed in it, but with occasional care and maintenance. Apart from these essential requirements, the bottle garden has reservoir of water which keeps readily available moisture to the plant and also enables a humid environment in the bottle. Bottle gardens if effectively designed can fetch very high price. Selection of plants to be planted for the bottle garden is very important and in quite a few cases people fail to appreciate this fact and try to incorporate any plant they can lay hands up on! An ideal bottle plant is of slow growth and dwarf habit. Because combinations of plants are housed in a bottle garden all the plants selected must be slow growing and dwarf, so that smothering can be avoided. Extremes of temperatures should be avoided and hence the bottle garden should be placed in such a location where there is adequate availability of sunlight. Also the soil or the compost, used in bottle gardens be just adequate for survival of the plants and should not induce vigorous growth.
