Supernatural Botanicals

Super easy decor straight from the produce department.  Fill clear jars or bowls, or in this case, a candle holder, and fill them with colorful fruits (as shown, Granny Smith apples and oranges).  Huge wow factor, easy to do, inexpensive, and healthy.

Have every intention to decorate your entire home for Fall, only to get half way thought the season and realize it’s too late to start?  Start thinking about your Fall decor now.  Give yourself a couple of weeks ahead of time to prepare.  Start looking through magazines and at your neighbors decor, and translate those ideas to your own decor.  Look for great ideas for decorating pumpkins (www.MarthaStewart.com always has great ideas every year, and so does www.WomansDay.com).   The secret to any seasonal decor is to start early…and tis the season.  Get crackin! 

Steal This Look:  Talk about “yes” of monumental proportions, this outdoor design is amazing.  Vibrant oranges bounce off of the mellow chocolate of the bricks, and the furniture is perfection in scale and color.  Achieve this look with pillows in various shades of orange, a great piece of outdoor art with oranges, yellows and reds, and table decor, picking up shades of your pillows.  So gorgeous.  So easy to achieve, too.  Try it.

Add instant oooohh- factor to your room with fresh flowers.  It’s much easier and much less expensive than you might think…you just have to know how to do it right.

Carnations are widely available (local florist, grocery stores, etc.) and are relatively inexpensive.  The key to carnations is to group them together tightly in a small vase.  This will produce a huge, snowball-type cluster bouquet.  You should keep the carnations all one color…it’s much prettier and expensive-looking this way.  An all white group of carnations is gorgeous and works in every room of any color.  Carnations come in almost every color, so color coordinate with your room’s color.

Keep them on your nightstand, your desk at work, your kitchen island, everywhere.  They lightly scent the air with a light, fresh scent and look gorg.  And now you know how to do carnations right.

Want your holiday table to look like you hired a celeb party planner?  Steal this idea… cranberry ice!  It’s super-simple to make, and looks gorgeous in an ice bucket, or under a heaping load of shrimp cocktail.

Simply fill a cake pan (silicone is the easiest) with a couple handfuls of cranberries.  Next, fill with water just enough to cover the cranberries.  Freeze.  When the ice is solid, crack the ice into large pieces (bang on countertop) and place the ice shards over a bottle of wine or champagne in a bucket, or on a large tray and load it down with cocktail shrimp and sauce.  Add a few sprigs of greenery (use some pieces from the back of your Christmas tree if you have a live tree) to set the look off.

Simple + gorgeous.  Love that!

Love her or hate her (and I think we mostly love her), Martha Stewart has left her mark on all of us in one way or another.  Miss Martha turns 69 today. 

When you think about the “queen of lifestyle and living”, Martha Stewart is the first name that comes to mind.  Always.  We have all learned how to throw better parties, cook better meals, and certainly decorate our houses in more interesting ways thanks to Martha. 

She has taught us to be perfectionists (which strangely is looked upon as a negative in society) and we are better off for it. 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvQccAuTRlQ

Steal this look:  Gorgeous brown toile.

Another home office to love!  Take advantage of the niches, arches, and insets in your house.  Remove the doors off of a closet, and create an inset desk with great bookshelves (I did!)  Take advantage of existing alcoves, or have a carpenter build these for you.  It’s an easy project for a professional….questionable if it’s your husband doing the work.  Use your better judgment on that one depending on the husband.

Great idea to take advantage of every inch of space in your home.

Design junkies everywhere are raving over Metropolitan Home’s new book, Glamour.  Gorgeous interiors to inspire your own design.  Click here for your chance to win a copy of your own. 

For more interesting advice on design, visit my friend Julia over at Hooked On Houses. 

I had a picture that was about 10 years old.  I love the frame, but the picture inside was getting to be a bit on the nappy side.  I decided to reclaim my frame, inserting a matted print I found at Michael’s, and ….instant beauty.   I threw a few ornaments into a hurricane glass, and now have a great table arrangement.

Right now, I’m into digital black and white prints, with digital color occasionally thrown in.  I have peppered (pardon the pun) my kitchen/dining room/family room with these prints.  They are rather inexpensive, but have lots of charm and style, and look like a million bucks on your walls.  I always get compliments on them.

If you have artwork that you don’t like, but love the frame, reclaim the frame, throw in a matted picture you can purchase at any art store, and channel your inner interior decorator.

For other decor issues, take a peek in on how Julia over at Hooked On Houses is dealing with her expansive ceiling.