Passionate Homemaking

Wel­come back for part 2 in Dec­o­rat­ing on A Budget. Check out part 1 for fur­ther ideas that I am expand­ing upon here…a post in my Nat­ural Living on A Budget series.

Remem­ber that above all you are seek­ing to make your own a haven of rest and com­fort for your family and guests! This is your embassy to extend the King­dom of God! Make it com­fort­able and relax­ing and above all…keep Christ the center!

Again, I thank my sister, Christa, for her input, cre­ative juices, and inspi­ra­tion! She has pretty much taught me every­thing I know!

Furniture Layout

Make con­ver­sa­tional areas. The key is to arrange your fur­ni­ture so that the line of traf­fic from door to door is not pass­ing right through the con­ver­sa­tion area. You want to keep the fur­ni­ture facing each other in smaller, inti­mate con­ver­sa­tion areas with­out having people walk right through the center and taking away from the relaxed set­ting. You do not want this flow to hurt your fel­low­ship. Arrange your future close enough that you don’t have to shout to have a con­ver­sa­tion. The closer the better.

Avoid L shaped fur­ni­ture. L shaped couches or laying out two dif­fer­ent couches in an L shape pat­tern are not rec­om­mended as it makes it dif­fi­cult to con­verse. There can be an excep­tion when you place a love seat across from it. You want to be face to face, not facing another wall, tele­vi­sion, etc.

Choose a pur­pose­ful focal point. Each room will have a focal point of some sort. Most Amer­i­can homes have the fur­ni­ture arranged so that the focal point is the tele­vi­sion. This does not serve to invite con­ver­sa­tion, but only dis­tracts from it. Use your win­dows and fire­places for this purpose.

Re-​arrange your fur­ni­ture with the sea­sons. Re-​arranging adds fresh vari­ety and change! It gives the feel of a whole new look with­out adding any­thing! For exam­ple, if you have a large window in your living room, you might make turn your fur­ni­ture to make that the focal point in the summer as it is bright and cheery to look at. In the winter, the out­doors may not look so attrac­tive so turn your fur­ni­ture inwards to your fire­place. I recently angled my dining room table for a change in the corner, and I was amazed how appeal­ing it was.

Keep fur­ni­ture away from the walls. Arrange your fur­ni­ture on an angle or in a unique fash­ion so it is not flat against a wall, or simply pull it away from the wall a bit (if pos­si­ble). This adds a vari­ety and cre­ativ­ity to your layout! We have placed our bed frame on an angle in the corner of our bed­room. It does take up more room in this way, but it is dif­fer­ent and vari­ety is the spice of life.

Have a place nearby to rest the arms or place a cup or mug. It is impor­tant to have a coffee table or end table near every seat, so your guests don’t have to stretch too far to relax them­selves or place their beverage.

More on picture decor

I talked last week about taking advan­tage of the sim­plic­ity and ele­gance of fram­ing pic­tures on your walls. Here are a few more tips.

Keep your arrange­ments to clus­ters. Don’t have pic­tures hang­ing van­domly along every wall. Your eye will have no where to rest. The ten­dency is to think you need some­thing on every wall in order to look fully dec­o­rated, but it is not true. It is kind of like when you read a brochure or newslet­ter. If there is no white space around the text, and/or no pic­tures for vari­ety, or just simply all text, it is over­whelm­ing to the eye and you would rather just set it aside them labo­ri­ously read through it. It is not appealing.

Main­tain a rec­tan­gu­lar shape. This is pleas­ing to the eye. Whether it is a small rec­tan­gle or a large one, main­tain over­all shape.

Avoid hang­ing pic­tures on a small wall (2 foot in length or smaller), or on a window wall, if there is not much space around it.

Having Fun with Paint

I thought I would share a photo of my rag-​wall red bath­room. Like I men­tioned before, my sister and I had a blast paint­ing this room. It wasn’t all that pro­fes­sional, but it goes to show that you don’t have to know it all to add a unique and cre­ative touch to your paint­ing. We just used old t-shirts scrunched up.

Table Arrangements

Enjoy the sim­plic­ity of a col­ored cloth napkin, can­dles and a few green­ery and silk flow­ers! I like to change out the colors with the sea­sons, but the over­all look is the same. I also love making my own table runners.

Resources

Pot­tery Barn Cat­a­logs - Take advan­tage of all the pic­ture layout and color scheme ideas in a Pot­tery Barn cat­a­log. This is a great resource for lots of fun ideas! Don’t get bogged down with all the fancy expen­sive fur­ni­ture and stuff, just enjoy and be inspired by how they layout and dec­o­rate the walls! Tear out pages and keep ideas in a notebook.

Above all, just have fun making your own an embassy and haven!