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Archive for the ‘Home Decor’ Category

Outdoor rooms are extremely popular these days, and not just amongst the rich and famous! You can squeeze an outdoor room in almost any space, and decorate it to match the style and mood of your home, inexpensively!

Any room needs furniture, and an outdoor room is no exception. However, much of the patio furniture on the market today is quite expensive. You can make inexpensive resin chairs work for you, however. There are new varieties with a texture to them that looks more like wood than their slick plastic counterparts did. Look for these! Also, the white Adirondack resin chairs sell at my local discount stores from $11 to $15, and look amazingly like the real painted wood chairs, especially from a distance. Dress up your new chairs with some cushions, and they will fit right in to any décor! You can also now spray paint those chairs with a new paint from Krylon called Fusion. Pick it up for about $4 and customize cheap plastic chairs. (Hint: Look at garage sales for used ones you can repaint!)

Once you have your furniture in place, time to think privacy. Hopefully, you are protected on at least one side by a wall, fence, or building. A great way to offer yourself some more private moments is to use a trellis as an extra wall, and plant fast growing vines at its base. You can anchor the trellis in a planter to make a moveable wall. Morning glories, scarlet runner beans, and moonflower will all cover your new “wall” in no time!

If your outdoor room is protected in part from the weather, fabric curtains can be used outdoors as well. I suggest using cheap flat sheets and either a staple gun or a grommet kit. Cheap muslin can work as well, and is so inexpensive it can just be replaced the next year! This is a great technique for the end of a porch or deck, and can help control the sun as well. Be sure to use tiebacks for those times you want to let the breezes blow through.

Lighting is so often overlooked in outdoor rooms because of its expensive nature, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Candles and torches are wonderful for outdoor meals, and solar lights can be used for safety, without the expense of electrical installation. Strings of clear holiday lights are magical wrapped around a tree, or over a porch beam. Luminerias can be created with recycled cans and a punch tool, then drop a candle inside.

Finally, don’t forget accessories to add charm and style to your outdoor rooms! Pick up some unfinished bird houses at the craft store, and decorate them with paint, then hang in a group on the garden fence or wall. Use scrap lumber to paint signs for your garden room with inspirational sayings, or words. Use your hand tools as décor items and hang them on the fence or wall. Lean an old picket fence against the porch wall,( or a new one, you can get a premade picket fence piece for around $8 at the home improvement center!) then place planters of flowers in front of it. Add cut flowers in pretty pitchers and bowls from the kitchen, pick up candles at the dollar shop, and lay out a fabric napkin or two as an impromptu tablecloth.

Any way you do it, an outdoor room is worth having in any home, and with a little creative thinking can be decorated with style, comfort, and the spirit of the seasons which coax us out of doors.

Living Chairs Terms:

Congratulations! You’ve landed the perfect job, complete with your own office. Now what? Of course, you’ll be spending time mastering the ins and outs of your new position. And you’ll be moving into you new office. You will, no doubt, have the requisite desk, file drawers and bookshelves. But what can you do to make your office truly yours? With just these few office decorating tips, you’ll be on your way to having an office of which you can be proud.

First, determine how much space is available within your office for your decor. Take some pictures of the office you’ve been assigned. Look at where the window(s), door, electrical outlets and computer jacks are situated. These will determine the possible furniture layouts. You may even want to draw up a scale floor plan with like-scale furniture. You can then try several arrangements to see which one you prefer – without hurting your back!

Once you have your furniture in place, your files in the file drawers, and your books and manuals on the shelves,  you will see exactly how much wall, shelf, and floor space you have available for your personal touch.

Second, choose the correct type of image. If you are employed by a conservative company, you’ll want your office to portray a more conservative image. Conversely, if you work for a vibrant, innovative company, your office should communicate that same feeling.

Third, while keeping within the proper company image, be sure to include your personality in your choice of décor. Are you an avid sports fan? Do you spend your free time in the woods? Do you love to travel? Any of these, or many other, interests can be easily incorporated into your office decorating scheme.

Now that you’ve determined the space you have available for your personalized office décor, you’ve chosen the type of image that would work best with your company, and you’ve chosen the aspect of your personality that you would like to portray, it’s time to get busy selecting the actual items to include in your office.

A great place to begin is at a wall mural website, such as muralsyourway.com. You will find, literally, hundreds of ideas to suit your personality. If you are lucky enough to have a wall unobstructed by a window, door, or bookshelves, you may want to include one of their full-size murals in your decorating scheme. The murals also come in smaller sizes, which can be used as is or hung in a frame. Once you have a mural theme as your starting point, choose plants, vases, sculptures, picture frames, and other decorative items that coordinate with the theme and colors of the mural. Let’s look at a couple of possibilities – one with a conservative image and another with an innovative approach.

For a person working at a conservative company, with an interest in travel, imagine an office with a world map mural on the wall. Hung from the appropriate location on the mural are small framed photographs of the employee’s travels. On the bookshelves are items purchased during his/her world travels. There are several plants arranged in a group, each in a vase purchased at a different travel destination.  This employee has succeeded in decorating the office to suit his/her personality while keeping within the conservative framework of his company.

This same person, working at an innovative company, could choose a full wall mural that consists of a backdrop of his/her favorite destination, perhaps a tropical beach. Décor would consist, in part, of family photos at beach destinations. Groups of tropical plants in vases covered in shells collected at various beach destinations would be grouped in various areas throughout the office. Window coverings would be constructed from a tropical print fabric – or even beach towels. Bookshelves, again, would contain tropical items purchased at various destinations. As in the case above, the employee has succeeded in decorating the office to suit his/her personality, with the added joy of feeling as if one is truly in the tropics!