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Kitchen Organization Ideas

Go through your kitchen and discard anything you don’t use, along with any food, spices or medicines kept in the kitchen that are beyond their expiration dates. Then take everything out of your cupboards and drawers, and wash the insides with warm soapy water. Rinse, let dry and replace cupboard and drawer liners with fresh, new ones.

Store pots, pans and cooking utensils near the stove, nesting the pots and pans together to conserve space. Make sure each one you choose to keep has a matching lid. Keep your dishes and silverware near your eating area or your dishwasher to shorten meal preparation or cleanup time. Plastic storage containers should be inventoried to ensure each has a matching lid and that they are free from cracks or other damage. Store them near your refrigerator to ease meal cleanup time.

Alphabetize your spices and keep them near the stove on a spice rack or in a nearby cupboard on a revolving rack. Store food items that you use on a daily in a place you can easily grab them when needed. Organize your pantry so that similar canned goods are in the same place and can be found easily when it’s time to cook meals. Make sure your children an easily reach items they use on a regular basis, and make sure items such as knives, scissors, and household chemicals are out of reach and secured in a locked cabinet. Utilize airtight food storage containers to lengthen the shelf life of your foods.

If you have small appliances on your kitchen countertop that you don’t use on a regular basis, remove them and store there in a nearby cupboard or pantry. A countertop storage cabinet for those appliances that are used on a regular basis keeps them out of site and helps reduce the countertop clutter.

 

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Modern Furniture

As the name suggests, ‘Modern Furniture’ is furniture of our times that is comfortable, affordable, and stylish to match modern tastes and perspectives. Technically speaking, the phrase Modern Furniture refers to furniture from the latter half of the 20th century and on into contemporary styles of today. A microscopic view of this kind of furniture reveals that designers more often than not use the phrase for furnishings manufactured in the 50s and 60s in post world war II America, and to a lesser extent in Europe. This type of furniture is quite experimental in nature; use of curvilinear shapes, integrated modular elements and understated monochromatic color schemes is common and is very different from the more traditional rounds, squares and rectangles.

When you decide on redecorating the house with modern furniture, some key things need to be kept in mind:

•    Have a game-plan ready before you even set foot inside a home furnishings store.

•    Measurements of rooms and photographs help a lot in visualizing the furniture in its final destination while shopping. Having wall paint samples and carpet may be helpful if you are looking at changing only the furniture.

•    Each element in the room has to be treated almost like a sculpture with an almost ‘museum like’ look. You can experiment with highlighting art by placing sculptures on columns or pedestals. Uncluttered furniture arrangement which forms the framework for home décor is the underlying objective.

•    Bold statements with both furniture and accessories are an apt definition for Modern Furnishing. Ruffles, florals, carved details, traditional shapes are usually a no go.

•    Selection of store is also important as furniture stores broadly fall into 4 general categories – Promotional, Medium, High End and Specialty Stores. These stores may provide you with a still wider array of styles like Traditional, Country, Early American, Shaker, Mission, Modern, Art Deco, Retro, etc. It may therefore be a good idea to give the stores a call and ask for their furniture style line-up. Unless you are fixated with the kind of furniture you want, it might be helpful to note that Modern Furniture includes styles like Southwest, Lifestyle, Lacquers, Euro-look, Retro (50′s),  and Art Deco.

So just go ahead and experiment!

•    While deciding on fabric, remember that Modern fabrics tend to have lots of design and color-change in their appearance. Here a degree of creativity might help in visualizing the complete set.

•    Modern accent tables may use a variety of material like metal, glass, stonework as well as wood. Choose well in order to have a synchronous furnished outcome.

•    Where lamps and accessories are concerned, remember that fine lines are a hallmark of modern look. A gaudy or heavy look is certainly not modern.

•    Mostly Modern Styles use geometric lines and well-matched colors to add an air of neatness to the whole look and feel of the room. For additional impact make sure the room(s) have lots of natural light and plenty of space. Cove lighting and washing walls with light are other options to be explored.

And lastly, do remember you’re the person who has to live with what you decide upon now. Have fun shopping!

 

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Office Decorating Ideas

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!

As you can see, using just these few decorating tips, you too can have an office that fits your personality while keeping within the bounds of your company’s culture. Enjoy your decorating adventure!

 

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Restaurant Furniture in your home

There’s a certain degree of nostalgia associated with booths from old diners and tables from old soda shops. They just give the aura of ‘good old days.’ If you dare to be different, you can bring those good old days back and incorporate them into your home décor by using restaurant furniture in your home.

Think how much fun it would be to have breakfast at a diner every morning. It can happen if you put a booth in your breakfast nook or dining area. Every lunch or dinner would be like a blue plate special! Or, treat your kids and their friends to banana splits and milk shakes at tables reminiscent of an old soda shop.

So you’re willing – but how do you go about finding such treasures? You could pay someone to custom design them for you. But where’s the fun in that? You could use an on line search in your quest by using key words like “used restaurant furniture” or “restaurant furniture.” Both key words will turn up a number of results.

But the fun way to find used restaurant furniture starts with scouring the classifieds of your local newspapers.

Some actually carry a category called “Restaurant Equipment” or “Used Restaurant Equipment.” If not, search general merchandise and furniture for sale columns. Then, start looking for auctions. Your area newspapers will probably have a particular day of the week on which they run auction ads. Ask to find out when your paper runs its most of its auction ads. Look for restaurants going out of business, then read the list of items to be auctioned in the ad. If you see a piece of furniture that sounds promising, go check it out. If it is what you are looking for – or can easily become the perfect piece of furniture with minor modifications – start bidding. The auction process is fun and don’t be surprised if you get caught up in it. It’s always good to go into an auction with a budget of how much you will allow yourself to spend. Check out the items closely first before placing a big.

Otherwise, you might pay too much for a furniture item that looked good from a distance but upon closer inspection you find cracks and other damage.

If you decide to go with a restaurant look with your furniture, you have many decorating options available to you.  You could concentrate on a theme room with décor focusing on the theme, like breakfast, Coca-Cola or other brand names. Decorations ideas to accentuate your restaurant furniture might include old magazine ads for the theme product, old menus from restaurants, or labels from your favorite cans and boxes of food.

You might even create a wall border using labels from canned foods!

Whether you incorporate one piece of restaurant furniture into your home or create your entire kitchen and dining area around a room full of it, you and your guests will always enjoy the novelty. After all, who doesn’t like going out to eat?

 

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Interior Decorating For Small Apartments

So you have a small apartment. You are possibly wondering, how do I make my small space look comfortable and inviting with out looking cluttered? I have your answer. Actually several answers first of all start with looking around, notice the placement of windows and which way the light reflects in the rooms during different times of day. You do not want to blind someone, who could possibly be visiting, by that stunning sunset. Also look at your current furniture and the colors that it is or is not. Some colors can make a room look small, clinical and cold. Good warm toned colors also make it more comfortable for you to live there.  Browns, Reds, Yellows, and Oranges are great colors to open up space and make the room warm and inviting. Use accent rugs to help with the addition of colors as some Landlords do not allow you to paint. Sofa Covers are a great way to add color and save from wear and tear on your furniture.

When choosing a color scheme please note that you should choose something that is easy to clean i.e., browns and grays. White is not a good choice, unless you plan on never really living in your place. Try to look at the big picture, small living rooms means that you shouldn’t get a sectional sofa. Instead try a small love seat or futon couch. Not only does the futon couch help with space but it can be converted to a bed for those single room apartments. If you are on a budget and don’t want to get rid of your current bed and you are in a studio apartment try a bed that looks like a bunk bed with out the lower bunk. That way you can store your dress and other articles under the bunk and enclose it with a curtain and no one can see your unmade bed up top. This is very useful for bachelors.

Try creating rooms with the use of decorative screens.

It can make a single room look like two or more rooms are there. Also remember your curtains, they should be allowing the light in, the more light you allow in the bigger the space looks. Use a small bistro table as a dining table. It is intimate and makes for a great coffee talk spot. If you are lucky enough to have some one in your apartment remember to always hide your laundry. Laundry laying around makes the apartment appear cluttered and small. Plants are a great way to make your room appear bigger. Try hanging them from the ceiling or by using hooks on the wall. Don’t forget the importance of mirrors. The use of mirrors can make your small apartment look large. Use a focal point and angle your mirror towards it, it gives the illusion of depth. Most importantly make sure you always have a clean space, it is always bigger when it is clean.

Ok so now you have gone and cleaned, you are noticing that the apartment still looks small. Question your storage. You need some ideas for storage you say? Well I am full of them. Look around and if you notice you have lots of magazines lying around get yourself a magazine holder. It is a handy little box that is decorative to your specific likes and it cleans up your tables of clutter.

Get your self a footrest that has storage inside of it. It is nice for when the surprise guest comes over and you need to store something quickly. A coffee table with storage underneath it is also a wise choice. The more storage you have that isn’t added clutter makes your life easier. Wall shelves help to eliminate tabletop mess. Put your collectible gnomes on a small wall shelf and look at all the free space you have just created for yourself.

All of the suggestions presented here to you are easy do it yourself projects. You can get most of these easy to use items at your local all purpose store and hardware store.

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Ideas For Creating a Tuscan Kitchen Design

Tuscan kitchen design immediately conjures images of Italy and sunlight and warmth.  In fact these kinds of images are just what you need to think of when coming up with the perfect Tuscan kitchen design.

Tuscany a region in north central Italy is known as a warm place almost year round an Tuscan kitchen design should reflect this.  Tuscan kitchen designs are defined by colors such as siena, terra, and sepia.  Tuscan Kitchen design uses a lot of soft warm colors and textures.  Windows in the kitchen should provide as much natural sunlight as possible.

The Tuscan style has evolved through the centuries, influenced by Etruscan metal craft and pottery as well as the Italian Renaissance.  The Tuscan style can be seen in mosiac tiles, wrought iron gates, bridges and architecture.

Tuscan kitchen design and décor can enhance the look and feel of any kitchen.  You can add a big wooden table, open cupboards, along with ceramics, pots, pans and Tuscan-inspired dinnerware.
These items can also make great decorations when you are not using them.

Kitchen island design in the Tuscan kitchen design style has its origins from ancient Roman times.  This is the origins of the nice ornaments you will find with all tuscan kitchen design.  The Tuscan kitchen island is usually of a dark color painted on oak.  Sometimes the islands are given one coat of white paint.  Scratches are added to give the wood a more antique look.

In Tuscany families tend to eat and cook together.  A good Tuscan kitchen design should provide for adequate room for you and your family to more around the kitchen freely.

The Tuscan kitchen design style is very popular now.  One reason is that this design style be quite affordable while be stylish and providing more comfortable kitchen.  The Tuscan kitchen design style accessories include pottery, jars, and hand crafted tiles depicting grapevines and vineyards as well as grapes, tomatos, and olives.  Having these design elements just naturally goes with Tuscan meals.

Walls – Wall should be painted in a rich Tuscan color such as rich reds, intense yellows, or strong yellows.  Consider a wall treatment such as molding, or murals to create a more Tuscan feel to the walls.

Floors – Use Terra cotta or clay tiles, glazed ceramic and marble inlay in intricate patterns.  Wooden floors can be left plain with natural color and finish with a Persian rug.

Furniture – For a Tuscan kitchen design use sturdy pieces of furniture that is also strong and functional.  Kitchen tables and chairs should also be well-built and strong.

Cabinetry – Cabinetry should feature open shelves for displaying your ceramics, as well as baskets, and cooking utensils

Sink – Kitchen sink should be white ceramic to be more compatible with your Tuscan kitchen design.  You might also consider a large rectangular marble sink.

As for other Tuscan kitchen design ideas you can add racks to display copper pans.  Also wrought iron pull for drawers, and wrought iron light fixtures.  You might even want to add a brick-fired oven just like the type found in large Italian farmhouse kitchens.

By designing your kitchen with the Tuscan design style and bring in the look of old Tuscany your kitchen and home will never be quite the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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