Shelly's Home Decor Ideas

If you are getting ready to move into a brand new house, or have decided to remodel your existing home, choosing the right house paint colors will be one of your most important tasks. The proper interior paint colors will complement the fabrics, carpeting and other accessories, and will contribute to the mood you want to create in individual rooms. You can use paint colors to create a uniform understated backdrop for your room furnishings, or you can use colors to provide active accents to your decorating scheme.

Pointers for Choosing Paint

Your local paint store is the best place to go for pointers on choosing the right paints. The paint experts there can advise you on what type of paint and finish to use in different situations.  For example, do you want flat or glossy, latex or oil-based, a smooth coat or a textured finish? They can explain the color wheel to you, as well as how to use it to coordinate colors on opposite sides of the spectrum.

When you are looking at paint samples in the store, you will be able to make better choices if you bring fabric and flooring samples with you, because it will allow you to see the exact colors you are trying to coordinate. Your paint store can prepare small samples for you to take home with you. In order to get a good idea of how the paint you have selected will actually look, use the samples to paint a few square feet of a board or the actual wall. Put carpet and flooring samples flat on the floor and curtain fabrics or wood trim vertically next to the sample, and then you can see how the colors look with each other. Let the samples dry completely before you judge the colors.

You will want to use different interior colors depending upon the purpose of the rooms and the moods that you want to create in them. You should paint ceilings a much lighter color than the walls, since they tend to be in shadow. The warm colors – reds, oranges and pinks – tend to go best in rooms where you want a higher energy level, while the cool colors – violets, blues, and greens – are best when you want a more soothing ambiance.

Liven up Your Kitchen

You want your kitchen to be warm and inviting, so choose warm colors to energize the room. You don’t want too many solid walls with a bright color, because it will become tiring over time. If you have brightly colored countertops, an off-white wall with rich brown trim or colorful borders might make the room an inviting place for guests to linger and join you to cook a delicious meal.

Make Your Living Room Lively

Choose colors for your living room that bring out the best in your furniture and accessories. If you have light furniture and carpeting, you can go with bolder colors for your walls.  You can use the color wheel to choose the right warm colors to go with your draperies or furniture coverings. To avoid making the room feel too busy, match warm hues with opposite cooler hues on the color wheel.

Make Bedrooms Peaceful Refuges

In order to choose the right house paint colors for your bedrooms, keep in mind that you want the space to be restful, especially for young children who need to wind down each evening before sleep. Choose cool colors like blues and greens for the walls to complement brighter colors in curtains, wall hangings and bed coverings.

Tranquil Bathrooms

Bathrooms are another space you may want to choose to paint in cool colors. In order to create a space filled with peace and tranquility, choose colors from nature, with pastel walls highlighted with bolder colors for cabinets and trim.

Ultimately, the right house paint colors are the ones that fit your personal preferences. Darker colors may go well in a room that gets a lot of natural light, but consider using a sponging application or other painting technique to give the walls texture to bring the darker colors to life. For restful spaces, choose cool colors and for rooms with more energy, choose warm colors.

Filed under: Uncategorized on March 29th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

What makes Zhu Zhu pets the hot holiday toy this Christmas is the accessories that you can buy for them like real hamsters.  You can customize their homes and add pipes and new areas like you would with a real hamster module and create a hamster city.  Here are some of the neat accessories that you can connect to a zhu zhu pet home.

Zhu Zhu Pets Funhouse

This set comes with a zhu zhu hamster named Patches.  Zhu Zhu pets are able to guide their way through the module without any help with their motorized wheels and make cute critter sounds when they pass over certain track bumps on the floor of the funhouse.

Zhu Zhu Hamster Wheel

Connected to a Zhu zhu module home, the Zhu Zhu pets can run on a hamster wheel.  They can also get off the wheel as well.

Zhu Zhu Ramp Slide

Watch a Zhu Zhu pet go up the ramp and then go down a corkscrew slide with this add-on.

Zhu Zhu Car and Garage

Zhu Zhu pets can leave their home driving away with this car and garage set.  The doors will pop open when the car exits out of the garage.

There are also many other accessories including an Adventure ball, a starter set and more.  To find many of these items, head over to Ebay.

zhu zhu pets accessories

Filed under: kids on November 24th, 2009 | 3 Comments »

Zhu Zhu Pets are the hot toys this holiday season

Even before the turkey is carved and before Black Friday hits, it has come to everyone’s consensus that Zhu Zhu Pets are the hottest toys for the kids this holiday season.  I was lucky enough to have the foresight to purchase a couple of Zhu Zhu pets for my children before the stores ran out of stock.  Zhu Zhu pets are toy hamsters that make cute sounds and comes in five different characters, each with cute names.  They are powered by batteries and move around in their Zhu Zhu hamster homes which are accessories that can be purchased separately.  They can be combine to form a large playset with pipes that they can run through.  There is even a hamster wheel that the Zhu Zhu pets can actually run on!  The Zhu Zhu pets move around their environment like a roomba and will turn around if it hits a wall.  They were relatively cheap to start out with costing ten dollars or lower but the demand for them has raise the price considerably to over fifty dollars on Ebay.  I don’t know when or where the next shipment of Zhu Zhu pets will arrive in stores but it will be harder to get them as Christmas draws closer each day.

Zhu Zhu Pets on Ebay

Filed under: kids on November 23rd, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Here it is, the ultimate white club chair and ottoman.  This set will fit in nicely with the furnishings of a modern contemporary living room or den.  The club chair and ottoman is made by Klaussner Home Furnishings and is part of their Fifi collection.  The high end standard sized club chair has foam filled cushions and is supported by a solid hardwood frame.    The arms of the chair flare out, which makes it seems as if its inviting you to sit down and relax.  The ottoman itself is also high end, with it’s Mahogany wood trim and down blend cushioning.  If you go shopping for this, expect to pay a premium price, as this is a top quality club chair and ottoman.

List of other chair and ottoman sets

Filed under: Chairs on August 21st, 2009 | 12 Comments »

Many people wonder how to take good looking pictures of inside their homes.  If you can afford it, you should get a DSLR camera which will provide you better quality pictures than compact cameras.  DSLR cameras are also better at picking up light which is important since you might have rooms that receives little light.   Also, pick up a wide angle lens.  This type of lens will help you take pictures if you are in a small room and cannot back out enough to get a whole view of it.  And pictures that shows the whole room are usually more preferred.

Best Time To Take Pictures Around The House

You should definitely use natural lighting when you take interior pictures of your home and this means taking pictures during daylight hours.  You would think afternoon hours would be the best with the sunset but your pictures will come out darker so it is suggested that you take pictures in the middle of a sunny day without an overcast.  The natural lighting coming from the sun through your windows will look better than any artificial light source.

Using Flash

It is recommended you don’t use flash when taking pictures inside the house, but if you do, use a bounce flash aimed at the ceiling.  The light will bounce off the ceiling giving your pictures a softer light instead of the harsh light you get from a direct flash.  If it’s at night and you have incandescent lighting, take advantage of that instead of using flash.  With the right ISO settings, pictures taken with such light can produce some pretty attractive pictures.

Filed under: Uncategorized on August 14th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Put a little zen into your home garden with an outdoor water fountain.  This eye-catching Rocca fountain from Cymax is made of high quality light weight resin which is easy to clean and can be easily moved indoors during the winter months.  With the fountain lights, you can turn them on during the evenings to highlight its beauty.  This garden fountain can be cleaned with just mild soap and water.

Filed under: Outdoors on August 14th, 2009 | 3 Comments »

If you have dinner guests over and are preparing what you know will be a delicious meal, why not dress the part of a chef? This classic white chef coat will give all indication that you mean business in the kitchen.  Instawares is taking off 5 dollars on what is already an inexpensive apparel bringing the price to under $16.  The one shown in the picture is a medium size fit but other sizes are also available.  There’s a short-sleeve version as well if things get hot near the stove.

Filed under: Kitchen on August 14th, 2009 | No Comments »

For those empty hallways in your house, you can add a stylish console table which takes up little space.  You can use them to set flowers, portraits or a sculpture on; adding flair to what otherwise would be a drab spot.  Cymax right now have this beautiful solid wood console table for 41% off its regular price.  Made with full beechwood construction, this table has an elegant dark espresso brown finish.  It also has a nice chrome accent and is easy to clean.  Console tables are  ideal for near the entrance of your door, where you can leave your keys and other small items.

Filed under: Wooden Furniture on August 14th, 2009 | No Comments »

In the news, there are people who are furious that Best Buy would not honor a pricing mistake on their website for a Samsung HDTV that retails in the thousands for only 10 dollars.  It should be obvious to anyone this was a pricing mistake.  If the television was $1,000 off or even half off from it’s regular price I would say there’s a case to be made.  But the television was going for a 10 dollar bill.  I like loopholes that are in the customer’s favor and good deals, but Best Buy should not have to honor such a ridiculous pricing mistake.

Filed under: Uncategorized on August 13th, 2009 | No Comments »

A good looking bakers rack that will fit in well with most kitchens, this one can hold six wine bottles underneath its Mahogany wood counter. There are also holders on the top where you can hang up to six wine glasses.  It has a solid frame thanks to its durable construction with decorative scrolls on both sides of the rack.  This bakers rack comes in a coffee brown finish which will go especially well with kitchens that have a warm color tone decor.

Filed under: Kitchen on August 13th, 2009 | 1 Comment »