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Spring

Seasonal, Spring, Summer

How to Decorate Your Fireplace for Every Season

home Fireplace

 

During the fall and winter, the living room fireplace is the central gathering place in the home. Nothing feels quite as cozy as sitting in front of a roaring fire, chatting with friends and family as the temperatures dip outside. However, as spring blooms and moves into summer, you can still light up a room (sans flames) with a beautifully decorated fireplace. Our fireplace decoration ideas will help you refresh your space throughout the year and celebrate every season.

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Seasonal, Spring

Overhaul your spring cleaning with chemical-free cleaning products

Bree here, from Home Zone Furniture.

Are you cleaning your home in a way that’s safe for your family and the environment? As you dig into this year’s spring cleaning, take some time to evaluate your cleaning products. While they might be products you’ve depended on for years, they could also be filled with chemicals that are harsh on you, your kids and Mother Nature.

These are my quick tips for identifying harmful products, replacing harsh ingredients and reducing your overall impact on the environment as you clean.

 

Laundry

Detergent, fabric softener, dryer sheets — laundry products are a central source of dangerous chemicals in the home. These might be products you’ve used year in and year out, but they can also be the culprit of serious health problems. Ingredients such as petroleum, phosphate, phthalates, dye and fragrances are often the source of skin irritation, headaches and a host of other problems.

When shopping for laundry products, choose something with ingredients that are gentle, plant-based and non-toxic. After all, these products wash the clothes that sit directly on your skin!

 

Bathroom

To combat a smelly, dirty bathroom, it’s easy to turn to the harshest products you can find. That being said, eco-friendly products can be just as effective as their chemical-laden counterparts.

In the bathroom, always choose a bleach alternative that’s free of chlorine. Bathrooms often don’t have good ventilation, and that combined with the steam from a shower or bath will make the negative effects of bleach residue on your bathroom surfaces that much stronger.

 

Kitchen

The cleaning products you use in the kitchen come in direct contact with the food you eat, so it’s imperative to use products that are safe, gentle and chemical-free! From dish soap to surface cleaners, always select kitchen cleaning products for the kitchen that are simple, gentle and organic.

 

DIY

From the bathroom to the kitchen and everywhere in between, if you want a cleaning product you can truly trust, make it yourself. While it might seem easier to simply pick up a product at the store, you can save a significant amount of money by making your own cleaning products using safe ingredients you already have in your home.

Whether you need to clean the carpet or the fridge, click the link to find some of my favorite recipes to get your house clean without the chemicals.

 

Refuse, Reuse, Recycle

Last but not least, think about packaging and waste when you overhaul your spring cleaning routine. Between disposable wipes, plastic bottles and cleaning tools, a single household can generate a significant amount of non-recycled cleaning waste without even trying.

Take small steps to start cutting down on your waste as it pertains to cleaning. Instead of a disposable surface or floor wipe, choose a compostable wipe, or better yet, choose a reusable cloth. As for packaging, always select bottles that can be 100 percent recycled after use. If you make your own cleaning products, preserve them in glass containers for an even smaller environmental impact.

 

What are your favorite green cleaning tips?

 

Bree

Seasonal, Spring

Top Spring Cleaning Tips for a Sparkling Home

It’s spring and time to enjoy a cleaner, refreshed home! Spring cleaning is both a refreshing and a completely exhausting exercise. While it feels great to clean up, clean out, and simplify, sometimes it feels overwhelming, and you don’t know where to start.

Sound familiar? If you’re not looking forward to this annual ritual, remember that you don’t have to finish your spring cleaning in one day. Pick a weekend, pick a room, get to work, and you’ll be done in no time! Also, if you’re wondering how best to spring clean, here are our top spring cleaning tips for your spring cleaning checklist in 2024.

grey couch in light formal living room
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Seasonal, Spring

Spruce up your home for spring with new throw pillows

Bree here, from Home Zone Furniture.

If you’re looking for a quick, easy way to refresh your home for spring, all it takes is finding the perfect combination of throw pillows. Decorating with throw pillows is a relatively low-risk, inexpensive way to make a bold personal statement of style in your home. A fresh new color or pattern in your living room or bedroom will give your home that seasonal pick-me-up everyone’s looking for right now.

Today I’ll be sharing a few styling tricks and formulas I rely on to curate a beautiful collection of throw pillows, but don’t be afraid to experiment to find the combo that best reflects your style.

Color Scheme

For those starting their throw pillow collection from scratch, the first thing to do is settle on an anchor color. An anchor color complements the room it’s in, meaning it can either be a neutral or a hue that’s related to the most dominant color in the room. One of my favorite ways to choose this accent color is to draw from the colors of the art on the wall. Without choosing a central anchor color to work with, the pillows will look random and the room will feel mismatched.

Pattern Play

Add dimension to your assembly of pillows with a dose of pattern play. For a traditional look, layer a solid pillow with a strongly patterned pillow that has at least one overlapping color. Feeling a bit more adventurous? Try mixing two kinds of prints or patterns in your pillow arrangement. There are several ways of doing this and no right or wrong answers.

For beginners, combine one strong, large-scale pattern with one discreet, small-scale pattern. In this situation, the small-scale pattern looks almost like a solid from far away. An even bolder experiment is to layer completely opposite patterns, such as geometric with toile, or even layer multiple floral patterns for an eclectic, English countryside style.

Mix Textures

If you prefer your pillows to come in solid colors, then you’ll want to mix in some texture for extra dimension on your bed or couch. Depending on the room you’re decorating and the kind of traffic the pillows will be expected to withstand, consider statement fabrics such as faux fur, velvet, linen, damask and even silk.

If a large pillow in a simple cotton or linen needs an extra bit of pizazz, consider embellishing it with an eye-catching trim. Fun tassels around the circumference might be too overwhelming to put on a patterned pillow, but on a large, single-color pillow, it becomes an exciting accent.

All Shapes and Sizes

If you’re playing with patterns, prints and colors, it’s important to keep the size and shape of your pillows relatively similar to maintain some visual consistency. On the other hand, if you have several pillows all in the same color and size, odds are it probably looks a bit flat. In addition to mixing a variety of textures, experiment with pillows in different shapes and sizes. A blue and white striped bolster pillow might be just what an all-white, square pillow arrangement needs!

Do you have a pillow lineup on your couch or bed that you’re especially proud of? Tell us your color scheme or arrangement formula in the comments below!

Bree

Seasonal, Spring

3 hot spring home decor trends to look out

Bree here, from Home Zone Furniture.

Spring is on the horizon, and so is a seasonal home decor refresh! As the weather warms up, I look forward to swapping rich velvets with airy linens and jewel tone shades with soft pastel hues.

Spring also has me looking to luxurious travel destinations for decor inspiration. So whether you’re seeking to revamp your bedroom, living room or even office, try one of these three trends to transform your space into an oasis of style this spring.

Greek-inspired 

If your home decor style is naturally contemporary, try a Greek-inspired scheme this spring. Modern Greek style is more than just marble and Corinthian columns — it’s a style that fuses indoor and outdoor living.

The first step to creating a Greek-inspired decor is to bring the natural colors of the Greek landscape indoors — think whites and blues with pops of canary yellow and hot pink.

Next, don’t be afraid to bring easy, breezy patio chairs indoors, or to make a comfortable seating area outside. When it comes to accessories, try minimal, sleek European lamps, colorful patchwork quilts and beautiful tiled details wherever possible.

Hamptons at home

For a spring revamp on a traditional home, look no further than the Hamptons for inspiration. Hamptons homes have many of the same clean, all-American characteristics of a northeastern home, but since they’re beach homes, they’re just slightly more worn-in.

Bring the Hamptons into your home with classic designs, muted colors and a host of natural fibers. In the living room or bedroom, lay down a seagrass rug for that outdoorsy springtime feel. Replace clunky seating with wicker chairs, and choose a color palette of white, navy blue, light pink and nude gingham. Balance the natural fibers and soft colors with furniture and accessories that flaunt sharp lines and cool textures like marble and acrylic.

Desert designer

Take a bohemian home to the next level with decor style inspired by desert designers. Whether you prefer Morocco or Joshua Tree, desert dwellings have their own unique, exotic style.

You can bring the warm personality of this style into your home with just a few small accessories. Throw down a muted, antique rug for texture underfoot, or layer several for a unique look. Install hanging planters to infuse some drama into your entryway or kitchen. Dress up your bed or couch with a number of mixed and matched throw pillows — the more texture, the better!

Which of these styles will you be trying in your home this spring?

Bree