Supernatural Botanicals

We like to keep the atmosphere “inspirational” in our studio, and there’s no better way of doing that than to paint the walls…or at least a one focal wall of color.  Which color do you feel you’d be your most creative in?  Green, yellow, or orange?

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.

Do you obsess over your home’s design?  Are you constantly looking to books and magazines for great interior design ideas?  Is your DVR full of HGTV design shows?  Then you’ll love Design Sponge.   Design Sponge is one of the most popular design blogs in cyberspace, and has a celeb readership (Nate Berkus reads it regularly).   Design Sponge is packed full of great ideas to transform your home into your sanctuary.  Jump over and check out the blog here.

It’s always a surprise to see how overlooked our makeup vanities are.  Women spend an exorbitant amount of time and money on makeup purchases, so their makeup vanities should have equal exceptional value.  Creating a beautiful and functional vanity to your home will not only make your home more beautiful, it will make you more beautiful!  A functional, well-lit, well-organized vanity will naturally provide a better end result…beautiful makeup application.   One of our former makeup vanity blog posts continually elicits comments and inquiries on where to purchase them.  The following makeup vanities can be found at Pottery Barn Teen, www.PBTeen.com.

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.

The prettier the vanity, the prettier the girl.  Having a well-designed makeup vanity, or makeup station,  not only acts as an addition to the aesthetics to your room, but also makes putting makeup on a far more enjoyable experience.  Being able to keep everything in oneplace simplifies your life and keeps you ultra organized.  Look at these designs for inspiration.

Nothing makes working more enjoyable than a beautiful office.  Be creative, be colorful, and steal some ideas from some of these gorgeous home offices.

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.

Utilize plants all winter long to reduce fatigue, coughs, sore throats and other cold-related illnesses by more than 30 percent, partially by increasing humidity levels and decreasing dust.  Plants do wonders for the aesthetics of a room.  Home retailers, such as Home Depot, have beautiful 6′ plants for about $30.  Turn up the design element in the room with an up-light (also sold at Home Depot).  Putting a light underneath the plant’s branches will cascade shadows all over the room…it’s a gorgeous look.

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!