What Kind of Mantel Do I Need?

Now that the shutter is complete in our living room, I am starting to focus on the mantel. This is a picture of our, as yet, untouched mantel in all its glory. Now, the picture that my husband hung for me that is way too low, but it's there. I don't have a photo to show you but the wall that that fireplace sits on is very tall and the room has a cathedral ceiling which makes the wall appear even taller than it is. We are lucky in that the fireplace is not just hanging on the wall like so many are these days until we finish them off but, actually already had a nice marble tile surround that I think I'll keep intact. So, the trick for me is finding the perfect full mantel in the right size and for the right price.

I keep waffling back and forth between stone and wood. I think I want a lighter color, like a creamy or whitish color and that is why I think a stone or faux stone mantle would be nice. I think any wood color might look funny but, it also might tie in nicely with the wood floors from the dining room and pull the two spaces together.

Now, if I am able to just focus on one space, the mantel area, I actually might be able to get something accomplished.

Here's the fireplace up close. The marble part is 64.25 inches wide by 43 inches tall with an 18 inch apron and the fireplace is centered in the marble tile at 40 inches wide by 31 inches tall with the actual opening starting at 6.25 inches from the bottom. I think I'd like to remove the doors and just have a screen there and maybe even just put in the fake logs so we can have a fire without polluting the environment.

What do you think? Do you have any good sources for mantels? If so, I'd love to hear them.

Comfortable Country French

I found this article that describes Country French decor as "comfortable" and as I read the article I thought that that is exactly what I like about it. The colors are peaceful and calming, the minimal simple accessories with the curvy, yet simple, lines of the furniture all make me feel very relaxed.

Fung Shui The Easy Way

I have heard so much about Feng Shui and never really read or studied it. One day not to far in the past I decided I would do a little search on Amazon for good books on Feng Shui. Of course, being the person that I am I wanted something that I could easily understand and a good read. So, I settled on Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life : How to Use Feng Shui to Get Love, Money, Respect and Happiness.

Here are the basics of Feng Shui. The basis of Feng Shui is that your home, room, car, or whatever other space you can imagine is divided into nine areas. So, whatever space you are thinking about Feng Shui-ing (is that a word?) you would place a grid with nine squares in it, or a bagua, overlaying your space. Each of the nine squares stand for an area of life with the nine areas being Prosperity or Abundance, Fame or Reputation, Relationships, including Marriage and Love, Creativity and Children, Helpful People and Travel, Career and Lifepath, Skills and Knowledge or Wisdom, Family, and Health and Other Situations. So, the bagua looks like this:

The idea is that you need to stock items with certain elements of water, earth, fire, and metal to balance your space and, therefore, your life. There is so much information to digest that it is impossible to go into in one post but if you want a great overview, I highly recommend this book, Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life : How to Use Feng Shui to Get Love, Money, Respect and Happiness, for a great overview of Feng Shui.

Modern Furniture, Is It Your Thing?

As you undoubtedly know by now, modern designer furniture does not fit into my design scheme but that's not to say that I don't think its sleek lines and color choices are not intriguing.

I like this Baroque Low Table that is available in seven color options, one for any color scheme you are working within:



In the right space, I love this table and actually all of the elements in this design. I think what I really like about modern designer furniture is the simplicity of it. Generally modern design elements carry clean lines, usually with some circular element thrown in for interest and movement. Also, the color scheme used in modern design is either monochromatic, different shades of the same color, usually neutrals, or black and white with some pop of red or other vibrant color.

Now, I need to buy a second home so I can employ some modern design elements while still keeping my Country French style intact.

Small IS better!

I bet you never thought you'd hear that!

Several months ago I was watching television one night and saw a spot on the new rage of tiny homes that is starting to grip the US and the world. The homes I saw looked like miniature homes with all the amenities we currently enjoy, except excess space. These tiny houses were only about 100 square feet more or less, that is less than the size of my family room.

Then today I see that Oprah has done a special on small houses so I do a little poking around. It seems you can but the plans for these small homes for less than $1000 from Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. Not only that, it seems that you can even get a book, Tiny Book of Tiny Houses, that is all about the cute little homes.

I think that these tiny homes are becoming so popular because they are billed out as being "green." That makes sense because you don't need an entire forest of trees for the wood nor do you need all the other materials you'd need to build a much larger home. The average size is around 100 square feet, they can fit just about anywhere, and some are even mobile. Peak your interest?

It peaked mine enough to perform some searches to gain some more understanding, I concluded that the buzz about these tiny houses is so popular there is even a blog about it.

Here are some examples of these small homes for your viewing pleasure. They are so cute!

Bracing for Furniture Deals

The High Point Market is underway in North Carolina and the furniture manufacturers are bracing themselves for a brutal forecast, Forbes reports.

If you have never heard of it, the High Point Market happens only twice a year and is the "largest furnishings trade show in the world," according to the High Point Market website. At the High Point Market you can find 188 buildings packed with furnishings and accessories, with over 12 million square feet of showroom space and more than 2000 exhibitors. Every six months approximately 85,000 people gather to see tens of thousands of new products unveiled. The Market says, "if you can't find it in High Point, it probably doesn't exist." With all that space, I hope they are right.

Attendance at the market is free but you must register and the catch is that you must have a resell license that shows you are in a furniture related business. (If you order Kimberly Causey's book, that I talk about here, you can be in the furniture related retail business if you follow her lead.)

Both the Forbes report and the High Point Market industry report state that sales of furnishings are expected to be slower than "normal" until at least the later half of 2009. I hope that if these reports are right that will bode well for the consumer in search of better than usual deals.

You know how I dislike paying retail prices for furniture and accessories and the not so rosy forecast may just be my lucky break.

Roche Bobois Puts the French in Furniture

One of my downfalls is that I really like stores like Roche Bobois. I count that in and of itself is a drawback because they have the best furniture styles but at the absolute (okay, yes, I have seen more expensive, don't ask) high end of the scale. In addition to that their showrooms are few and far between.

I am not really a modern person for my own home but I do like the Roche Bobois style. My favorite of their collections, though, has to be Les Provinciales collection. This collection has the traditional French lines and many choices of furniture pieces. I love to go into the showrooms and just browse. Call me crazy but it gives me many ideas, many which I cannot afford to implement, I might add. But that does not mean I cannot look.

Now, maybe, just maybe, when I receive the updated versions of my books from Kim Causey at Smart Decorating I can swing a designer's discount there, too. Have I mentioned that I cannot justify paying retail prices for furniture and accessories?

My Halloween Decor

The air is crisper and fall is settling in, therefore it must be time to think about some kind of holiday decorations. Here is my bare front porch that desperately needs some attention.

So, I grab my twins last Saturday morning and convince them to help me decorate a little for Halloween. Mind you I have one boy and a little girl so the decorations cannot be too scary. As one of my friends pointed out to me, if I had only boys the decorations would be much more scary or my boys would refuse to live there.

These are the decorations on one side of the door (and the little houses have LED lights in them that turn different colors when you turn them on). The Boo sign was something that I could not live without, one of those things I saw and had to have.

And here's the view from each side of the porch.

And the view coming up the stairs.

I think I need something with some height so I am not quite done yet but I like the look so far. I will update my post when, or should I say if, I find exactly what I am looking for to add some height.

Happy Halloween! Boo!

Exterior Painting Again!

We have not painted the exterior of our home in about eight years so the time is coming that we will have to decide what to do and when. As you probably have noted, I like to research our options regarding various projects prior to jumping in with both feet. So, while looking for ideas about color for our home's exterior I found this website for something called the Coolwall system for exterior painting. Apparently the paint has some sort of special reflective properties to it that causes your home to not absorb the solar heat. I'm not sure how or if it works but it sounds pretty cool. In addition, it is billed out as a green (environmentally friendly) product and has some backing from the Department of Energy.

The product comes in some 570 colors so there must be at least one for everyone. The colors seem to range from neutral to bright and most everything in between. And, if you have any CCRs, like we do, I'm sure there are some colors that would earn approval from your neighbors and the board.

We have not tried this Coolwall system paint so I cannot say whether its claims are true about heat reflectivity that reduces energy usage but when I was explaining it to my husband he seemed intrigued, and that's saying something!

Angies List Experience

I'm not sure how but, I received some kind of advertising for Angie's List sometime last year. I performed a few searches and found out that the list had quite a few businesses rated in our area. I'm not sure how you go about finding out about businesses and service companies but I usually plug a search into Google, some thing like, "[business name] opinions" or "[business name] ratings" to see what I can find. I often find nothing and, depending on the service, I am often reticent to move forward without some further information.

Well, as I was looking for the shutter that I have so often spoke of, I checked Angie's List and I was hooked. Not only did I find the company that installed my shutter, I found I could sit here all day and search for companies by name or by service sector of keyword, if you will. I really had no idea about all the things I "needed" until I was able to easily access information about providers in my area.

If you dare, try it, Angie's List - Where thousands of consumers share their ratings on the local contractors and service companies they hire. Learn more.

I have talked a lot about Veranda Magazine. Now, I found that at Amazon you can get a two year subscription for $20. Seeing as I paid more than that for a one-year subscription last year I am pretty excited.

What I like about Veranda are all the ideas that the pictures help me generate. In addition, I look through the ads and then look up the vendors that I particularly like on the Internet to see what their other options are. Sometimes I book mark those sites for reference and sometimes I decide that the advertisement was not representative of their offerings and I move on. But, all the while, I am building a library of things I like so I have those resources for reference when I get there. The getting there part is the hard part for me...