Think about your home, and answer these questions:

1.  What do you want it to be?    If you want your home to be a tranquil oasis in a busy world, are your colors soothing or do they shout?   If you want a fun place for friends to gather, do you have plenty of seating?

2.  What are your main hobbies and activities?   What do you need for these activities?  For instance, if you have a collection that you work on often, get storage containers for it that can be easily opened or put away.  If it’s a lot of trouble to get at your collection, you either won’t spend the time on it, or else might be tempted to leave it out and risk losing or breaking certain pieces.

3.  Who will be using the space?   How many people will be living there?  What ages?  It’s important for every person to have a space that’s their own.  Whether it’s a special chair, couch, desk or a section of a room, everyone needs ‘their space’.   If you’re planning to do video aerobics, you’ll need room to move around in front of the TV!

4.  What about your things?   It’s easy to become very messy if things don’t have a place.     A small filing cabinet is a must for many people – it’s a great place to store all the papers that you don’t know what to do with!

5.  How much do you really need?  Too much furniture makes a room seem crowded.  The bare essentials are a couch and chair, a table and chairs for eating, a bed and place for your clothes.   After that, think hard about what you need or don’t need.  Will you really use that computer desk – or would you rather sit on the couch with a laptop?

6.  Think about the traffic flow.   You want to be able to walk anywhere in the room without bumping into furniture.   Try drawing furniture placement on paper as a first step.

7.  Pick a focal point – your Greystone Properties home has unique features.  What do you want to see when your first walk in the room?   If you have nice windows with great lighting, are you emphasizing it?   Everyone feels brighter in sunshine.

8.  Think about order and organization.  Do you bring home work every day, or mail, or sports equipment?    Where will you put it?   A large bowl or box near the front door is a great place to drop mail until you go through it later.

9.  Take advantage of free expert advice.  Every store and every product line employs professional designers to put furniture and accessories together.   If you’re unsure of your decorating skills, pick a design you like.   Study how they did it either by looking through a catalogue or going to a store.   It’s all there assembled and displayed for you.   If you like the look, simply do what they’ve done!

When I think of decorating a child’s room tropically, I immediately think decorating with palm trees, sand, and mischievous monkeys. A good way to begin this transformation is to go to a local craft store and look at the wall adhesives. Most of the wall-paper like pictures easily stick to the wall, are movable, and leave little or no residue when your child decides he or she wants a change.

If wall adhesives aren’t your style, or you want to make the wall a little more three dimensional, then you can take simple acrylic paint and create the palm trees (which are very easy to create for a child).

After the walls are done, find either green bedding or bedding with pictures on it that will mesh well with those that you have chosen for the walls. If you cannot find bedding that you and your child think will work, go to the fabric section and look for the children’s fabrics. Usually there will be several tropically themed fabrics to choose from. If you don’t want to make the sheets you can always find a solid sheet set that will match well with the fabric you choose for the comforter and then either make the comforter yourself or ask a local seamstress to create the blanket for you. If you have two made one heavy and one light, then you can keep the tropical themed bedding throughout the year.

A good idea for wall art to compliment these decorations, you can either use the previously mentioned wall adhesives or have your child create their own pictures to frame and hang on the walls. If you use one wall as a mural and paint the rest with a solid tropical color your child’s wall art will look impressive. Or, you can create a blackboard wall with blackboard paint and your child can continuously draw new wall art.

A tropical vacation wouldn’t be complete without watching a sunset or the stars. To create this for your child you can paint a scene on the ceiling, or find star and moon wall adhesives to attach to the ceiling (that way the ceiling scene can be changed out quickly and easily).

There are several periodicals on decorating your child’s room. You can also visit local furniture stores or view online furniture stores. When designing your child’s room, it is important that you keep in mind that eventually your child will out grow his/her room. Try sticking with neutral colors.

Always remember that to make your child happiest with the room, allow them to help in the process. If their shorter, let them help you place art at their height or even, to an extent, paint the mural (there are several easy things that they can do, like paint sand or grass). Take them with you to choose the fabrics and wall art and let them help you decide where things go. They will feel a great sense of pride in the room that they helped create