Red Leaf Style

March 24, 2013

Spring Decorating Ideas

Springtime is practically here. Can you feel it? I can’t. Mother Earth decided to celebrate the first few days of spring by dumping Kansas City with four to six inches of snow. Still, I can imagine what the lovely spring weather will feel like soon—and I can decorate my home to prepare! Here are a few simple ways you can create springtime cheerfulness in your home. Decorate with flowers What could remind you of spring more than flowers? Pretty spring blossoms just make a room feel happy. Grab a bunch at your local farmer’s market and split up the blooms to fill several vases. That way you can enjoy flowers all around your home! Want to make your blooms even more spring like? Use metal pails, pitchers and milk glass vases to hold your flowers. Use woven baskets Baskets are so completely spring-like. They remind me of Easter egg hunts and spring harvests. Use pretty woven baskets as easy accents in your home. They’re perfect for corralling all types of items. Right now I’m using a couple woven baskets by the front door to hold rain boots and umbrellas. Another one rests near my couch brimming with...

March 20, 2013

5 Best Houseplants For Your Home

Growing plants indoors renews your space. Plants filter the air and brighten up any room. It just feels good to mix some life in with the rest of your décor, especially after a long winter. Maybe it’s the spring weather coming, but I’ve just felt all planty lately. Houseplants, along with herbs and veggies I’ve started from seeds, are cropping up in every room of my home. Many common houseplants flourish all year long without a lot of maintenance. (My kind of plants.) These five are my favorite easy-to-care-for houseplants. They’ll even thrive for those of you with black thumbs. Aloe Vera You know what’s great about aloe vera? It’s happiest when you leave it alone. I’ve had my aloe vera plant for almost two years and I’ve found that when I coddle it, it starts to wilt. All aloe vera needs is a warm sunny window and very few waterings. Any time I overwater my aloe vera plant, it looses its bright green color and starts to turn a dull grayish-green. Just leave it alone, sit back and enjoy! Dracaena This lush plant requires just a little TLC. It only needs indirect light, making it the perfect indoor plant, and intermittent waterings. I tend to go a week or...

March 15, 2013

Glass Bottle Bracelet Holders

Corral all of your bracelets in one spot by reusing a glass bottle as a bracelet holder. The necks of glass bottles are the perfect size to line up your bracelets and watches. Several bottles create a quirky-cute jewelry display. Plus, you can see all of your baubles easily, which will make getting ready in the morning faster. I used a couple bottles I had on hand. (Please ignore the fact that I was too lazy to scrape off the residue from the label on one of them.) You could display your jewelry with any leftover bottle—wine bottle, beer bottle, jelly jar. Get creative! Would you use glass bottles to display your bracelets? What are you favorite ways to store your jewelry? Like this? Then you’ll love this Branch Jewelry Hanger and these 3 Uses For Vintage Jewelry. Related articles: Branch Jewelry Hanger DIY Cake Stand Jewelry Holder 3 Uses for Vintage Jewelry (Besides Wearing It!)...

March 12, 2013

St. Patrick’s Day Decorating Inspiration

St. Patrick’s Day is this Sunday. Yay for green beer and parades and loud Irish music! It’s just a fun day where we pinch each other for no reason and try to speak in Irish accents. While I don’t usually decorate for St. Patrick’s Day, I’m open to bringing a bit of green into my home. It’s a nice segway into spring, and some green will remind me that this winter is almost over! When decorating for holidays, I like to use items I already own. I just shop the house for pieces that will work. For St. Patrick’s Day, I looked for green items (duh!), as well as anything else that fit the feeling of the holiday. I love the different hues of green I found around my home in everything from flowers, to vintage hardback books to a lone mixing bowl. I also rediscovered a rock that I already had that reminded me of Ireland. I love the bits of moss stuck on it! And, finally I had to include my claddagh ring, a traditional Irish ring that I bought in Dublin. (Fun fact: If you wear it with the heart pointing towards you, it means you’re taken. If you wear it pointing out, it means you’re single!) I hope you’ll feel inspired by the items I found around my home to decorate your home for St....

March 10, 2013

DIY Wine Cork Bulletin Board

Hey you wine-o. Want a way to use up those wine corks? Craft a creative bulletin board with your leftover corks. This easy project only requires a pile of wine corks (get drinking), a hot glue gun and a surface for your bulletin board. I adhered my wine corks to an old bulletin board that I never used, but you could make your bulletin board out of a picture frame minus the glass, a piece of wood or any other hard surface. Just grab your glue gun and get going. I arranged my wine corks in rows, but they’d also look great laid out in different directions or in a pattern. Get creative! For just a little extra prettiness, I used vintage earrings (without the backs) to pin postcards, maps and photos to my wine cork bulletin board. Since I hung the bulletin board in my kitchen, I may switch out the postcards with recipes in the future. What do you think about this wine cork bulletin board? Have you done any wine cork projects? Let me know in the comments! Keep Up With Red Leaf Style! Follow Red Leaf Style author Kirsten Hudson on Twitter @kirsten_hudson, Google+ and...

March 3, 2013

Indoor Gardening Day

I don’t take my home so seriously that I can’t drag a big ole bag of potting soil inside to do a bit of gardening. That’s exactly what went on in my kitchen this Saturday. After weeks of chilly, snowy and dreary weather, I’m ready to fill my home with greenery! A week or two ago I started some seeds using eggshells. (Check out my tutorial to learn how!) I planted a smorgasbord of veggies and herbs: spinach, carrots, lettuce, radishes, oregano, basil and chives. All easy-to-grow plants that I can cultivate in containers. The radishes sprouted far faster than all of the other plants. They were ready to transplant to larger containers, so that was this weekend’s project. If you’re looking at the pictures and wondering if I used that soup ladle to fill the pots with soil, why yes, yes I did. (Go ahead, file that one away for future reference. Soup ladle works just as well as shovel.) I didn’t actually plant the peppers or tomatoes in the pictures above, but I love the happy colors on the seed packets. That’ll be a future project. Until it warms up enough to move all of these plants outside and transplant the rest of the...

February 21, 2013

Snow Day Home Inspiration

Happy snow day from the Midwest! We’re pretty much buried out here. The Kansas City area saw 8 to 12 inches of snow or more today and it’s still coming down. As a home blogger, I have perhaps an out-of-the-ordinary love for being at home, but I think a snow day makes everyone appreciate home just a little bit more. There’s nothing quite like snuggling inside with a pile of blankets, a cup of something hot and a window with the curtains pulled open to reveal a snow-falling scene outside. My house is happy, warm and oh-so comfy right now. This is what makes me love home decorating. It’s about creating the same comfy, satisfied and simply happy feeling that you have for your home on a snow day—all the time. Everything I write about, every do-it-yourself project, decorating idea and thrift store find, is because it’s something that made my home feel just a little bit happier. And, I hope all of my ramblings give you some inspiration to make your home feel happier too. Well, that’s enough home philosophizing for one lazy snow day. What makes you inspired when it comes to your home? Apparently weather does...