Sarah Crosset asked:


When you have a picky, sophisticated style, it can be difficult to decorate your home. Learning to appreciate the little things will keep you in the loop with life and loving your home, sophisticated or not.

Decorating your home can be difficult. We all know that. But if you’re one of those people that has a slightly sophisticated taste, if you yourself may not be a sophisticated person, decorating your home can be a veritable nightmare.

As a Home Decorating Sophisticate, or HDS as it were, you have a refined taste in furniture, flooring, sashes, throw pillows, drapery, rugs, lighting, hanging artwork and pretty much everything else that comes through your line of vision. You can sense imbalance in your sleep and your aura blends with Zen decorating on an ultimately frightening level.

Never fear, though. You don’t have to go to a professional decorator to get the look you want and can be happy with for your home-which is great because with your picky style, a professional decorator would be a complete waste of thousands of dollars.

First things first. Learn to appreciate imbalance and make it work with your extreme sense of balance. When you’re learning to appreciate the simple things in life, the sophisticated side of you can break lose and make it difficult. One of the most important things a sophisticate must know when trying to decorate a home for reality is that there can never be perfect balance in everything. Life may be about learning achieve balance, but if you have kids, or a life that moves with the speed of the world, there’s bound to be an occasional dirty sock on the floor, traffic marks and hand smudges on your walls. Decorate to suit those needs.

You may need to purchase an area rug to cover the places where people walk the most. Oriental rugs are perfect for parlors, living rooms and dining rooms as well as any other place your sophisticated little heart needs to put one. In outdoor spaces or sunrooms a well made bamboo area rug or seagrass area rug can be an excellent addition to your motif. Remember though, that an area rug is more than just a way to cover up the little imperfections that send your sophistication radar blaring up a storm. An area rug is a way to bring warmth and life into your otherwise over-perfected home.

But don’t think that it’s only about area rugs and covering things up that you don’t want to see. Decorating as a sophisticate is also about learning to appreciate the macaroni and glitter jewelry box your daughter made enough to proudly display it next to the Faberge egg knock off your grandmother left you.

Remind yourself everyday that sophistication is less important than the little things in life. As a sophisticate you can always have a beautiful home that you love. But it is so few and far between that a sophisticate can have both a beloved home and home that’s full of love.

It’s not easy to have a sophisticated home that is also full of life and ready for reality. Give life a change and you may find it’s more sophisticated than you thought.

Bob Bastian asked:


You should keep in mind that the best way to get a lot of decorating down is to take a few of your closest friends and ask them to come over and help you get your home decorating done. There are a lot of people who have painting parties. This is a cheap way to get your painting needs met without having to put a lot of time into the home. You will also find that there are many other things that you can do to keep the budget down too. Keep in mind that there are some other things that you can do to keep the decorating prices down. For those who have never had a professional come in and decorate a home, it can be very expensive. Instead of paying someone, you and your friends may be able to handle some of the decorating tasks and it could save you hundreds of money.

The first thing that you will want to think about when putting a home decorating party together is so that you can try to talk some of your skilled friends into helping you. You are going to have to have some people will some basic carpentry skills. The carpentry skills my come from your husband and his friends, but then you still have to find people who are trustworthy to come in and paint and hang some of your pictures. This is why is it always best to go with close friends and family members that you can trust.

The second thing that you have to think about is how you can stay within your budget. You will want to make sure that you consider telling this helpers that they are pretty just donating their time to you and that you have no concern in paying them. Even your best friend may expect some form of payment, however, you can always tell them that the drinks and pizza is one you for the night.

The third thing is that you will need to find some nicely priced supplies. It is very easy and very quick to decorate a home when you just try to use things like fabric, mirrors, and candles. This will make a room dramatic and lovely without having to waste a lot of your time or taking a lot of your money.

When you have a home decorating party you will find that there are a lot of opinions that you will have and you’ll get a lot of great ideas. These same ideas would be the ones that a professional home decorator would make. You will be able to save money on not having a home decorator and having professional painters come in to do the job that your friends have helped you to start and finish.