TheDesignFile

Getting creative – a sheet for a tablecloth?

It’s just days until Thanksgiving and I headed down to our basement storage this morning to pull out my brown table cloths when – oh no! – I realize I don’t have any brown table cloths.

Seriously. I thought I did. But it turns out, I was thinking of brown cloth napkins I have.

I have a burnt orange table cloths. I have white ones. I have black ones I used last year. And I have some patterned ones that are not appropriate for Thanksgiving. But no brown.

However, I have a table scheme in mind that I don’t want to alter.

So do I go out and buy two new table cloths? I hope not. They can be so expensive. Instead, I’m going to experiment.

Because I’m going with a much more casual Thanksgiving table this year, I’m headed out to the store to look for some inexpensive sheets.

I wasn’t sure about this idea, but then I did a little browsing on the web. Turns out, I’m certainly not the first person to have thought of this idea.

In fact check out this cool video, which makes me feel perfectly at peace with this decision…

Looking for more options for old sheets? Look at the list I found over at DIYLife.

Place card ideas for a casual Thanksgiving

Long-time readers know that I stress every Thanksgiving about making nice place cards.

I know it’s a silly thing to worry about, but I love for my table to look beautiful – plus I have a few folks at my dinner who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum and I want to keep them apart, at least until dessert is cleared.

So I’m on the hunt.

Earlier this week, I told you in my post - Rethinking the Thanksgiving table – that I want to go more casual this year, rustic maybe.

With that in mind, here are a few ideas I’ve come across.

At right is an easy one from Better Homes and Gardens.

“Simple imagery and fanciful lettering marry on this business-card-size tag,” BHG says. “Choose a fun font or fill in names by hand using a calligraphy pen. Pin each place card to a miniature pumpkin or gourd.”

I like both options above, also from BHG. I think I could probably find the tags above left at a scrapbook store. And the leaves above right, well, I have plenty of them around the yard.

Finally, I think this cardamom pear place card idea is beautiful and unusual.

I don’t know whether I could find these pears on my side of town, though!

 

Do you do place cards at Thanksgiving?

What are you doing this year?

 

For more place card ideas, try these posts:

Place card inspiration for Thanksgiving

Five ways to make holiday placecards special

My black and white Thanksgiving table

Tiny house full of spacing-saving designs

Yesterday I told you how much I love Murphy beds and today I wanted to show you a video from Dwell magazine and the Nate Berkus Show that incorporates one into a small 650-square-foot design.

The video is from the show’s House Proud series, in which homeowners show off their own designs. This one has lots of tiny-space ideas. Enjoy!

The home belongs to Rosa and Robert Garneau, architects whose place was featured in Dwell's March issue, We Love New York.

Do you have some great space-saving ideas? If so, share them…

A video to help you create your own terrarium

You may have noticed of late that I’ve been a little obsessed with terrariums.

They are all over the web and in design magazines and catalogs. But the most popular terrariums seem to be the ones you make yourself using glass containers you find for cheap.

Here’s a video from HGTV that shows how to turn a small fish tank into a cute terrarium. These instructions include a few steps that I haven’t seen in other instructions – including the addition of activated charcoal – and so I thought it might be helpful to those of you thinking of creating your own mini garden.

So I like the terrariums planted in hurricanes or old glass cylinders so much better than the one in this fish tank. Still, the instructions are obviously transferrable to similar projects.

Have you tried to make your own terrarium? If so, send me a photo and your tips. There’s no doubt I’ll be posting about these gardens again.

Halloween centerpieces that are frightfully festive

I promised you several Halloween-related posts this month and today I’m focusing on great centerpieces for your table.

I took these ideas from Better Homes and Gardens, which always had great holiday decorating tips.

These came from a Halloween slideshow that is chock full of suggestions, including the centerpiece shown at right.

I love the white pumpkin.

You can find a white one or you could just spray paint a regular pumpkin white – especially if you left just enough orange showing through to make it interesting.

Then, instead of putting your cut-off top back on, just fill the pumpkin with dried or fresh flowers.

It makes a great table topper.

My favorite ideas – and the easiest, I think – are actually the two below. They both involve spray paint: A simple black paint on some thrift store goblets below left and chalkboard paint on some cheap Halloween accessories below right.

Finally, the idea below right looks fantastic. I can just imagine how pretty all those little twinkling lights would be for an evening dinner.

But I have to admit, the thought of carving all those tiny jack-o-lanterns is just a little too much for me.

I am just not patient enough for such a project.

There might be some of you out there, though, who are dying to try this. If so, send me your photo!

Make sure to check out the other Halloween centerpiece ideas at BHG.

Sunday roundup: Painting a door and more posts

Sarah over at Thrifty Décor Chick does a nice job with tips that help you replicate the projects she’s done.

And that’s never been truer than one of her posts last week: How to Paint a Door.

Sarah walks you through painting the inside and outside of her front door, including tips for reducing brush strokes, picking a primer and which areas to paint in what order.

She even provides instructions for how to tell if your original paint is latex or oil and what that means for your project.

“Two things to remember,” Sarah writes. “Figure out if you’re dealing with oil or latex-based paint (that you are painting over), and get a sample of your color – mainly for an exterior door. The color on the swatch in the store will look different in your house and will look even more different outside.”

Thanks to Sarah at Thrifty Décor Chick for offering such great advice!

Here’s what else to check out this week:

• Young House Love has a great house crasher post with a tour that is just beautiful.
• Nesting Place has a nice post on using what you have to achieve a designer look.
• Cristin at Simplified Bee has a great collection of pink and orange girls designer bedrooms.

Halloween ideas for a spooky touch

I was never a big fan of Halloween until I moved to my current neighborhood and married my husband.

Jeff is a huge fan of the holiday and decks out our house every year for the occasion.

Plus, our street is just hopping on Halloween night. We get more than 200 kids trick or treating every year.

As I’ve adapted to Halloween as a major holiday in my life, I’ve also become more fascinated by projects that will make it more spooky and fun.

So throughout this month, I’ll be sharing a few of ideas with you.

None – or few – will be my own ideas. Instead, I’m searching the web for fun ones to share.

Check out a few of these:

These little guys are sure to liven u your Halloween table. They are creepy and yet still adorable.

I found the project at HGTV, which has complete instructions for these little guys. But basically, you’re just assembling some black pom-poms, pipe cleaners, wiggly eyes and orange felt. Too cute!

Above is a great project from Better Homes and Gardens. This Eerie Eyes Feather Wreath is cheap and easy. Here are BHG’s instructions:

Use pegboards for storage - not just in the shed

Do you think of pegboard as a material just for the garage or shed? If yes, then open your mind.

Think like Julia Childs, who hung all her pots and pans on a pegboard in her kitchen. I saw a similar – though much smaller – look in the Better Homes and Gardens kitchen below.

Of course, using pegboard in a craft room is a no brainer. It’s perfect for hanging tools, ribbons, bags of supplies and other items you need.

I found the example below at BHG as well.

Below right, there’s another craft space – this one from a designer home featured in Southern Living and at MyHomeIdeas.com – tucked into an office. In this case, a shallow hall cabinet is lined with pegboard to create space for paint brushes, wrapping paper and other supplies. Painted red, the board just blends right in.

In the BHG bathroom below left, the peg board lines the inside of a cabinet to create more organized storage.

I love that bathroom idea. I don’t have a bathroom cabinet to try it on but maybe in the kitchen…

The inside of a closet – like the BHG example at right – is another great place to try pegboard.

In this case, it’s used again for craft supplies.

But you could just as easily hang jewelry, purses, belts and other accessories on a pegboard hung on the inside of a closet door.

It would offer lots of storage while taking up very little space.

 

Do you have pegboard someplace unusual in your house? If so, send a picture to thedesignfile [at] yahoo [dot] com.

Sunday roundup: Moss ball, glue guns and more

You may remember my posts about The Couch Show, an art exhibit that I participated in with my friend Keith and a great designer named Brandy Ketterer of Brandy Ketterer Design Co.

Brandy used cool moss balls as part of her design (see at right) and they really added that designer look to her space.

So when I saw that Pretty Handy Girl had a post about making your own moss balls, I knew I had to share it with you.

What’s great about the Pretty Handy Girl post, though, is not just the project. It’s the wonderful tips she provides on using a hot glue gun – including how NOT to get burned.

“The most important thing to know about using a hot glue gun is that it is dangerous!” Brittany writes in her Pretty Handy Girl post. “Never mind that you can buy one for $5 or less and some of them look like they were made by the same company that makes McDonald’s happy meal toys.”

She adds, “Treat this little ‘gun’ like a power tool and use extreme caution when using it.”

If you’re a crafter, thinking about becoming a crafter, or just want to try out making moss balls, check out the post.

Here are a couple other posts to check out this week:

• Freshome, which never fails to have interesting homes to view, has a great tour of a New York City penthouse with amazing views and sleek modern furnishings.
• Re-Nest has a fun DIY post about creating a log table (and you know how much I love those). The project actually comes from Seakettle but don’t follow that link. I got a message saying it had been hacked. Just admire the project over at Re-Nest.

Tiny art is often out of scale with the room

Yesterday I shared my obsession with keeping artwork within the imaginary bounds of the furniture below it. I admit in that post to being a little nuts.

But today I’m going to share one of my real design irritants – art that is way undersized for the space. And I don’t think I’m nuts here.

Check out the bedroom at right from Better Homes and Gardens.

The series of three little frames above the headboard is ridiculous. It’s so puny compared with that fairly substantial headboard.

Scale is so important – I think – when it comes to art and design. And the room at right just doesn’t do it well.

Neither does the room below, which I found at MyHomeIdeas.com and was featured in Southern Accents. I’m so distracted by the way those tiny pieces of art are spread across that huge wall. Your eye has no idea what to look at.

The same is true below in a photo from Cottage Living, which I found at MyHomeIdeas.com. The space behind that sofa is perfect for a nice sized painting or even a collage of art.

Instead, there’s a little painting with a pair of sconces and some small sculptures. None of them make an impact.

It’s hard for me to believe the folks in the room above just couldn’t afford to buy some nice-sized art! But maybe they just like it that way.

I’ve got one final photo for you.

The room at right is from Real Simple and I found it at MyHomeIdeas.com.

What’s up with those tiny matted photographs? They are just swallowed up by the big wall.

Terrible! The pieces are too tiny to relate to that tall desk and hung too high to relate to the chair. It’s all wrong.

 

 

Do you have art that’s too small for your space?

If so, will you change it?