Wrap a feather boa around a bottle of wine.

You are reading this because you k now that Valentine’s Day is the most romantic day of the year and you want to make this year just a bit more special. Keeping your Valentine decoration simple will afford you the energy to enjoy your evening for just you and your sweetie. Here are 9 ideas in preparation for your special romantic dinner.

1. Get ready by first, clearing off all the clutter from your dining room table to make room for your special dinner.
2. Arrange a sexy, sheer red tablecloth on the table.Don’t be afraid to try new ideas; a gorgeous sari or other sleek fabric would work wonderfully.
3. For a unique floral display that makes a bold statement, pick up a spray of Babies Breath and one tropical flower such as pink orchid from the florist. Cut the stems short and settle in a small glass cube vase with water and a few smooth pebbles. Keep your flower arrangement small, gorgeous and one of a kind.
4. Place crystal bowls of floating pink and white candles around the room. Did you know that candlelight is the most flattering light to a woman’s complexion – and no doubt a man’s, too.
5. Sprinkle pink and white sugared almonds or cinnamon hearts on the table.
6. Attach red and pink bows to your chandelier to give it pizzazz.
7. Drape a red feather boa around a bottle of wine.
8. Tie love notes with ribbon and hide them in and around the room. Notes like, “You’re my inspiration”, “You are the love of my life”, “You warm my soul”, the rest I will leave up to your brave and bold daring.
9. Prepare your favourite special romantic dinner – no help from me in that department. Baked beans on toast sounds pretty good to me, which proves you can take the girl out of England but you can’t take England out of the girl.

The prediction for colour going into 2011 was for a riot of clear colours as in acid yellows, vibrant purples, effervescent turquoises, lively blues and spring greens. These did not make the forecasted trend, at least not for long. Painting a wall acid yellow for example has adverse effects on even the most stalwart, be it known that yellow walls in an infant’s room makes a baby cry. All these brilliant colours look great in a magazine photoshoot as it floods the publication with eye-catching colour. But try living with that on walls day in and day out and I will guarantee that your eyes will start to water and your brain will start to fizz.

Another trend that started out with good intentions was to paint the walls the same colour as the furniture, or the other way ‘round – whichever came first. This idea didn’t make it for obvious reasons – the monotony was mind-bendingly boring and the furniture disappeared.

2012 TRENDS

1. ARTWORK – personal creativity

Transferring a favourite photo or picture to canvas has become a popular trend in the artwork world. This technique is available everywhere (even Costco offers this service). Picking a portion of a close-up photo or cropping a holiday picture and blowing it up to enormous proportions can be reasonably priced. A 40” x 60” gallery wrapped print runs to around $330. Delivered and ready to hang, this provides a unique, affordable option and a fabulous conversation piece. Pick a tasteful photo and you are onto a winner

2. SOFAS AND CHAIRS

The trend for sofas in 2012 are so crazily out there that I suggest my more daring clients sleep on it (not literally). It is always a good idea to pick a sofa that will be loved for years to come because, while it might be popular today, in a few months’ time they might regret buying that very distinct sofa.

The most popular sofas and chairs today have clean, square lines that are also cushiony soft and welcoming. The Shabby Chic style is and always will be popular but perhaps by another more 21^st Century name: Modern Chic or Urban Loft comes to mind. Dressing them up with toss cushions and colourful throws will add the trendy colour pop. Being able to come home, flop in a comfy sofa and prop your feet on the coffee table –  you, your friends and family all doing the same without conscience – is the comfort most homeowners consider utopia.

3. FABRIC

There is the continuing struggle for consumers to be “green” conscious. Selecting natural cotton, wool, linen, bamboo and silk can be more costly than their look-alike counterparts.

Due to the economic climate many cash strapped consumers are content, or more likely at obliged, to settle with synthetic ‘naturals’ which so closely resemble their counterparts as to be virtually indistinguishable.

The trend for fabric designs is more targeted toward textures, metallics: gold, silver, bronze and copper, and coordinating colours in animal prints and organic designs.

4. APPLIANCES

Stainless steel will continue to be the favoured finish for kitchen appliances with its inherent association with luxury. When the fingerprints have been polished off, they provides proof of a sterile surface and show off a clean industrial line.

The second choice is black; a colour I definitely would not recommend. Black shows every spec of dust, every fingerprint and spatter of grease, but more importantly black is a fully dominating colour and when the fridge, stove, microwave and dishwasher take precedence over everything else in the kitchen, something is very wrong.

Growing with popularity are the appliances covered with doors that match the rest of the kitchen cabinetry. Very sleek. Very stylish.

5. RUGS

The fashion outlook for 2012 for rugs is bright and bold. My prediction is that homeowners will continue to want serenity in their homes and look for the calmness that solid colours or subtle patterns exude. Because the overall trend is for homeowners to replace carpeting with hardwood, and reduce the volumes of pleated drapery with simple, straight side panels, the resulting smooth surfaces result in an uncomfortable sound resonance, or echo effect, which can easily be quieted with textured rugs, toss pillows and throws.

The most popular rugs are the new shags made in a myriad colours and textures in mixtures of natural and synthetic fibers, and even shags made with strips of leather. Fabulous. Just make sure they are not so deep that you’ll lose the cat in them.

Decorating isn’t magical or mysterious. It’s a body of knowledge and skills that any diligent homeowner can learn and apply. At some point you probably realized, “The less I can afford to spend on decorating, the less I can afford to make mistakes”. The good news is that when you learn how to be a better decorator, you can expect to see fabulous results.

Learn from two of Ottawa’s top professional Interior Decorators. They will answer your biggest questions…
Click here to learn more

So just what is a sheen, you ask? Well I was hoping you would. Contrary to popular belief, a Sheen is not only a term used to describe a talentless and mentally unstable millionaire playboy slash “actor” who vastly overestimates his own stock… No, it is also a technical term referring to the amount of gloss visible in the finish of a final coat of paint. You could also call it the “shininess” of a paint (if that didn’t sound so silly.)

As paint dries and cures, the protective layer or enamel rises to the top and forms a clear protective barrier between the colour and your smudgy fingers. The thickness of this enamel layer affects both the gloss level and the washability of the paint job and is referred to as the paint’s sheen level.

To help you sort out the ins and outs of the spectrum of available sheens, here is a list of the most common finishes you will encounter and their recommended applications:

FLAT:  Flat paint actually has no sheen whatsoever. That means that it will not reflect the light at all. The benefit of this lack of reflectiveness is that it is perfect for areas that are prone to imperfections like cracks, nicks, nail pops and bows in the drywall – the light won’t catch them and so they will be less apparent. On the con side, however, flat paint has no protective layer of enamel and so will not hold up well to grease stains and scrubbing.  That is why this sheen is the go-to finish for ceilings.

SCRUBBABLE MATTE: This almost-flat finish has just a wee bit of enamel in it and is often fortified by non-shiny mineral protectors like ceramic or Teflon. This sheen is very popular with designers because it minimizes imperfections without sacrificing all clean-ability. If you have children and/or pets who make cleaning and scrubbing the walls a common occurrence however, this sheen just might not cut it.

EGGSHELL: The true rockstar of paint sheens and the “Title Track” of this article, eggshell falls smack dab in the middle of the finish spectrum, representing a perfect compromise between scrubbability and non-reflectiveness. For most family homes, eggshell will probably be the best bet for your walls.

PEARL or SATIN: Called differently by different brands, Pearl and Satin are sheens with a little bit more gloss than eggshell. They used to be popular for kitchens and bathrooms where moisture and grime are more common. However, high quality paint manufacturers like Benjamin Moore (which we like to use in our work) now make all their paints with built-in fungicides and mildicides and their eggshells are plenty washable for most kitchens and bathrooms. My advice? Only use a satin or pearl finish if you specifically like the look of a glossier paint on the wall.

SEMIGLOSS: The majority of all your house’s dust and grime ends up where gravity takes it: on your baseboards. That is why semigloss has long been the sheen of choice for trim and baseboards, providing lots of protection from kicks, broom-swipes and scrubbing and all the while making the decorative element of the room “pop” like it was meant to.

GLOSS: Finally, gloss is a rarely used and sometimes hard-to-find finish that is so shiny that you can usually see yourself in it… along with every little imperfection magnified 100x. Sometimes, older homes will feature high-gloss finishes on bannister caps and, less commonly, on baseboards. But this one usually falls under the same general rule as satin and pearl: only use it if you really like the shiniest finish possible!

And that’s it, congratulations – you’re now a certified Paint Sheen Expert (contact the author, Daniel Smith at sogpaitning@gmail.com for your frame-able certificate.)   Now the next time one of your friends says they’re thinking of doing their living room in “some kind of eggshell colour…”,  I hope I can count on you to be the annoying one who chimes in and says “uh, actually, I think you’re confused – eggshell is a sheen, not a colour” and promptly send them my way to be educated.

Performing this task was gloriously satisfying and also a wonderful time waster as we obviously couldn’t type while our machines were ‘out-of-commission’. On one such occasion, after spending an inordinate amount of time cleaning my machine, I pushed my typewriter to the back of the desk to collect all the tools back into the box. I must have been a little too zealous as suddenly the typewriter disappeared and landed on the floor with a huge crash.

The girl in front of me leaped from her seat staring in horror at the carnage behind her chair. Miss X, the supervisor was not happy. A few of the girls jumped up to help me gather the pieces and plonked them all back on my desk scurrying back to their work.

I had to spend the rest of the morning and into my lunch break putting everything back together again. I had a ton of springs and screws and nuts and bolts left over but the typewriter seemed to work fine, so I put all the extra pieces in the little box and continued my day. My typewriter worked perfectly for the next two years.

I never did learn the internal workings of the typewriter, it didn’t seem important.

If you didn’t see it in the paper, check out the article on the Ottawa Citizen’s website:
Ottawa Citizen

Set the Stage for a Fast & Profitable House Sale

Susan Phillips, author of The Seductive Power of Home Staging, and decorating expert on Rogers Daytime television shares the secrets she uses to showcase homes and sell them in less time for top dollar.

Susan’s schedule has been updated to include new times…
Friday 2:00pm and 7:00pm
Saturday 1:00pm
Sunday 2:00pm

Ottawa Home & Design Show
Sep 30th-Oct 2nd, 2011
Design and Decor Stage
Lansdowne Park
(1015 Bank Street, Ottawa)
Click here to visit the Ottawa Home & Design Show website

Click to learn more about the book

It is vital to put your buyers in a positive frame of mind so they will be ready to fall in love with your home the moment they enter it. You do that by making the first impressions count.

1. Focus your attention on fixing the things that could possibly put them off – essentially those things that would create a negative impression, and potentially thwart a sale. In my book The Seductive Power of Home Staging: A Seven Step System for a Fast and Profitable Sale; the first step is Red Flags.  Fixing anything broken, or peeling, is a given, but what about actually finding your home? Yesterday I was looking for a house and had to rely on the neighbour’s house numbers to deduce that I was at the right house – the thing is, the neighbours were as bad and didn’t have house numbers either!. I finally arrived frustrated, late and in an unimpressed frame of mind. Make life easy for your buyers with a clearly displayed house number.
2. Next, pick up clutter, deadhead plants, pull weeds, and edge lawns.
3. Your front door is the focal point and so make it stand out with splendid pots of greenery and flowers which call out, I’m over here, come on in.” and “Welcome”.
4. Check lighting is working both in porch lights and solar lamps.
5. Plant flowers in yellow and red, the “Notice Me!” colours.
6. Make sure pathways are clear and easy to navigate.
7. Remove the gnomes and flamingos and instead accessorize with natural elements such as a stone birdbath. (And the birds will love you for it).