Friday, April 23, 2010

Loving and Learning How to Design & Decorate

Up until about a year or so ago I really hadn't a lot of interest in decorating.  Well, I take that back.  I did, just not in my house.  I didn't feel settled for one reason or another.  But I began to feel more like this was our home and so I started some room redecorating projects.  I did the girls' rooms first and they turned out great.

This is Lydia's room:


2009-06-04_6745

Oh my … it doesn't look like this right now!  Goodness that girl needs to clean up her room!  Let me just look at that lovely, CLEAN room for a bit.  Ahhhh.  In a minute I will get up and walk past it in its current state and I might scream.  One more look …. OK ...

For some reason I don't have pix of Grace's room on Flickr, but I did hers too.  It's a lovely light green and very happy.

But that was all LAST Spring.  And since then I haven't done much in the house.  I got kind of lazy over the summer and I let my garden grow out of control.  But this fall when Lydia went back to school I found myself wanting to take the time to make this our home.  So I began learning what I could and gathering inspiration and reading reading reading.

Firstly, I ♥ blogs.  I use Google Reader to organize and access all my feeds.  And I love to read blogs.  I have so many feeds in my reader that every day I have about 400 that I could read.  Seriously, right now it says I have 252 feeds unread.  That's a lot.  And I already read most of them this morning!  So I skim.  But there are several that are must reads for me every day.  I was going to list them here, but wowzers it's a long list and I just don't have time to make all those links!  I get a lot of ideas from these blogs!

So while I am going through Reader and looking at all my feeds I right click on the ones that I want to save and open them in a new tab.  When I am done going through Reader and opening up the posts I want to save, then I go to each one and bookmark it on Delicious.  I ♥ Delicious.  It's such a simple way to keep track of everything that I find inspiring or projects that I want to tackle at some point.

The other thing that I do is READ READ READ.  I ♥ the library and I ♥ magazines.  When I'm at the library I like to peruse the decorating section and pick up books to bring home.  Now, my style is not really House Beautiful or Traditional Home.  No.  I'm more the Flea Market Style and Fresh Home and Country Living kind of girl.  I also love Better Homes and Gardens.  And many of their special publications, like Do it Yourself Magazine.

I buy the magazines rather than checking them out from the library because I have an inspiration notebook.  After I read the magazines I go through and tear out all the articles and pictures that I like and put them in my notebook.  I ♥ my idea notebook.  I have several magazines that I need to go through at the moment!  Fun times for me :)

So there … that is how I am learning about decorating and I am loving it.  If I get a chance later I might post the main blogs that I read.  I'm off now to read those 252 unread feeds in my reader …

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