One of the things that I really think is important in life is to find those little things that make your every day a bit more special and to indulge in them. One of those little things for me is having fresh flowers in my home. Yes, there are good reasons to get house plants instead. Yes fresh flowers could be seen as a waste of money. However, I enjoy the whole experience of going out to find the right flowers for the week, arranging them in empty wine bottles and setting them up throughout my house. I also enjoy seeing and smelling them whenever I enter certain rooms. To me, this experience is worth the cost.

Of course, not everyone wants fresh flowers in their home. Some people would rather decorate with flowers in other ways through putting up floral wall paper or having flowery furniture. And for other people, flowers just don’t do anything at all. I’m not saying that having flowers in your home is the way to enjoy life. What I’m saying is that you should ask yourself what your equivalent is of the every day joy that flowers are for me and you should aim to bring that into your life on a regular basis. In the end, it is these little things that brighten our days that add up to a life worth living.

Tags: creativity, decor, floral, flowers, fresh flowers, home, Interior Design, life

I am someone who works from home but I don’t exactly have a home office. Instead, I have little office spaces within each of my rooms. I have a desk in my bedroom and a laptop on my bed most of the day. I have a second desk with a PC on it in the living room. And I have an art space in the spare bedroom where I work on more creative projects.

Despite the fact that this scattered approach to home office design is something that works for me, I do think that there are some major benefits to creating your own single home office space. The major benefit of that is that you have one specific place in the house where you work which seems to make it easier to separate work life in home life.

In my opinion, there are three things you need for great home office design. First, you need to make sure that the area that you choose for your home office is well lit, preferably with natural sunlight. Second, you need to make sure that you create storage space and can keep the place free of clutter. And third, you need some furniture or art that makes it personal and comfortable for enjoying your work.

Despite the fact that my home office is littered around different parts of my home, I do have all three of these areas covered. My desks and my art space both get sunlight. I’m unusually good about picking up the clutter in my home so I feel organized while I work. And every room has art and fresh flowers and other creature comforts. So I’ve found a design that works for me. Have you?

Tags: decor, design, home design, home office, houzz, work from home

I don’t have children of my own but I spent several years working as a foster parent, taking kids into my home. One of the things that I always tried to do was to make sure that the bedrooms that I offered to them were nice. Not fancy nice or filled with nice things – just pleasant places to be, places where they could feel safe and comfortable and maybe even happy.

There were a lot of ways that I did this including trying to personalize their rooms with photos and making sure that the beds were comfortable. But one of the easiest ways that I did this was with paint. I love painting rooms different colors and believe that a kid’s room should be painted to express his or her personality.

For one foster child, we did the room in blue and red because he was a big fan of the University of Arizona Wildcats and that was his favorite color. I also had a smaller bedroom where kids who weren’t going to be with me long stayed. That room was very small but I tried to make it seem bigger and brighter by painting the walls a sunny yellow and doing cloud-like blue-and-white paint on the ceiling.

I think that decorating any kids’ room should be fun. And it should be something that kids get to help with. And it should be something that you do again and again. Check out my recent article on The Best Colors for Decorating a Kids’ Room to get some more inspiration!

Tags: bedroom, children, decor, decorating, design, kids