As you might know if you read this blog regularly, I’ve been putting together ideabooks on different home decor topics over at Houzz.com. I thought I’d share the links to some of my favorite ideabooks in case you have an interest in this topic.

Links to the best ideabooks I’ve written:

• Sophisticated and Fun: Good Design Can Be Both
• How to Add a Jacuzzi to your Home
• Home Design for the TwentySomething Person
• Save Old Furniture with Bohemian Chic Decor
• Awesome Stairway Ideas

Links to some of the best ideabooks by other Houzz authors:

• Not Exactly Roughing It: Fancy Camping by Kit Pollard
• Workspaces that Stimulate Creativity by txranchgirl
• Favorite Front Porches by Becky
• Decorative Bedding Done Right by Rachel_M
• Warm Up to Fireplaces by jerrifarris

Does anyone else use Houzz? Share your Houzz URL in the comments.

Tags: home, houzz, Interior Design, Link Love

I’m working on changing my apartment. I’m trying to get it to the point where all of the things that I own are things that I truly love. That means getting rid of all of the secondhand junk and things that I’ve outgrown and replacing it with truly lovable stuff. I’m not planning to spend tons of money or to make huge dramatic changes. I’m just tweaking things here and there to create a space that really means something to me.

Most of the house is a mess while it undergoes these changes. However, I’ve finally gotten to the point where at least one room in my apartment is filled with things I love. It’s my bathroom. Hey, you have to start somewhere right.

Ten things I love in my bathroom are:

1. My flower girl vase. You’ve seen it pictured here before. I found it a thrift store in Ohio last year and totally love it. It’s an old Gibson girl vase that I keep fresh flowers in on the sink in the bathroom.
2. Vintage mouthwash bottle. I just added this to the sink’s countertop as well. It’s silly but I hated the big Listerine bottle that doesn’t fit quite right in the medicine cabinet. My new vintage mouthwash holder is small and cute.
3. Pretty soap dispenser. For the first three years that I lived here, I used throw-away plastic dispensers from the store. Now I have a pretty grey-and-white soap dispenser that’s so much nicerh.
4. Lips shower curtain. I have a totally flirty, fun shower curtain. See it in the picture of my bathroom shown above.
5. Pin-up girl towels. I love the new towels that from Sin in Linen that I bought. They’re grey with pinup girls on them. Pricey for towels but totally worth it since I love them so very much.
6. Pin-up girl pictures. Sticking to a theme here, I have a few cheap framed pinup girl photos in the bathroom as well. They were one of the first things I changed to make the bathroom more lovable.
7. Bathmat and toilet seat cover. They’re a pretty purple pink color that matches the shower curtain. I do wish the bathmat was bigger and more comfy than it is though.
8. Sugar body scrub. I don’t use fancy soaps but I found this sugar body scrub from Trader Joe’s that smells like tangerine and I adore it.
9. Space heater. I like to use a space heater to keep warm when I get out of the shower.
10. Bathrobe. And I like to cuddle up in a big warm black bathrobe when I leave this room so it hangs right on the door at all times.

Tags: bathroom, decor, home, house, kathryn vercillo

There is something simple and cozy about this picture, isn’t there?

Note: This is blog is more than just a photo blog. Normal posts resume August 1st.

Tags: home, light on in the house, pictures, waiting with the light on

One of the places where I publish my writing is Houzz.com. This is a site that is loaded with great photos related to home design. I like to put together ideabooks there where I compile photos around a specific design subject and write about my thoughts on them. Recently one of the articles I did there was about bathroom sinks that are shaped like bowls. These are also called vessel sinks.

There are quite a few different designs for these types of sinks. However, the style that I like best is the style shown in the picture on this post. The sink actually looks like a ceramic bowl which is simply sitting on the counter. Some of the reasons that I’m drawn to this style of sink include:

• Natural design. I find the ceramic or clay pot feel of these sinks to really evoke a natural feeling. I like bathrooms that feel like a spa and I think this is conducive to that kind of earthy relaxed feeling.
• Small shape. Every bathroom I’ve ever had was small so I appreciate sinks, tubs and toilets that don’t take up a lot of room in the bathroom.
• Easier to decorate around. I think that these designs lend themselves to decorating with neat soap dispensers and vases which is something I like to have in my bathroom.
• Unique but not odd. I think these bowls have a really unique shape that differs from the standard sink. However, they’re common enough not to be too weird.

I’m really drawn to these types of sinks and plan to look at more of them to see if there’s a particular style or brand that I like best.

Tags: bathroom, bowl sinks, home, houzz, kathryn vercillo, sink shaped like bowl, vessel sink

I love checking out antique stores and thrift stores. I don’t usually end up buying anything (unless they have vintage postcards which I adore) but I did make a great antique store purchase recently. I found this colorful set of glasses and a pitcher for just $15. Yay!

Tags: antique, colorful, glasses, home, kathryn vercillo, photo, pitcher, thrift store find

I recently had the opportunity to do some research into birds. Specifically, I was learning about how to attract birds to your garden. What I learned was that there are a lot of little things that you can do to make your garden more appealing to the birds in your area but that there are only three major things that birds want.

The three things all birds want (or need) are:

1. Food
2. Water
3. Shelter

If you provide these three things then birds are going to want to come spend time in your garden. They’ll be fed, clean and safe from harm. That’s basically what all creatures want and birds are no exception.

What I find interesting is that the garden serves the same purpose for the bird as it does for the person. The person who has planted a garden with edible plants is using it as a food source. And even the person who has planted flowers is probably using the garden to sustain himself or herself in a more emotional way. We go to our gardens to find safety and peace. If we make it safe and peaceful for the birds, too, then they’ll come.

Tags: attract birds, birds, gardening, home, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, landscape

I believe that it’s important to get your dog spayed or neutered. I know all of the good reasons for this. The most important reason is that there is a huge problem with pet overpopulation in America which results in a lot of unwanted and uncared for animals. I support getting your dog spayed.

However, I have to confess that not all of my pets over the years were spayed or neutered. When I was growing up, we had one dog that my parents didn’t bother to get spayed. every year we’d have a litter of puppies to enjoy and to learn from. Watching those babies be born and grow up was educational and exciting.

Even as an adult, I had one dog that I didn’t get neutered. I had a female and a male dog. The female was already spayed. I put off neutering the male and then more and more time passed and I’d never done it. He was almost always kept in the yard but there were definitely some times that he got out. I admit that my failure to neuter him was irresponsible because of that.

So I’m thinking about the pros and cons of spaying your dog. When I weight them against one another, I come out of it believing that almost everyone should get their dog spayed or neutered. It’s the responsible thing to do. However, I can see some reasons that you might not get your dog spayed.

The main reason that you wouldn’t get your dog spayed is because you want to breed the dog. This could be because you’re breeding a dog for money or it could be a more general case like when I was a kid and we liked having puppies around. You have to consider the consequences of your actions if you want your pet to have puppies but for some people it’s going to be the right thing to do.

What do you think? Is it always wrong not to get your pet spayed? Or is it acceptable for some people to choose not to neuter their pets?

Tags: animals, dog, health, home, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, neuter, pet overpopulation, pets, spay, spay and neuter

I like to use a lot of different colors to bring life and energy into the places where I live. I hang up art and postcards. I spread colored fabrics across tabletops and hang them from the walls. I choose drapes and pictures frames and furniture that are all colorful. And I love to use bold paint to make a statement in a room.

I’m not picky about the colors that I use when decorating a home. I’ll try almost any color once to see how it makes me feel to live in a room that’s decorated with that particular shade. This experimentation has taught me a lot about how colors can alter your moods. And it’s taught me a lot about the colors that I like to live with.

One of the things that I noticed recently is that I’ve used the color yellow in every single place that I have ever lived. Yellow isn’t among my favorite colors but it offers a really great feeling for home design. It’s bright and optimistic and inspiring.

My first attempt at yellow actually wasn’t so great at all. I repainted my parents’ bathroom yellow when I still lived at home. Then I sponge painted over it with orange. The effect was garish. Believe me, looking into your reflection in a mirror that’s in a yellow room is not actually all that pleasant of an effect.

My other experiences with yellow in rooms has gone much better. My favorite was a small bedroom that I had added on to my old house. The walls were a great shade of bright yellow. The ceiling was painted to look like the sky. I always felt happy and peaceful in that sunny room even though it didn’t get a lot of natural sunlight.

Right now I’m using yellow to create bright patches in my bedroom. There’s a yellow and green piece of fabric over my desk. There are a few yellow fabric art pieces on the wall. There’s a yellow blanket slung over a small couch. And there is some yellow artwork on the French doors that separate my bedroom from my living room. It makes me feel like waking up. I think I’ll always have yellow somewhere in my homes.

Tags: color, decor, decorating, design, home, houzz, kathryn vercillo, paint, yellow

My dad recently re-did the floors at my sister’s house. Dad is a custom woodworker who also does urban harvesting and sells that wood to others. He had a bunch of extra wood because of this and was able to use this reclaimed wood to create my sister’s new floors (as well as a really great new wooden door for the front of their home). The new floors themselves are such a work of art that they dramatically altered the style and mood of the house.

This got me thinking about how floors can be used as fifth walls to really shape their space. A truly wonderful floor can be a style foundation for the home. Bold rugs, painted floors, unique tile options and the placement of large sculptures directly on floors are all ways that you can start to use a floor as the canvas for a room’s design.

I’m not sure yet what this means for my own home. I live in an apartment that already has wood floors. They’re nice but they need to be cleaned up. Plus I think that they need a bit more than just their own selves to be truly beautiful. Perhaps some rugs? Maybe some art propped against the walls to bring the eye down to floor level? I’m not sure yet but I’m hoping to figure it out. Or to at least have fun trying!

Tags: decor, design, floor, hardwood floor, home, houzz, Interior Design, kathryn vercillo, style

I have lived and stayed in a variety of different types of housing. This includes rural, urban and suburban homes in various parts of the country. It includes big houses, small houses and apartments. And what I find is that I’m comfortable in all types of different homes but that there must be decen natural sunlight in whatever place I’m staying in for me to like it.

I’m lucky because the place that I’m in now gets great sun all throughout the day and that’s really special in a place as foggy as San Francisco. One of the major reasons that I haven’t thought seriously about moving to a new apartment is because there aren’t too many places in my price range here that get great natural sunlight.

I was recently daydreaming about getting even better sunlight as I looked through design photos of skylights. I’ve got someone above me in the apartment here so I’m not going to be getting a skylight anytime soon but I do definitely like them. Bathrooms and kitchens in particular are places that I think should have skylights.

What do you think? Do you like skylights and big windows or are you a drawn-curtains kind of person?

Tags: decor, home, houzz, Interior Design, lighting, skylights