No, I’m not going to tell you how to get your kids to stop fighting or how to always smile when your husband’s annoying habits are getting under your skin.  I want wanted to share one of the lessons I learned in design school.  Harmony in design is bringing different parts together to create a whole.  It is balancing unity and variety into a pleasing arrangement.

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know how much I love black and white.  I have used this color combo all throughout my house.   Black and white goes with everything.  I can move one piece from room to room and mix it with the other black and white pieces.  So, each room can stand on it’s own but each room works together to make our house a whole.

Okay, I have unity with the use of the black and white color combo but how do I achieve variety?  I think the easiest way is to mix patterns.  If you do mix patterns a good rule of thumb is to have one large-scale, one medium, and one small-scale pattern.  I also think it’s easy and fun to mix shapes.  For instance, I would like to do a permanent mantelscape in my family room.  I would love to do a white ceramic Buddha head and some black candle holders, or maybe antique black gears, or maybe a white ceramic deer head, or maybe….  Well, I think you get the idea, just play around with your stuff.  If you don’t have enough stuff to bring a room or your house together you can go a long way with scrapbook paper or fabric.  They are often grouped together in coordinating colors and/or patterns in the store making harmony easy to achieve .

     I have done more than my fair share of decorative wall treatments in my day.  I was queen of sponge painting back in the day.  When Ralph Lauren came out with the denim wall treatment I had to try that out on my kids’ bedroom walls.  I have also stenciled, painted stripes, squares, circles, polka dots and free-handed tree branches with  blossoms.  I love paint and I am always excited to try something new.  Today, I wanted to try a linen/grasscloth look on the wall behind the bed in my bedroom (this is where the good idea goes bad).  I figured the linen look wasn’t that far off the denim look (which I was successful at even as a complete novice).  I have a linen brush that I purchased at Home Depot years back when they still carried Ralph Lauren products.  I had the glaze mixed and ready to go.  I followed the instructions, but my project didn’t turn out right.  I think maybe I used too many different tints of glaze and didn’t let each coat dry completely between coats.  Anyway, I ended up with cock-eyed stripes instead of beautiful linen or grasscloth look wallpaper.  So, what am I going to do now?  I don’t know.  I will paint over the faux linen mess with some of the leftover wall color for now.  Maybe it will stay that way until I can afford the original plan for the wall, brick.  Guess I’ll have to chalk this one up to “lessons learned the hard way”.  Thank goodness it’s easy to get a do-over with paint!  Hope you are heaving a better weekend than me

      Sometimes I like a very soft and subdued color palette.  Sometimes I don’t, but I always love to mix lots of patterns.  This design board is my dream office.  I guess it actually does look a bit like my real life office space (minus the washer, dryer, exercise bike and litter box).  Maybe one day I can have a quiet and non-stinky office.  Until then I will keep dreaming over at Oilioboard.

      This past summer I was lucky enough to get a special tour of this Utah Valley Parade of Homes model.  This model is special because it won “Best In Show”  for decorating.  And I am very proud to say that my sister-in-law, Lyndee was one half of that winning design team. 

      I don’t even think I can begin to tell you how much I loved this house.  I mean just look at that view.  I love that this great room is flooded with light.  And I love the sleek and modern (but comfortable) feel of the place.

      I often dream of having a clean and streamlined room like this, maybe because it is opposite of what I have now.  With four kids everything is always rumpled looking (and often downright messy).

 This stairway speaks right to my love of all things Industrial.

      And I will leave you with the view from the living area into the adjoining kitchen.  Yeah I’m going to be mean and make you wait until next week to take a closer look at the gorgeous kitchen.  Thanks for stopping by for this week’s “Inspiration”, hope you all have a great week!

      It has been a full month of healthy eating for our family.   So far everything is going pretty well.  We are however missing some of our favorites, like Poptarts.  Who doesn’t love Poptarts?  They are warm, yummy, and quick to fix.  The only thing holding me back from buying cases of these is one, the price and two, they aren’t “clean enough” eating.  I think I found a way to make everyone pretty happy with this recipe.

     This first thing I did to make my homemade poptarts ”clean enough”  was to find an oil pie crust recipe.  You can click on the link for the recipe.  I used olive oil for the oil in this crust.  I put the oil in the freezer for 20 minutes before I mixed up the dough.  I also sifted the flour before measuring it.  Before I rolled out the dough, I refrigerated it for 15 minutes.  To make it easier to roll out and clean up I rolled the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap.

      I made my own template for the poptarts but you could just wing it too.  I used my fancy new wheeled cutter/crimper.

 Pumpkin poptarts.  I used store-bought pumpkin.

 Cherry poptarts.  I used canned cherry pie filling.

      Add a top.  You will have to seal the edges to keep the insides in.  I just wet the lower edge with water and pushed the top down into the bottom.  I poked a little hole in the middle for venting.  I baked these at 400 degrees for fifteen minutes.

      I finished these with a bit of glaze (store-bought, I’m all for easy if it’s not too unhealthy).  I know these aren’t really picture worthy but hey, they taste a lot better than they look (and better than the real thing, if I say so myself).  These poptarts did take some time to make.  I usually make a batch Sunday morning when we aren’t rushed.  But they are fairly guilt free and they are a heck of a lot cheaper than the real version.  The best thing though is you can make any kind of poptarts you can dream up.