I know I’m a few days early, but these tulips inspired me!
{photo Country Living}

Hi All! Sorry I’ve been MIA but I’ve been busy with clients and the Dream House. It’s a good kind of busy but trying to juggle it all can be diffifult!

These past couple of weeks I have been developing the color palette for the Dream House. Paint color selection is a challenge for most people -  it’s my #1 requested service. No one wants to make a mistake including yours truly!

Over the years I have become good friends with Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams. Here in NE Ohio where Sherwin Williams in headquartered, it seems like every painter uses SW. I like their paint but feel that Benjamin Moore offers more color selections so I end up using both in my work.

Since I’ve been knee deep in selecting paint colors, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite spring colors.

From Sherwin Williams
SW 6134 Netsuke – the perfect neutral beige. It has a yellow green undertone, perfect for spring.
SW 6204 Sea Salt – I fell in love this this color four years ago when I used it in an in-law suite. A soft blue green that looks like sea glass. I’ll be paining our living room this color in a few weeks.
SW6267 – Sensitive Tint – a beautiful soothing, sophisticated violet.
SW 6414 Rice Paddy – this yellow green is on the walls of my office which I have designed to feel like a perpetual spring/summer. When the winter weather gets me down, my office palette picks me up!

Benjamin Moore
HC-4 Hawthorne Yellow
HC-5 Weston Flax
If you are looking for the “perfect yellows” check these two colors from BMP’s historical paint collection. They are amazing. Yellow is one of the most difficult colors to pick out. Most of the time they come out way too bright and neon. Hawthorne yellow is a more saturated yellow while Weston Flax is softer. Both are perfect!
052  Conch Shell – this soft peachy pink does look like the beautiful soft color inside a conch sell!
631 Aberdeen Green – a wonderful robin’s egg blue green that reminds me of spring.
920 Honey Harbour - a soft creamy yellow beige – another perfect neutral and a great alternative to beige.

Next week is St. Patty’s day and everyone will be wearing green and drinking green . . . and that gets me to thinking about how green can also be a powerful force in decorating our homes.

I’m not talking green as in money {although it can’t hurt}, I’m talking plants! They are one of the most important elements in decorating but are often forgotten. Plants are the finishing touches in decorating.

Here are a few tips regarding “faux” or silk plants that will have your house looking fabulous and your friends green with envy!

#1 Palms are IN  Ficus Trees are OUT!
I know, I know. You can get a ficus on sale at the craft stores for $10.00. Well I’m here to tell you that the ficus tree is passé, out of date, gone with the wind. Palms {like the one shown here} are in and designers have been using them on the coasts for years. That means they probably won’t get popular here in Ohio for another couple years!

Palms are gracious and have beautiful depth and dimension. It’s gotten to be a joke  about me not liking ficus trees. It’s nothing personal, mind you, but most of them look cheap and that’s how they make your house look. Pop a palm in the dark corner of a room and illuminate it with a canned light and voila! Instant elegance.

#2 Variegated it OUT
What’s variegated you ask?? The spider plants and other silks you have in your house that have two colors  sometimes three. They are out because, again, they look cheap. Solid color leaves on your plants please! (And the ficus trees that have the burgundy under their leaves – they are the worst offenders!)

#3 Nature Rulz
Only buy silk plants in the colors that nature makes them. Oh, those hideous blue flowers -Mother Nature is having a fit! When you go to the craft stores to buy your silk flowers, only select the ones that look like they do in nature. In real life, the good Lord does not make bright blue daisies, so please don’t pick those daisies when you’re at the craft store. They look cheap and really do nothing for your house  – I promise!

If you want some cheap but chic ideas for giving a room in your house an update, hop on over to this link in our local newspaper today. They interviewed me for their Progress Series of articles.

The reporter who interviewed me, Jean Bonchak, was super terrific to talk with and we had fun discussing the latest trends for keeping our homes on trend. Hopefully readers will find a nuggest or two that will help them spruce their nest up for spring!

I’m so happy that they were able to include a small list of some of my favorite design/decorating blog friends! {www.susieharrisblog.com, www.thenester.com, www.livingwithlindsay.com and www.theletteredcottage.net.}

It’s the house that everyone seems to love. The Hampton’s beach house from the movie, Something’s Gotta Give.

The fabulous kitchen and dining room. The must-have living room. This house/set design was the reason I bought the movie on DVD!

If you love great movie homes, you must go visit the ladies of The Skirted Roundtable and listen to their interview with  Beth Rubino, the Set Decorator for Something’s Gotta Give.

Beth talks about the process of creating these beautiful sets and you’ll be kinda shocked to hear how they created the iconic rug in the living room {above}.

The Something’s Gotta Give house is going to be the inspiration for the 2010 YMCA Dream House. This year’s house is a lake house – our first ever! {For those of you not familiar with Lake Erie, it looks like an ocean – you can’t see land across or from side to side.} So the Something’s Gotta Give house is a perfect inspiration for our designers.

I’m excited to announce that I have been asked to be the design coordinator for this year’s house! I’m very honored and a bit overwhelmed – it means I help determine the color palette and other major aspects of the house. I have also been asked to design the kitchen, eat-in area and the living room. Wow! I’m going to be pretty busy these next few months but that’s a good thing!

I hope you enjoy the interview with Beth – so interesting! Thanks ladies of The Skirted Round Table!

On my growing list of  100 “must have” items that will  help transform a house into a home: LAMPS. They truly do light up our houses and make them feel like homes.

When it comes to lighting, the general rule of thumb that I follow is that you should have as much light coming from the floor as you do from the ceiling. That means both table and floor lamps are key to make rooms feel warm and inviting.

What’s popular now are glass base lamps. You will find them in beautiful colors like  these Optic Sea Glass lamps from Crate and Barrel {above} or clear like this one from Ballard Designs {I love it paired with the sea grass shade!}

I’m also seeing some Mercury glass lamps out there but so far, they are still pretty expensive. I’m sure at some point we will see them at TJ Maxx, Home Goods & Marshalls.

We’re also seeing lamps with great texture {think wood, paper} and some wonderfully-graphic/architectural shapes. Updating your light fixtures is one of the quickest ways to give a room a facelift.

We’ve talked a bit about what’s hot . . . but sometimes it helps to know what’s NOT. Take a look at this blue specimen. I have also seen it in burgundy, hunter green, pink, etc.

If you have any of these around, you can go ahead and chuck the pleated shade. Spray paint the entire lamp base (silver/brass and all) and you will give it a whole new life in this century!

Pleated shades are generally out, texture (linen, burlap, silk) are in. Cone-shaped shades are still out there but short/shallow drum shades are really where it’s at.

One last little rule I follow on table/floor lamps. Arrange them in your room so they are connected by an imaginary triangle. This placement creates a balance in the room and helps to create that perfect warm & inviting look we all love.

Spring is just around the corner, right? I mean, despite the foot of snow on the ground we are less than a month away from the first day of spring which is March 20.

The longer I’m back on the North Coast, the more spring becomes my favorite season. That’s because it’s the season farthest away from winter! 

After six months of being hermetically sealed in our house, there is just nothing like open window season and catching the scent of freshly-cut grass as it wafts in and perfumes the house.

Since moving into our Cottage In the Woods, we have done an updating project at the house each spring. Last year was the kitchen and this year it will be, in part, the living room fireplace.  

 We will be getting rid of our 10-foot brick fireplace surround. It’s just a monstrosity.  (Here it is during one of my projects!) This is one of the rooms that has stayed exactly as it was when we bought it. Aren’t the builder white walls so . . . in need of warming up?!

We are tearing out all that brick and in it’s place we are putting in some very simple built-ins. That means more to decorate {happy dance!}

We have also ordered a sectional for this room which will arrive in April. My husband wants to be able to watch TV with his legs up and since I refuse to have recliners, we got a sectional with a chaise.

Since most of our money will be going for the built-ins, sectional and my husband’s new flat screen TV, I’m on a very tight decorating budget, as in, I pretty much have to re-purpose existing things in the house to dress the living room.

I’m planning on using the lamps from our master bedroom in the living room. I am also reusing our sofa console table but I can’t use our existing coffee table because it’s rectangular and won’t fit with the sectional.

So I’m also scouting thrift stores for a small round table to use as a cocktail table. I love this one from Maine Cottage but umm, as beautiful as it is and as much as I would love this table, $1,590 IS NOT in the budget! I’d like to find something similar and then paint it a color like this “sprout” which is one of 40 custom colors Maine Cottage offers.

I know spring will soon be here, so I’m keeping busy counting down and getting ready for a fun redesign of our living room. Let’s see, just how many days until spring . . . ?