How to Decorate Your Home on a Budget

How to Decorate Your Home on a Budget

You have a brand new house and now you have to make it look exactly the way you want it.  After buying your home you don’t exactly have an unlimited budget to decorate your new home.  You have been looking through interior design magazines for months and now it is time to put your own style on your home.  Here is how to decorate your new home on a budget.

Choose Your Style

This may sound simple but you should first choose the type of style that you like and that works with your home.  Make a note of the pieces that you need and set up a budget.  The last thing you want to do is have a house full of things that don’t work together or a home that is a big cluttered mess.  An underlying theme helps make sure that everything flows.  Here is how to discover your style.

Add Some Personality

Your home and decorating style should really reflect your personality.  Do you like boho chic, French provincial or are you into something a little more Western style?  Use small decorative items that you absolutely love.  This could be anything from a picture frame, bright paint colors or a piece of modern art.  Choose carefully but let it reflect who you are.  You don’t have to spend much on small decorative pieces you can get some great finds at thrift stores or swap meets.

Measure Your Space

Unless you are buying window coverings this is something that most people forget to do.  All of the beautiful decorative pieces that you bought won’t do you any good if they are too big for the space you have.  You can make the best impression when the dimensions are working.  If you live in an apartment or condo then you need to be very careful about size and dimension.

Rugs are a Must

Most homes come with hardwood, laminate or tile floors, they are easy to look after and look good but they are also cold and impersonal.  Warm the space up and add some much needed texture with a brilliant area rug.  You can use plush thick rugs, wool rugs, modern designer rugs or a traditional rug.  You can even layer them for some pretty interesting effects.  They will keep you warm during the cold winter nights and they look fabulous.

Decorating on a budget isn’t as hard as you think, spend money on the big pieces like your sofa, but accent your home with inexpensive accessories that add color, texture and design elements.

Creative Ways to Incorporate an Area Rug into Your Home

Creative Ways to Incorporate an Area Rug into Your Home

A handmade area rug is more than just a piece of carpet you put in the middle of your living room, it is a piece of art.  Area rugs are more versatile than you think and you can do so much more with them than just putting one in the living room.  Let us show you creative ways to incorporate an area rug into your home.  You have an endless array of options when it comes to color and texture, so here are some ways to make it work.

Decorate the Floor

The first is of course the most obvious, you put a handmade area rug on your floor to add a splash of color.  You can put your furniture completely on top of your area rug or you can use it to tie a conversation area together and only have the front legs of your sofa and chairs on the area rug.  How you place it will greatly depend on the size of your room and how large your rug is.  The living room isn’t the only place to put it though, if you have hardwood floors in the bedroom area rugs are perfect beside the bed.  No one likes cold floors first thing in the morning!

Layering Your Area Rugs

This is a pretty new trend but it looks wonderful.  There are a bunch of different ways that you can incorporate this into your home, layering is simply putting one rug on top of another.  Your bottom rug should be larger than the ones that you put on top, you can combine colors and different textures in the layered rugs.  Put a wool layer on the bottom and you can put sheepskin on top of that.  This takes your area rugs and makes them the focal point of the room.

Use them as a Wall Hanging

Area rugs, particularly the ones made from silk or any natural fiber for that matter can make beautiful wall hangings.  They are not that different from tapestries that used to adorn castle walls.  Grab a small or medium size rug and you easily add it to your walls.

Flow from Room to the Next

You can use runners to transition from one room to the next, this works really well in homes that are open concept.  You can transition from the living room to the kitchen to the dining room while keeping a consistent decorating theme.

Area rugs are more than just pieces of carpet that you put under your coffee table you can use them strategically to add texture and color all over your home.

Southwestern Decor, Western Decor, Area Rugs, And More

Southwestern decor has always held a special place in my life. I think I most recently realized this when moving from my home state of Arizona to a small town in upstate New York. It was crazy and extremely overwhelming. I was having such a hard time adjusting, so much so, that it started to affect my health. Anxiety and depression hung over my head like a black cloud. I couldn’t find any comfort in my own head. After a few months, I couldn’t take anymore. I decided to make the best of things by taking our four bed, two bath rental and making it our own. Because it was a rental there was not a lot that I could do but I took baby steps forward.

Southwestern vs Western Style

Room by room, I went through that house, looked for anything and everything that made me uncomfortable or that I may be really enjoyed. Once I had an idea of what I wanted to do I slowly started to change, and it was exciting! I brought in colors that brought my mood up. I lit up the dark rooms that I would hide it when I just felt like giving up. Southwestern decor allowed me to change my life, crawl out of a dark spot, and made me feel like I was home, even though I was thousands of miles away. I couldn’t be more appreciative for being able to adapt in the world through southwestern decorating.

Aesthetics is a philosophy that deals with assigning life value on beauty and test. It a philosophy that is as ancient as man himself because it is tangled within the very physical nature of humanity. By nature, man attribute value on things seen, heard and tested. This value is measured in the degree of beauty and test. For example, a green and flowering garden is considered as a vineyard of abundant life and of divine favor while its opposite is considered to be a place of suffering hence hell on earth. A beautiful piece of music is a source of soul relaxation, peacefulness and love. At the same time, a good and testy meal is considered by those who partake of it as a sign of hospitality and care from the one who prepared it.

The art of aesthetics has played a major role in the socialization of the world. In the religious world, the art of beauty and test has been used since the advent of religion to communicate God to the human senses. For example, in the Jewish religion, sweet testing aroma were burned on the altar, the temple décor was unmatched in contemporary times while bread, wine and meat from sacrifices were served to worshipers as a symbol of life. History of religion reveals that nothing has ever penetrated the soul of mankind like the beauty of the religious songs. To sum up, human beings behold God the creator in the beauty.

This notion has been founded on the fact that the created world is outstandingly beautiful and thus reflect its creator. As a consequence, the décor of the church is expected to be exceptional in its beauty because worshipers equate it with the presence of God. Psychology of worship contend that a church that ignore aesthetics in its worship risk to lose the sense of God’s own presence among the worshipers.

Love is an ultimate social aspect sought by humanity. Love means everything in life and where love abounds, life abounds also because there live peace and prosperity. In the social world, there is nothing that physically communicates love like the aesthetical arts. One is able to tell a wedding ceremony by far by just perceiving the décor of the environment. In addition, it is possible that one can notice a house prepared for very important visitors by looking at the western decor in the siting room with the western and southwestern style in the area rug design. A visitor is able to tell how much is loved by the amount of decorations made to the environment. We are all conscious of how it can be disturbing to a visitor who is welcome in a smelly and dirty house full of all horrible things.

A sense of rejection, worthlessness and fear will always crawl into the mind of that visitor in a situation such as this. Though the word of rejection and worthlessness has not been verbally spoken, the host in this manner has physically communicated the opposite of love to the visitor. Most of the discrimination cases we hear of in our homes, institutions and places of work are not spoken words but are actions void of decor done against the victims of discrimination. For example, assigning a rusty hostel to a new arrived  student or giving badly cooked food to a stranger in the house, is enough to make one feel rejected hence discriminated in the community.