make a beautiful, inviting, uplifting home

This one feels like it has been on the backburner of late. I don’t seem to spend that much time actually at home these days to ensure it is beautiful. In reality there are dirty dishes and full bins. It makes me feel grotty.

Gah I hate not being able to clean my house!

This weekend I’ll do a proper clean, get my veggie patch back in order (post-puppy love), buy some mroe indoor plants to cheer the place up a bit, get some fresh flowers from the markets and take down the rest of the decorations from my party.

I love my house, it just isn’t looking very loved right now. Action stations!

1. black lights
2. plastic body parts
3. covers for couches
4. candles
5. food
6. tulle for the roof
7. funky invites
8. fake blood
9. costume

I hope it goes well!

I’m trying to keep fresh flowers in the house. It makes it feel lovely and welcoming.

I think i achieve this atmosphere in our home. We don’t have much in the way of material things but there’s a lot of laughing, playing, relaxing etc

I always do my best to make visitors welcome. I get insecure at times if I can’t offer a biscuit with your tea so I work on what I can do.

I have loads of family photos plastered all over the place. There’s a lot of music here. We are pretty casual about where we eat and sometimes sleep. We love camp outs in the lounge room.

I have very dear friends who visit. I want to have loads more though. I vision inviting more people over if we had a bbq and a bigger coffee table. Oh and the lounge suite is practically falling to pieces.

It’s the people in the home that matter the most.

I did alot of research over the internet and bought a carpet cleaner that had some good reviews. Its pretty easy to use and I tried it with both the detergent it came with and a home-solution of vinegar, water and essential oils. The vinegar solution left the carpet a lot softer feeling and shinier, while the area I cleaned with the detergent stayed dingy looking and kind of dense feeling.

So far, it was a great purchase!

I was very proud of how good our living room looked on Saturday night. I spent a heap of time last Friday and Saturday morning finishing the decluttering, cleaning and just generally straightening the room up. We had guests over for dinner and it was wonderful to not have to worry about hidden clutter or dusty bits :)

This weekend we bought a new shower curtain! Hooray! Hubby and I went for a frosty vinyl one with large blue and green circles on it. In feng shui, circles are considered to represent metal. Since our bathroom is in the family corner of the house, where metal is not a good thing, I attached some bright red clip-on flowers to the curtain rings so the fire would “consume” the metal. laughs It sounds kind of tacky, but my husband spontaneously told me he liked it, so it must look good!

There are several, however mundane, things that I would love to do currently to enhance my home.

1) A new shower curtain (I bought one of those cloth ones, to avoid getting mildew and make it easier to clean – lo and behold, it has a plastic lining on the bottom strip…which mildews).

2) Carpet cleaned. Two dogs, three years, zero cleanings. ‘nuff said.

3) Get rid of some stuff. Our little home is packed to the roof. Go through some more of my hubbies ancient clothing relics (which have three years worth of dust on them). Craigs list the wedding flower arrangements I still have from a year ago. And donate/dispose of anything else that we seriously don’t need.

I don’t feel like I should bring more stuff in, till I make a little breathing space.

1. Hung my pictures. Will finish hanging prints when get the chance.
2. Am keeping my herb garden alive (thanks must go to mother nature for the rain, and Zed the dog for not eating them!)
3. I have my guitars out again.
4. I bought a electric mixer so I can bake cake for friends. I also have a brownie pan!
5. I’m knitting for friends a lot more. I’m learning new things too.
6. My home isn’t always really tidy – sometimes it’s a bit of a mess actually. I don’t mind that.

ok so the fish died (they ate each other so far as I can tell…) but my fern is going great guns!

I’ve decided that the next 24 hours are for working on one of these items – the uncluttered living areas one.

My mini-goal for the next 24 hours is to completely unclutter our combined lounge/dining area. Luckily it’s not as big a job as it would have been because I’ve been doing 15 minutes here and there for the last couple of weeks. Still, at almost 8 months pregnant I think I’m going to need the entire day tomorrow and a large number of rest breaks ;-)

Do you think this counts as nesting?