5 stress-free steps for creating a beautiful holiday home

With just 10 days left 'til Christmas how are you feeling? 

If frazzled, stressed out, and frenzied come to mind I have 5 simple solutions for you.

Simplicity.  Nature.  Harmony.  Creativity.  Relaxation.

Here are 5 stress-free steps for creating a beautiful holiday home where you can relax and enjoy the season with family and friends:

1. Simplicity – Keep it simple

• Write down 3 words to describe what you would like to see, feel and experience in your holiday home
• Choose 3 or 5 areas where you would like to add decor
• Before you start, remove a few accents to make room for your holiday decor

Life was pretty simple when I was in kindergarten. 

Here are 3 clear memories:

1. I remember my parents bought me a colorful pencil box before my very first day of school.  It was 'something from home' that I could carry back and forth.  I cherished it with my life, I personalized it with crayons and I felt 'at home' and safe venturing out into the world as long as it was with me.

2. I remember the red plaid jumper my mother made for me that year, and a matching tam to wear atop my braids.  After all I was a little french girl!  I loved that red plaid and to this day red makes me feel good.

3. I remember another kindergarten dress, coral with gold buttons, that my Aunt Bernardine sent for my birthday. I was all about the fashion!  Sometimes we had to put our heads down on our desks and rest. Those gold buttons always pressed into my little ribs when I had to put my head on my desk.  That really bothered me.

Did I tell you what I carried in that pencil box?  Home.

I believe home decorating should be more like my pencil box.  

15 home decorating lessons 

1. Style is more than a look, more than traditional or southwest or modern.

2. Style is personal and everyone interprets it differently.

3. Style is expressed in the details.

better homes and gardens surveys their facebook fans

Are you unsure how to reflect your personal taste in your home?  Not sure where to turn to find decorating inspiration?

Better Homes and Garden recently asked their Facebook fans this question.

Here are their responses:

Last year's big question was 'paper or plastic'.  Today the big question is whether to buy 'incandescent' or 'compact flourescent' light bulbs for our home.

While traditional incandescent bulbs gave us a warm, comforting glow compact-fluorescent bulbs give off a harsh, white light.

What to do?  Whether we are trying to create warmth and ambiance or just want to curl up and read a good book, we need good lighting in our home.  Here's news about an exciting alternative...

The World's Greatest Light Bulb

       Dump your fluorescents and incandescents for this amazing new LED bulb.

By Farhad Manjoo

When I drove to the offices of a start-up called Switch Lighting last week, I wasn't expecting much. A company representative had promised to show me something amazing—an alternative light bulb that uses a fraction of the energy of a traditional incandescent bulb and lasts 20 times as long, but that plugs into a standard socket and produces the same warm, yellowish, comforting glow that we're all used to seeing when we flip the switch.

I'd heard that pitch before. Energy-efficient bulbs that shine like incandescents are the holy grail of the lighting industry. The effort has become more urgent in the last few years, as governments around the world have imposed regulations to phase out incandescent bulbs. In the United States, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, whose light bulb-related provisions will go into effect next year, requires greater efficiency from all light bulbs on the market; the act effectively outlaws the traditional incandescent bulb by 2014. The phase-out has created a surprising political outcry, with some people even stocking up on bulbs. That's because today's main alternative, compact-fluorescent bulbs, are awful. They've got three main shortcomings: They're ugly; they contain mercury, which can be extremely hazardous if the bulbs are broken; and most importantly, they put out harsh, white light that many people (myself included) find unbearable.

Switch Lighting claims to have solved all of those problems. When I arrived at Switch, Brett Sharenow, the company's chief strategy officer, showed me two lamps. Inside one was a standard 75-watt incandescent bulb. Switch's 75-watt replacement bulb, which uses only 16 watts of power, was plugged into the other. The lampshades prevented me from seeing the bulbs directly—I couldn't tell which lamp contained which bulb. When Sharenow turned on the lamps, the light from each lamp looked identical. The moment was completely undramatic, and that was the point. Switch has spent years developing bulbs that produce something thoroughly unexceptional—light that looks exactly like what we're used to.

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