Resolution: Try Some Quick Decorating Touches

The new year calls for quick action and easy decorating fixes to spruce up your home. Here's an assortment of ideas to help make your home fresher.

Place Leviton Everywhere Lights . . . everywhere! Set these little hockey-puck-size LED lights (get them in red, black, or white) on tables, the fireplace mantle, and on your dining table. Surround them with some greenery for a bright centerpiece. This is a cheap and easy way to add light and color, and you'll always use the lights any time of year as uplights for drama, outdoors mood dining, handy closet illumination, etc.

Add some Santa Maria Novella Potpouri in small dishes around your home. You'll have an unbelievable home fragrance to greet your family and guests. This is a real treat, with a fresh-from-Florence pedigree. The herbs and flowers come from the Florentine hills and are collected by hand, soaked in essence in huge earthenware jars, sealed with wax, and aged for months. The fragrance lasts for months and you can release more scent by fluffing up the potpourri on occasion with your fingers. Bella!

Some decorators recommend taking a color that dominates a room and going mad with it. One idea: paint your celing to match that dominant color. A few hours of painting with give you a bold decorating statement!

Go to a home goods store and pick up small baskets or bowls that match. Add drama to your rooms by spreading out these items and filling them with clusters of small apples, pears, walnuts, and chestnuts. You'll get a quick decorating fix with mucho impact when you multiply these accessories over several rooms and place the baskets or bowls on occasional tables, coffee tables, counters, and sideboards.

Find a great wallpaper pattern (like the grasscloth on the left, or a busier pattern, floral, or textural bamboo sheet) and buy several rolls of the same pattern. Measure the back panels of bookshelves, hutches, cabinets, etageres, breakfronts, and other shelving units in your home and cut out gift wrap to fit. Use double-sided tape to affix the paper to the back of shelves and your books and accessories will really pop against this backdrop. Another quick wallpaper decorating idea: wrap the paper around the covers of hardcover books and place a colorful pile on a coffee table.

Select two colorful fabrics to quickly cover and skirt round tables in any room of the house. The fabrics should be different patterns, yet compatible, to provide a layered look (see photo below). If you have time, apply hems and end stitching to give the fabric a more finished look.

Wall sticker companies like RoomMates sell sticker sets to match any decor. Peel off the stickers and affix them to your wall for a simple decorating solution. When you want to get a new look, peel them off your wall, put them away for another time, and stick on something completely different. (Pictured below is RoomMates Cherry Blossom Tree Wall Decal for around $20.)

Many homes are fireplace challenged, yet a fireplace and fire can add great atmosphere to a room. You can quickly add high-impact decorating to area of your home if you get a biofuel fireplace. Look into these stylish fireplace alternatives and find just the right spots in your home for them, with models ranging from tabletop flamers to free-standing units. Many biofuel models add sculptural flair to your decor, too, which is that extra bonus we like from quality home products (see the EcoSmart Fire line below).

Resolution: Make More Space

Irwin Weiner ASID -- Each year we fantasize about tackling big projects like remodeling our kitchen or putting in a new bathroom floor. When the reality sets in that these may involve considerable expense, time, and professional help beyond a Do-It-Yourself project, we deflate after the first of the year and our home improvement resolutions fizzle out.

Don't let this happen to you! The best way to make a resolution for the New Year is to pick something manageable, follow through with it, add confidence and momentum to your home makeover desires, then tackle something else. I always urge my clients around this time of year to simply clean up and organize. Here's the system:

• Start Small.  Pick one room of your house to clean up. Let's say you've chosen your master bedroom. Now, subdivide the room into zones for cleaning and choose your Priority Zone. Let's say it's the large chest of drawers along the south wall of your bedroom suite. That's where your cleaning project will start.

• Everything Out!  Completely empty the zone you've chosen to clean. If it's a closet, you're going to take every single item out -- shoes, shirts, dresses, folded T shirts, and anything on shelves or hanging rods. Put all items neatly into the center of the room.

• Three Piles.  Now you're going to look at each item and decide to put it into one of three piles: (1) Throw Away, (2) Sell, Donate, or Give Away, and (3) Keep. The first and third piles are obvious. You will keep items that you use a lot, need, and really love. You will throw out items that are of no use to anyone, like a broken lamp or magazines and personal papers that you will never read or need again. Be sure to recycle trash items whenever possible. The second pile should be items that have value, but not to you; you can sell them in a tag or yard sale, set up your own stand at a flea market, post items on Ebay, give them to a local consignment shop to sell for you (and pocket the proceeds, minus the store's commission), give them to friends or relatives (like passing on baby clothes and toys your family has long grown out of), or donate them to a charity or church second-hand store. I love giving away things I no longer need to other members of my family; it continues the holiday spirit of giving throughout the year.

• Purge the Zone.  Throw out and recycle all trash items immediately and take all give-away, sales, and donation items and store them in boxes where they're out of the way (a garage, attic, basement, etc.).

• Clean and Refill.  Run the vacuum cleaner and take out the cleaning products to give your emptied-out zone a good cleaning. Banish grime from bookshelves, suck up all the cobwebs and dustbunnies, and polish any metal or wood. Now you can put back the items you'll be keeping, and they're going back into a much cleaner, tidier space.

• Tackle Other Zones.  Once you've completed one zone in one room, go to another zone and follow the steps above. Then go to each zone in the room until everything is newly organized.

• Organizational Items.  Now for the finishing touch to your organizational, space-making room makeovers. Go to Bed, Bath & Beyond, Target, The Container Store, Home Goods, or other local store to purchase organizational and storage accessories that will help make better use of the space you have for the items you've decided to keep. I recently had a client with a stack of diplomas in picture frames that she never wanted to hang, so I convinced her to give the frames away to her sister and purchase flat decorative boxes that hold documents and diplomas Now she has everything within reach in a decorative storage box. I also recommend decorative boxes to store all those loose family photos, and use separate ones to sort out different subjects: the grandkids, family vacations, pictures of our house, our relatives, and so on. Boxes, decorative baskets, and magazine files are great for organizing craft supplies, home office supplies and papers, and children's artwork and supplies. I've personally gone onto Ebay and purchased small leather luggage bags and decorative hatboxes, putting them on closet shelves to store out-of-season hats, scarves, gloves and mittens, and shoes.

Miracle of miracles -- you have a lot more space now that you've weeded out all those items to toss out, give away, sell, or donate. You'll find you have more room in your closet, less furniture and accessories in your rooms, and more general storage space. And with the items you give away and donate, you have the satisfaction of seeing your unwanted possessions doing others good; and with the items you'll be selling, you'll pocket more money. More space in your home and more money -- now those are wonderful home project results!

Let's go over these sites during the holidays, honey:

Ararat Forge
http://www.araratforge.com/index.html

Nantucket Baskets (love the story behind these: world famous BLIND craftsman who beats others who are sighted in competitions!)
http://www.jymm.com/

Michel Bayne Pottery
http://www.michelbayne.com/pages/index.htm

City Folk Handwork by Sandra Malamed
Quilts: http://www.cityfolkhandwork.com/quilts.htm
Pottery: http://www.cityfolkhandwork.com/pottery.htm

Shaari Horowitz Painted & Gilden Wooden Bowls
http://www.shaarihorowitz.com/index.html

Don Noyes Whimsical Bird Carvings in the Pennsylvania Tradition
http://www.donnoyeswhimsicalbirds.com/gallery.html

Stenciled Floorcloths by Michele Holick
http://www.stenciledfloorclothsbymichele.com/index.htm

Around the Bend Willow Furniture and Accessories
http://www.aroundthebendwillowfurniture.com/index.html

Johanna Parker Papier Mache
http://www.primitivesbykathy.com/listItems.asp?displayType=Across&CurPage=1&dispStart=9&Search=Link&Cat=CUSTDISP|CUSTFIELD2|JOHAN&CatDesc=Items%20by%20Johanna%20Parker