Home Front Decoration

Archive for January, 2010

Solar power is truly the wave of the future, a very practical replacement for fossil fuels with many utilitarian uses. The one unexpected thing to come out of the solar revolution is the rise of solar decor. Practical, but pretty, too. Now, when I say “solar decor,” I don’t mean “Take the solar panel and lightly stamp it with the butterfly stamp, and then decorate it with pink frills,” like a certain domestic goddess might suggest, although that could be nice for a broken panel. No, I mean that the addition of solar power has worked its way into many of the places around our home that we want to look pretty.

Sun-Powered Lighting

The most common solar decor I’ve seen has to do with lighting. Wherever you need lighting, especially outside, solar power makes the job of setting up lights so much easier. It’s simple to set up a line of lights along your driveway to guide you in, or to hang a solar-powered lantern out front, which is pretty and acts as a guiding light.

Address Lights

A good-looking and practical product I’ve seen is address lights. Whether you mount them on your house or on a pole in the front yard, having a well-lit number outside is great for people trying to find you. How many relatives have gotten lost or newspapers mis-delivered because they couldn’t see your house number? Put one of these out front and they’ll never wonder, or wander, again. The standard yard gnomes, animals and fairies are seeing lights added to them, which add a nice fairy-tale ambience to your outdoors. They might be holding up a lantern (great as a welcoming touch) or a crystal ball, and of course, they light up.

Christmas Decor

And when the holiday season comes around, it’s not hard to find Christmas lights powered by the sun. You just hang them and forget about them; no need to plug them in every night. The biggest benefit from all these things using solar energy is the convenience of not having to drag out cords or change out batteries. More than once I’ve either hung an address light or put out a decoration, only to let it grow dark because I either forgot to change out the battery, or because I didn’t want to plug it in. Cords also have the danger of being exposed to the elements, making for short circuits. We don’t need that, do we?

No Need To Deal With Dangerous Electricity

Solar power easily makes those problems obsolete. Most of the time, the solar panel comes mounted in the decoration already, and light-bulb changing is minimized by using LED lights, which last darn near forever. All you have to do is set it out or mount it and you’re good to go.

As the holiday season quickly approaches, it’s never too early to start thinking about decoration ideas. After the holiday dinner menus are completed, it’s time to start thinking about ways to add holiday cheer to the home. While garland and blinking holiday lights tangled on the staircase are the norm for many families, what better way to be festive than with some new and unique holiday decoration ideas? The whole family can become involved in decorating the home, while sipping on hot cocoa and listening to the family’s favorite holiday tunes. Holiday decorations can represent a personal aesthetic and doesn’t have to be expensive either. Here are five holiday decoration ideas to add character to the home.

1. Window decorations are a simple way to add some holiday festivity to any room. Pick out a holiday colored fabric and create a beautiful windowscape with custom drapery to match the home and holiday season. Don’t forget that specialty window rods are also available that can add some character to the room.
2. The fireplace and mantle are popular areas for some holiday decorating. Look for fake snow to place on top of the mantle, snow globes, snowmen, angels, menorahs, Chanukah figurines, and other holiday spirited items to adorn the common area.
3. The bathroom is also a fun place to add holiday decoration. Look for scented candles and soaps for guests to use, such as cinnamon spice or pumpkin pie to compliment the season.
4. Pine cones and pine trees are a definite staple during the season. Look for ways to add the sweet smelling shrubs as a centerpiece near the dining room, as a wreath on the front door or in the form of a Christmas tree.
5. If young children live in the home, make sure to put up their special classroom projects as part of the home’s holiday decorations. Many youngsters will spend hours in class making snowmen, Thanksgiving turkeys, Santa hats and holiday drawings to get in the spirit. Put some of their favorite creations in the kitchen and living room for the whole family and guests to enjoy.

As the wealth of the Colonies increased, there was a gradual introduction of articles of additional comfort, if not those of some luxury, and the architecture reflects these conditions in the construction of more pretentious houses with larger rooms. We also notice crude attempts at introducing architectural moldings and ornamentation, with the occasional use of some color enrichment.As the products of the printing press brought drawings and descriptions of the works of the well known English architects, such as Sir Christopher Wren, Chambers and others to America, an important and rather sudden advancement was made in the refinement of architectural detail, both on the interior as well Classical art becomes strongly felt. The fireplace now becomes smaller, but great interest is centered about its decoration and the use of academic forms such as pilasters, columns, glass corner protectors, and entablatures, become common, and often unusual and interesting forms were introduced by the local carpenters who often constructed these features from memory.The plank walls were superseded at first by an informal arrangement of paneling, which in turn gave place to the symmetrical compositions of wall treatment that were typical of Georgian England. The practice of covering the interior partitions with the woodwork, allowing the inside of the exterior walls of the house to be covered in plaster, persisted for many years, and the introduction of wallpaper was a convenient method of enriching the plaster surfaces.

The wood paneling was treated in light colored paints. This unbalanced treatment of the different sides of the same room lasted until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The wide plank floors of the early type of room eventually gave place to oak flooring in strip and parquet patterns. Elements besides English were found in other portions of the country.Flemish and Dutch features were often prominent in buildings in Southern New York, Long Island and New Jersey, and we find French elements of interior decoration copied in many localities of the South. Due to the greater wealth of the South, attempts at formal architecture are found much earlier than in the North. Along the river banks of Virginia and the Carolinas, the social life developed to a point that was nearly equal of that of the old country. The diaries of visitors from foreign lands gave witness to the manner in which they were entertained by the leading families of these sections.