Designing Diva Interiors

Skip the flowers and put down the Snuggie- Designing Diva Interiors wants you to consider a more unique and practical gift for the mom in your life this Mother’s Day. With a DDI gift certificate she can:

* Redecorate

* Get advice on everything from paint colors to furniture selection 

* Start that remodel you promised her last year

* or utilize any other service DDI offers!

Gift certificates are available in $75 increments and expire six months from date purchased.

**DISCOUNT** Purchase your Mother’s Day gift certificate before April 15, 2010 and you will receive 20% off of your total!

Visit my friends at Cedarburg Square (http://cedarburgsquare.com/) this week to take advantage of their store-wide OFF CLEARANCE SALE! Take home your favorite accessories and gift items like table lamps, accent rugs, artwork, fragrance diffusers and more at prices you won’t likely find again soon as the store prepares for new shipments arriving from market in the spring. Holiday items are 50% off, home accents are 10% off!

Need a little help creating a designer look with your new finds? Designing Diva Interiors, LLC offers guidance from beginning to end with shopping assistance to decorating your new space.

DESIGNING DIVA INTERIORS LIMITED TIME OFFER:

Receive $5.00 off initial consultation. First-time clients only, please.

Expires 1.31.10

Every month I take reader questions on everything from landscaping to picking out sofas and ask local professionals to sound off. Today I’m asking for your HOLIDAY DECORATING QUESTIONS!

You may leave your questions here in the comment space of this blog or e-mail them to Jennifer@decorateokc.net. Your question may be answered in the upcoming days right here at Back Talk!

If you follow “divainteriors” on Twitter there are savings in store for you! Between now and December 24, 2009, you can purchase design service gift certificates in one hour increments and receive $15 off each hour!

Example: Standard design fee is $75. For the next eight days ONLY you can purchase two hours of design service for $120 instead of $150.

Gift certificates set to expire one year from date purchased and make great gifts! May be applied towards any design service DDI offers. Minimum of one hour ($60) required.

“Jennifer helped me transform my home into a cozy, warm home that I enjoy every minute.  She is an expert in using what you have, adding her ideas and carefully chosen additions and creating a beautifully crafted look in the style you want.  I look forward to working with her for many years.”

-Liz Lundin

People tend to believe that their decorating problems are unique; that they are the only people on the block with outdated furniture, with a bad room plan, with a themed room gone wrong. But truth be told I hear a lot of the same complaints from homeowners and that is never more true than at this time of year. Holiday decor has always been a mish-mash of collected items from over the years, in my home and in most homes I visit.  I don’t know anyone who has a perfectly coordinated Christmas look– sure, your gift wrap may match your ornaments but that’s as far as most people get. I’m not encouraging a Stepford Wife approach to holiday decorating, either, I’m simply saying that most folks have common issues with their holiday decor and its my job-I mean joy- to solve them! The most common gripes include “Everything I have is hand-me-down and nothing matches,” or “My Christmas decorations are so old, I don’t even know what’s in style this year.” My solutions to these individual households are very customized but in general you could safely stick to these rules:

1) If you have a collection of odd and end decorations, work with it! Its called “eclectic” (or “Bohemian” if you’re from the east) and it works because it looks effortless! This usually ends up looking very colorful and its okay if every ornament isn’t color matched or if you have pink ribbon in one room and green in the other. Think more “Dr Suesse” than “Martha Stewart” and you will easily pull off this playful style on a tight budget.

2) Add a little sprinkle of “new” to your decor. So obviously the kids’ reindeer cutouts from kindergarten have to go up but there’s nothing stopping you from adding a few new pieces to give the room an entirely different look from years past. But be disciplined and make a list before you go shopping otherwise you will get easily overwhelmed and end up purchasing more than you had intended. I recommend replacing the garland every two years depending on its quality. Replace the tree skirt every year (3-5 yards of fabric will do the trick and is only $8 compared to a $50 off-the-rack skirt. Tuck under the raw edges and no one will notice!) and the silk floral arrangements every 3-5 years.

3) For a more tailored look, choose three colors. Two will be your main colors (what your ornaments, tree skirt, gift wrap, candles, etc will be in). The third will be your accent color (use on throws, candle holders, decorative plates, ribbon– smaller doses). Carry these color scheme throughout the home for a designer look.

4) Stick with classic pieces and ornaments if in doubt. Trends are..well, trendy, but if you haven’t shopped for Christmas decorations in several years you could run the risk of going in the very extreme opposite direction (having very outdated decoration to having very modern decorations all over the place, which looks forced) in the middle of the excitement.  You can never go wrong with glass ball ornaments in clear urns, vases, bowls, etc. 

*Photos by Cheryl Meares of Captured By Cheryl Photography www.capturedbycheryl.com, Edmond, OK.

“Although we find Christmas tree alternatives intriguing here on AT, there is nothing quite as satisfying as a fresh Christmas tree to cheer up your home. If you have the yard space and inclination, you can select a living tree and lessen your environmental impact of this holiday season. Here are some trees that will thrive out West.

Sunset Magazine put together a guide for selecting the proper Christmas tree for your “zone”.

Left to Right, Top to Bottom:
1. Alpine Fir
2. Deodar Cedar
3. Australian Black Pine
4. Douglas Fir
5. Giant Sequoia
6. Norway Spruce

Say you don’t want a Christmas tree in your yard after the season is over? You might consider getting a living Christmas tree and then gifting it to a friend with ample land when you are through with it. If you are lucky enough to live around Portland, Oregon you can rent a living Christmas tree from The Original Living Christmas Tree Company. For $80 you can have a tree delivered to your home mid-December and picked up on January 2nd.”

So now that your options have been laid out for you, get thee to the nearest tree farm (my family loves the Coffee Creek Tree Farm in Arcadia, OK) so you can start enjoying your fresh dose of Christmas cheer! Need decorating tips for that beautiful new tree? Keep an eye on this blog for more inexpensive tips you can do in a hurry!

*Note from Designing Diva Interiors, LLC:

ApartmentTherapy.com has become a recent favorite of mine because of their unique content and creative ideas. Subscribe to their RSS feed or follow on Facebook and Twitter!

In honor of the upcoming holiday, family time and much-needed rest, Designing Diva Interiors, LLC will be closed November 26-28th. Additionally there will not be blog posts for these days. Hold back your tears.. there will be plenty of hot-off-the-press design news and tips come Monday! Happy Thanksgiving!

By now you have had time to recount the last few winters and you get tired just thinking back to the trips to the store for ornaments, a second trip to the store when Fluffy broke your ornaments, decorating the tree at midnight (because when else were you supposed to do it?), getting the house sparkling clean, preparing the meals, entertaining the guests— WHEW!

WANT TO ENJOY YOUR HOLIDAY SEASON AGAIN?

So you’ve wisely decided to hire Designing Diva Interiors, LLC to take care of the decorating for you this year but you’re not sure what to do next.

Schedule your consultation! But please be forewarned that you may not get scheduled in the same week you call. As this is the busiest time of the year for DDI we do our very best to meet the client’s needs as quickly as possible but may be booked several days out so plan ahead! A consultation is $75 and includes 1-2 hours with the Jennifer Hicks, owner and an experienced Certified Interior Decorator (C.I.D.). During this time the following points will be discussed (see below) and a plan of action/design will be laid out. Holiday decorating jobs are priced by the size of the job. The following are topics that you will need to think about prior to your consultation.

a) Time frame. If you intend to have the home decorated in time for a party, open house, home tour, etc, please give your designer ample time to complete the project so that every last detail can be perfect!

b. Budget. If new accessories/garland/ornaments, etc are required how much would you like to spend on these items? This may or may not be a realistic budget given your design preferences but your designer will be able to estimate costs for you before the decorating begins.

c. Style. Do you like your mantle overflowing with things that sparkle in the night or do you prefer a more natural, simplistic look? A custom holiday design is indeed very custom– no two centerpieces from DDI will ever be the same, no two Christmas trees donning the same ornament collection, no duplicated floral arrangements, guaranteed.

d. Inventory. Before your consultation it is important to go through your current decorations and determine what’s broken and needs to be replaced and what you would like to use again this year. Once your expert knows what you have to work with an appropriate budget and shopping list can be determined.

Receive your $20 OFF coupon for booking your holiday decorating service by November 15th! Remember, you do not have to have your home decorated by the 15th, you simply must schedule your desired appointment by the 15th.  

Who is DDI’s Holiday Decorating Service for, anyway? You don’t need a huge home or an overflowing bank account to get a professionally designed room for the holidays! We do it all, large or small: tree decorating, fireplace/mantle decor, decorating for dinner parties and more.

Use your current decor or allow Jennifer Hicks to design a new look from the ground up and at an affordable cost to you! Take it easy this year and let us do the hard part for you.

*DDI and temporary holiday assistants are insured.

* Includes interior design only, exterior decorating jobs accepted at designer’s discretion.

                                              See “Contact Us” link on homepage.