Interior Decorating Ideas

Some time between Thanksgiving and the middle of December, most everyone in the US faces one daunting task, hanging Christmas Lights! We've all seen the movies of people falling off ladders, getting zapped by electricity, sliding off of the roof and getting caught up in the lights as one falls off the roof. While this is a common thing in most Christmas comedies, there is the phrase "all fiction is based on fact." That means that these dangers are not simply fictional.

But who doesn't want to see their house sparkling in the night, looking like an over-sized gingerbread house. There are several ways of keeping your light-hanging experience from making the pages of the next Christmas Comedy script. First things first, don't work alone! Seriously. When you have someone else with you to watch your back, you can avoid most accidents. Also, having someone there to hold the ladder still while you reach the hooks is one of the main ladder-safety rules. When you have someone with whom you can discuss random topics, it keeps you from getting bored and hasty, which leads to accidents.

Second thing on the list of safety rules: ladder usage! When you are using an old ladder, make sure all of the rungs are still secure. Don't use a ladder that is too short, too long is ok, but too short tempts you to step on the top rung that clearly states "do not step here". Move the ladder often. Don't reach because when you reach, you put yourself out of a natural balance. Loss of balance equals falling and broken bones, and half-strung lights and emergency-room bills. These are all bad things.

Lastly: Don't jimmy-rig anything, EVER! When working with electricity, don't be tempted to over-rig things with electrical tape and your wire-strippers. Seriously, they are made the way they are for a reason. Electricity is not happy when it can escape. Again, electricity escaping equals emergency room bills and half-strung lights. Have a happy Christmas and hang lights safely. Visit outdoor string lights or used party tent for further information.

Although there is some debate over the origin of the rocking chair, the modern indoor rocking chair is a part of most households in the US today.

Some speculate that Benjamin Franklin designed the first rocking chair on the American continent using the concept of a cradle, adding the curved wooden rocker pieces or skates to the bottom of a chair in much the same fashion rockers were attached to the legs of a cradle. In England, a similar chair appeared for outdoor use. This chair was called the Windsor rocker after Windsor castle were it is first recorded to have been used. In the late 1800”s a German craftsman named Michael Thonet came up with a lightweight bentwood rocker that became very popular in England and Europe. Mr. Franklin, Mr. Thonet, and the person who made the first Windsor Rocker all had one goal in mind, to sit more comfortably. Certainly, Benjamin Franklin watched while mothers rocked cradles to sooth their babies to sleep. He may well have seen men leaning the back two legs of straight back chairs against the wall with their feet propped on a porch rail or another chair to achieve a greater degree of comfort. Maybe he liked the motion of a swing in the garden and wanted to recreate that same feel where it was not practical to have a swing.

Whatever the motivation, the rocking chair began to be a part of modern furniture in the 1700”s. However, the concept of the human form rocking began much earlier. The word “rocker” began to appear in the 15th century. It was a term used for the person who was in charge of rocking the cradle. Later it came to mean speakers or orators who put others to sleep with their monotone speech patterns.

There are examples of women or “rockers” setting beside cradles in Renaissance art but no evidence of a rocking chair until the 1750’s. Why it took man so long to transfer the idea of children being soothed by the rocking motion to adults wanting to rock, I cannot say. Adult sized cradles were made and used by the Shakers in New England in the early 1800”s. The adult cradles were used to help care for the elderly and very sick.

Today, rockers are big business. They can be found in any store that carries a line or type of living room furniture. You find them in home and garden centers and the most avant-garde furniture boutiques. They are throwaway cheap and thousands of dollars. They are metal, wood, wicker, plastic and combinations of materials. You can find them inside and outside; anywhere someone wants to rest for a few minutes or a few hours.

Ceramic is a very popular material when it comes to bathroom accessories.  Whether it be a ceramic soap holder, a ceramic tile toilet paper holder, ceramic robe hooks, towel holders, a toilet paper stand, or shelves,  ceramic will often add a very elegant look to your bathroom.  At the same time, it is versatile enough to create a more traditional or old fashioned look, if that is what you prefer.

The first thing you will want to do is to settle on the color scheme you are going to go with.  There is a large variety of both colors and themes to choose from when it come to ceramic accessories, so you should have no problem finding the right combination to create the exact look you want for your bathrooom.

A great place to find what you are looking for, or at least to see exactly what is available to you, is online.  There you will find hundreds of variations on ceramic accessories to choose from, you will be able to compare prices and styles, and ultimately determine just what you need for your particular project.

You can also visit dealers in your area.  While they might not be able to show you as much as you can find online, the advantage to visiting a dealer is that he will be able to answer all of your questions and give you much needed guidance.  In some cases, his advice may mean the difference between the successful and unsuccessful completion of your project.

The overall size of your bathroom is a crucial consideration when selecting either the tiles or the accessories that you need.  In the case of tiling, it is important to realize that large tiles actually make a small bathroom appear to be even smaller.  Strange, but true.  So if your bathroom is on the smaller side, you will want to go with smaller sized tiles as well.

When it comes to finding a curtain that is elegant and adaptable an option that provides style and grace while also allowing a certain level of natural light into the room is the voile curtain. Voile curtain panels can be used equally effectively as full length drapes, bed canopies or as replacements for net curtains.

Although they are light and breezy in weight and texture they aren’t restricted to a single color or style with types of voile curtains available in natural linen looking fabric and lighter sheers. The top of the voile curtains are just as versatile with the curtains able to be made with a stitched heading to allow it to be threaded onto the curtain rod or, if you prefer, made as tab topped curtains. The tab top voile curtains thread even easier onto a curtain rod.

Both of the tops mentioned above pull into uniform pleats to create a stylish look when they are pulled closed creating a textured background for the room in which they are hung.

One of the benefits in buying voile curtains is that they are nice and light and very suitable for hanging on tension curtain rods. Tension curtain rods are used when it is not possible to screw curtain rod brackets into the wall, but they require lightweight curtains to ensure they aren’t dragged down due to the weight. Because voile curtains are lightweight they fit the brief quite nicely. If they are made as slot top panels they will be able to be used as part of a layering effect.

The question of how many voile curtain panels you might need to effectively cover a window may come up and although it will depend on just how much privacy you might be looking to achieve, the idea is to use double the width of the window itself. This way the voiles can be allowed to overlap while covering the window creating a full look while still giving the required level of light a chance to filter in.

Most of us rarely change things in our homes without having a whole new room scheme. So we might change our kitchen curtains when we remodel the kitchen but not just because we feel like a change.

If you have a colored kitchen with, for example, blue painted doors, then ringing the changes is a bit difficult anyway but now that the fashion is for more neutral kitchens with lots of white or wooden cabinets and stainless steel appliances then we can have a change whenever we feel like it. In fact changing the curtains along with a few other accessories is a great way to give our kitchen a new look without having to completely redecorate.

If you are updating your kitchen bear this in mind because if you choose a colored kitchen you will not be able to change your color scheme very easily. You may love that shade of green or blue at the moment while it is so fashionable but how will you feel about it in five years time when the interior magazines have long ago moved onto something else?

To make changing your kitchen curtains even easier you can always hang neutral blinds up at your windows and then buy dress curtains for your windows. These are very inexpensive as the fabric does does not have to be wide enough to be able to be drawn across the window (while still being gathered at the top). Instead of one and a half times the width of the window you can probably get by with two thirds or one times. As long as the fabric looks as if it could stretch across the window that is fine.

If you can make your own curtains, you can create new window coverings for your kitchen very cheaply indeed and ring the changes whenever you like. If blue is the latest color add blue curtains, a couple of tea towels and a few pieces of new china an you have a new color scheme. If next year, green is in vogue, change everything to green without too much expense!