9 green Thanksgiving centerpiece ideas

Thanksgiving Day is around the corner! Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States.

Article taken off mnn.com

9 green Thanksgiving centerpiece ideas

Dressing the table is as important as dressing the turkey on Thanksgiving day. Try one of these easy, eco-friendly ideas for your holiday feast.



You can’t enter a store this time of year without being bombarded with holiday music and tacky decorations. As an interior designer, those tacky decorations really get my goat because I know that simple decorations look so much nicer. Contrary to what’s sold in the stores, there are many easy and elegant holiday decorations that can be made from things we already own, or can be easily purchased and reused. Here is a group of natural Thanksgiving centerpieces that look elegant and don't cost much.

1. Put leftover clear glass florist vases to good use by filling them with mini-pumpkins, pinecones or berries. Often, these inexpensive vases get tossed out or pushed to the backs of closets, but they can definitely be put to great use. Small vases can be clustered together or use a large vase for a singular statement. If you’re looking for a crafts project, you can wrap the vases with raffia or cornhusks and glue into place for a customized look.

2. Hollow out a smallish pumpkin to create a beautiful, seasonal vase. Fill with seasonal flowers such as mums or red and orange gerbera daisies.

3. From the pages of Better Homes & Gardens: Hot glue the heads of mums directly onto small pumpkins for a unique look. Place a few down the center of the table in different color combinations. These will make easy-to-see-over centerpieces and you can use less -than-perfect pumpkins to boot!

4. Also from Better Homes & Gardens: If you have an acorn tree in your yard, start collecting the fallen acorns early in the season. These can be hot glued onto an old basket or dish and used as a natural-looking container for a centerpiece. If you wish, you can also gild the lily by spray painting the acorns with a metallic paint and filling a clear glass bowl with the tiny golden nuggets.

5. From Fresh Home: Scoop out a round shallow hole in apples or pears and place a tea light candle inside for some festive lighting around the table. These are so tiny that each guest can have their own.

6. Fill a vintage metal pie plate or baking pan with apples and cinnamon sticks and a few flowers. It's an easy and quick centerpiece that can eventually turn into a real pie!

7. An idea from Southern Living: If you’ve had a relatively small tree come down in your yard, don’t just send the logs through the chipper. Cut 4-6” rounds for natural looking bases of varying heights to prop up centerpieces. Just make sure the wood is free of insects and is relatively clean.

8. From Good Housekeeping: Create a citrus-scented centerpiece by thinly slicing lemons and oranges, drying them in a 250 degree oven and then apply to thick pillar candles with hot glue. The warmth of the candles will release a gentle scent throughout the evening.

9. Also from Good Housekeeping: For a down-home, rustic-looking centerpiece, empty out a box of Clementines and loosely wrap the box with natural burlap, stapling in the inside base to secure. Spike the fruit with whole cloves in the manner of an old-fashioned pomander and refill the box. A spicy orange scent will fill the air nicely.

Tips for Using a Brown Leather Sofa to Inspire Home Decor

Earthy Decor... Elegant Decor... Modern Decor with brown leather sofa!

Article taken off suite101.com

Tips for Using a Brown Leather Sofa to Inspire Home Decor

Decorating with a Brown Leather Sofa
Decorating around a brown leather sofa makes choosing the decor for almost any living room extremely easy. Brown is a versatile color that fits in well with most decorating schemes. A brown leather couch can meld with an earth toned theme, feel elegant against browns and maroons, or add a touch of modernity to your home. Learn about decorating around a brown leather sofa with these exciting home decorating tips.

Earthy Decor
Warm decor in earthy colors make for a relaxing and comfortable color scheme in any living room. Earth tones also make decorating around a brown leather sofa easy. Choose colors in earthy browns, dark reds, warm oranges, muted golds, and even dark greens. Paint the walls of your living room a medium dark brown or install wood paneling for an even earthier feel. Stain or paint floor, ceiling, window, and door wood trim in a lighter brown to natural wood color. For painted walls, add an earthy feel to the room with hardwood flooring. For walls with wood paneling, select an area rug or carpet in red, beige, or green. Add other earth tones to the room with curtains, blankets, pillows, and other accessories. Your brown leather sofa will meld beautiful with the earthy theme throughout the rest of the room.

Elegant Decor
Decorating around a brown leather sofa is a perfect excuse for more elegant decor. Choose colors in dark browns, maroons, and golds for a classic but elegant feel. Paint the walls of your living room dark maroon with dark brown trim, or paint both the walls and the trim dark brown. Hardwood floors look especially elegant against a brown leather sofa. If possible, remove any existing carpeting and install hardwood flooring stained in a golden brown color. Choose a patterned area rug with brown, maroon, and gold colors in the design. Use dark red or maroon for window curtains and valances. Select additional upholstered furniture like chairs in maroons and golds. Your brown leather couch will feel elegant against the new decor of your living room.

Modern Decor
For a more modern look, decorating around a brown leather sofa is as easy as incorporating light, neutral colors throughout the rest of your living room. Paint the walls of your living room a grayish olive green. Use white or off-white for the trim and ceiling. Install a medium dark hardwood or carpet on the floor. Select fabric in a solid or minimally patterned chestnut brown for the window curtains. For other furniture in the room like side tables, coffee tables, and entertainment centers, go with natural wood furniture in medium to dark browns. Add splashes of other neutral shades of whites, grays, and browns with pillows, blankets, vases, lighting, and other accessories. Your brown leather couch will feel very modern in a room with light, neutral colors. Finding color schemes for a living room for decorating a brown leather sofa is easy for almost any home. Being inspired by a brown leather sofa can be earthy, elegant, or modern with these simple but fun decorating ideas.

Integrating High Tech TVs in Home Design

Can you visualize of having this high tech systems in your living room... Isn't this awesome?

Article taken off homeinteriorszone.com

Integrating High Tech TVs in Home Design

You might have never made the connection between home entertainment and gas prices. Consider this: the gas prices are constantly rising, and so the staycations are gaining more and more popularity. In case you spend your vacation at home you won’t have to worry about the prices of gas, lodging, and food.

You could get high quality entertainment all year round, so why to go on vacation to see one place if you can see the entire world right from your living room?



One of the most important things that people take into consideration when choosing their home theatre system is the price. If you go the right way, you can find some amazing systems without burning a hole in your pocket. The basic home theatre system comprises a DVD player, a video display device and digital surround sound.

Try to go for such theatre systems that can fit into your living room environment without being noticed until it is time to switch on and enjoy.

In case you have the money and also the place for it, you could have a room that is dedicated to the home cinema experience. The place of the room may vary between a basement that hasn’t been used before, and a new addition to your home.

There are some more fortunate people who can afford to have a dedicated room to use as their personal cinema, but since not everybody can do this, you should be thinking about how to incorporate all the hi-tech equipment in your living room.

The best solution is to keep everything casual. You don’t have to show off all the things that you have, because chances are that you are going to ruin the harmony of the living room.

The size of the room that you are using as home cinema doesn’t really matter, but it should have a rectangular shape to be able to place the best theatre seating and to create the best digital surround sound field. To have good viewing angle for all the viewers, the video display should be placed in the center of the short wall. In case the room is small and square, you should place the projector diagonally in a corner. This way the viewers could be more comfortably seated.

In case you would like to get more advice on how to create your own personal cinema, look up iLife Home Automation. You can be sure that you will get numerous useful tips on how to do things, and you will have the possibility to learn a lot about this exiting matter.