Quick Decorating Touches
The holiday season -- and all your company -- are fast approaching. This calls for quick action and easy decorating fixes to spruce up your home. Here is an assortment of ideas to help make your home a fresher and more festive place.
Place Leviton Everywhere Lights . . . everywhere! Set these little hockey-puck-size LED lights (get them in red for the holidays) on tables, the fireplace mantle, and on your holiday table. Surround them with some holiday greenery and berries. This is a cheap and easy way to add light and color, and you'll always use the lights any time of year as uplights for drama, outdoors mood dining, handy closet illumination, etc.
Add some Santa Maria Novella Potpouri in small dishes around your home. You'll have an unbelievable home fragrance to greet your guests. This is a real treat, with a fresh-from-Florence pedigree. The herbs and flowers come from the Florentine hills and are collected by hand, soaked in essence in huge earthenware jars, sealed with wax, and aged for months. The fragrance lasts for months and you can release more scent by fluffing up the potpourri on occasion with your fingers. Bella!
Some decorators recommend taking a color that dominates a room and going mad with it. One idea: paint your celing to match that dominant color. A few hours of painting with give you a bold decorating statement!
Go to a home goods store and pick up small baskets or bowls that match. Add drama to your rooms by spreading out these items and filling them with clusters of small apples, pears, walnuts, and chestnuts. You'll get a quick decorating fix with mucho impact when you multiply these accessories over several rooms and place the baskets or bowls on occasional tables, coffee tables, counters, and sideboards.
Find a great holiday gift wrap and buy roll after roll of the same pattern. Measure the back panels of bookshelves, hutches, cabinets, etageres, breakfronts, and other shelving units in your home and cut out gift wrap to fit. Use double-sided tape to affix the colorful wrap to the back of shelves and your books and accessories will really pop against this holiday backdrop. Other quick gift wrap decorating ideas: (1) Wrap the covers of hardcover books and place a colorful pile on a coffee table; (2) Cut out two sheets of gift wrap and stick them up to the front panels of your refrigerator, cutting out holes to accommodate the handles; mount your family pictures and kid art with magnets on top of this colorful background; stick a big gift bow near the top to complete the "wrapped gift" effect.
Select two colorful fabrics to quickly cover and skirt round tables in any room of the house. The fabrics should be different patterns, yet compatible, to provide a layered look (see photo below). If you have time, apply hems and end stitching to give the fabric a more finished look.
Wall sticker companies like RoomMates sell holiday sticker sets. Peel off the stickers and affix them to your wall for a simple decorating solution. When the festivities are over, peel them off your wall and put them away for next year. (Pictured below is RoomMates Build a Christmas Tree Wall sticker pack.)
Many homes are fireplace challenged, yet a fireplace and fire is a holiday tradition. You can quickly add a festive glow to any room or area of your home if you get a biofuel fireplace. Look into these stylish fireplace alternatives and find just the right spots in your home for them, with models ranging from tabletop flamers to free-standing units. Many biofuel models add sculptural flair to your decor, too, which is that extra bonus we like from quality home products (see the EcoSmart Fire line below).
