…or the whole house if you want.

Here are some staging friendly ideas from Better Homes and Gardens on decorating your home this season:

• Miniature cypress trees are a great bargain at $5 – $10 a piece. They will survive outside and look better than empty planters and urns.
• Poinsettias come in a variety of colors to coordinate with your decor.
• Add sprigs of greenery to shimmering place settings. Go for an all white and silver theme with just a touch of natural evergreen.
• Spray paint branches silver and add them to a vase.
• Try a nature theme that is unique such as berries and ferns.
• Make your own wreath using an old frame and objects such as evergreen (blue juniper, norway spruce, holly, balsam, or blue spruce), ribbon, garland, fake snow, etc.
• Place electric candles in the windows rather than strings of lights outside. They are much easier to take down, friendly to all religions, and more forgivable if you leave them up past the holiday.

Freshaire Choice

VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds, can cause eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches, loss of coordination, as well as organ and nerve damage. These are not things you want in your home! Fortunately, Freshaire Choice Paint is available at your local Home Depot, which means no going out of your way to buy it.

Get started repainting today with 3 free samples of the 65 premium colors! For more information, click any of the links on this page or watch this informative video!

Here is some history on Samara House:

• The original owners were John and Kay Christian whoe decided to build near the campus of Purdue University in 1950.
• The project took six years
• The exhibition features a collection of furnishings, textiles and other items Wright designed specifically for Samara, one of the late Usonian style homes he designed.

Planned lectures at the exhibit:

• Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Building will be given by Richard Cleary, Ph.D. on Thursday, March 13, at 7 p.m. Cleary will discuss Wright’s vision of organic architecture and his innovative approaches to structural systems and construction techniques.
• On Thursday, April 10, at 7 p.m. Margo Stipe, Curator and Registrar of Collections, at The Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, Taliesin West, will discuss Wright’s revolutionary reworking of architectural space, how he dissolved interior walls and opened interior spaces allowing communion with the natural world he believed was a great spirit.

The Westcott House is located at 1340 East High Street in Springfield, Ohio. Admission fee is $5; free for members of The Westcott House Foundation. For more information call 937-327-9291 or visit www.westcotthouse.org. 

(Article from www.Ohio.com, the Akron Beacon Journal’s online website)

So do we.

Benjamin Moore carries a line of Pottery Barn paint colors for the home that coordinate with PB’s textiles and accessories. You can receive a complimentary color deck at any Pottery Barn store or you can request one to be shipped to you for just $2 by calling 1-800-922-5507 or by going to potterybarn.com and typing the word “colors” in the search box.

Staging friendly colors we love:
   Cedar Key
   Brookside Moss
   Oak Ridge
   Suntan Yellow

Saturday’s schedule features:

• International Design stars on the KRUPS Stage
• Seminars on all things design
• The IDS Workshops are new this year:
  • Saturday’s workshop will be DESIGN & DECORATING TRENDWATCHING by Cobi Ladner, Editor at Canadian House & Home magazine and Mark Challen, Vice-President Communications also from the magazine. Unfortunately, the 100 places are sold out.
  • There are some places left for the LIVING WITH A COMMITMENT TO GREEN workshop on Sunday.
• What’s Your Design Dilemma?  This is your chance for a free 15 min. consultation with one of ARIDO’s registered interior designers.  Appointments are on a first-come first-served basis and arranged upon visiting the ARIDO booth (1617).

Visit the AfriCharisma booth to see and touch the remarkable rock and scatter cushions and pebble carpets by South African Designer, Ronel Jordaan. The felt cushions made to look alike rocks are divine. The unique cushions and carpets are handmade with no sewing (therefore no seams). 

Interior Design Show 2008 in Toronto

Figures from K+BB January 2008 issue

Here is a summary of his tips:

“Tone down personality” In this section he addresses clutter, bookshelves, collectibles, family pictures, and neutralizing colors.

“Don’t burden the buyer with repairs” Here he suggests all repairs be made before showing the home. In this competitive market, the home in the best move-in ready condition wins the sale.

“Maximize exposure” This last section refers to using a true professional: a Realtor who uses Multiple Listing Service, the newspaper, and online resources.

100% of his article is on key, possibly his best peice of advice is to “consider using a Realtor who can prove results and a staging expert who can give you many more tips and suggestions.”

I ran across a post from the Business Courier of Cincinnati. The article begins, “An Ohio furniture retailer with a nearly 50-year history is eliminating its corporate staff and beginning the process to close stores. According to documents filed with the Ohio Department of Job & Family Services, Sofa Express Inc. plans to close all eight of its Central Ohio stores and its headquarters and warehouse. Another six stores in northeast Ohio are scheduled to close, putting 436 workers out of a job altogether. That tally includes 253 workers at the Groveport, Ohio, headquarters.”

Yuck. As if Ohio’s economy wasn’t looking bad enough. The company’s reason for closing is their financial situation. Usually I can’t help but run into news like the closing of furniture retailers in my own backyard, but the company is quietly dragging out the closure. It will take several months for 40 stores to be closed.

Time to vent! I refuse to throw away plastic bags and I just won’t use paper grocery bags. Now I have bags of bags of bags, especially during this shopping season. The collection is getting out of control but there is an answer! No, I am not going to break down and throw them in the trash. (Speaking of break down, it takes plastic bags as much as 1,000 years to break down in landfill and 450 in water.) I plan on taking my bags to a local recycling bin (as seen in many Medina, OH parking lots) or to the local Giant Eagle grocery store which also has a bag-recycling bin. I will also stash a folded-up fabric shopping bag in my purse. Maybe this will relieve me from the funny looks I get when I reuse or refuse a bag at the store! 

Furthermore, I will now give preference to retailers that sell reusable shopping bags, like Giant Eagle. When I am not at a green store, I tend to apologize to clerks about my proactiveness, but why should I? I think I am hip and ahead of the crowd, kind of like the city of San Francisco who recently banned plastic grocery bags. You can read more about that in this past post by Sharon.

My friend’s think I’m crazy, but I know I am just more educated and aware about the issue. Now you are too.

More facts on plastic bags and their unfriendly impact on the earth:

• Plastic bags don’t biodegrade because their components do not biodegrade (especially oil). They actually break down into smaller toxic bits which become consumable contaminants for animals, even humans.
• Other than oil, plastic bags contain metals like chromium and copper. Exposure leads to diseases.
• Oil is expensive! Can avoiding plastic bags lower gas prices? Yes, if more people change their ways! 12 million barrels of oil, remember?
• My fave environmentally friendly, earth-loving, life-changing website ever - IdealBite – is chock full of facts like the one at the beginning of this article. 

• Last October 115,568 foreclosures had been listed 
• This year it is 224,451, showing a 94% increase.
• In October the ratio was 1 foreclosure for every 555 houses.
• The foreclosure filings are inclusive of default and auction sale notice as well as bank repossessions.
• 45 states saw a high jump rise from last year.
• Year by year the number is still up but it had leveled during the last two months after making an all time record in August this year.
• The pace has slackened most probably because of the lenders bending to pressure and beginning to modify terms of loans. Another reason may be a lull in filings after the shooting up following a new surge in interest rate rise.
• It usually takes two to three months for a borrower to be marked as defaulter after the reset sets in.
• Roughly 2 million loans are about to reset in the following eight months. Inevitable this would lead to a surging of foreclosures.
• In October lenders repossessed more and more houses after failing at the trustee auctions. Very few of those who were marked foreclosed managed to save their houses.
• In Ohio especially 45% of all the filings were bank notifications for repossession.
• In Missouri and Michigan the numbers were 46% and 37% respectively.
• Apart from the sub-prime other causes were economic woes like job loss.
• Nevada topped the foreclosure list with a ratio of 1:154 compared to the national average of 1:555.
• In October the filings numbered 6,618 showing a rise of 20% from September and triple that of what it was in the same month the previous year.
• In California the ratio was 1:258 but it recorded the highest number of foreclosures – 50,401. It had come down by 2% from September but triple that of what the numbers were in October 2006.
• The ratio in Florida was 1:273 with the state recording 30,190 foreclosures. It was a 9% drop from September but up by 165% from the previous year.
• Ohio showed 1:290 with 17,276 foreclosure listings – 10% more than last month but 136% higher than the last year.
• The other top ranking offending states were Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, Arizona, Indiana and Illinois.

My motto when selling a home is to “live like you’re on vacation.”  This means that all items in every room, including the basement, garage and attic, should be evaluated for regular use.  Buyers know you are moving and are not turned off by boxes.  They will be turned off by clutter in storage areas.

You are moving anyway – box everything NOW!  You will feel ahead of the moving game, have less to move and/or clean, and will really impress buyers with how clean, organized and spacious your home is.