Tag: home design

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Eco Tips Furnishings Home Decor Home Design

Fun Eco-Furnishing Ideas That Your House Would Love To Showcase

eggshell-candles-eco-friendly-idea

branch-shelf-eco-friendly-furnishing Decorating a home can be so much fun and so expensive. In this case we went a different route since it is an eco-friendly home. We went low in cost and expensive in taste. A lot of your home furnishing can be made by hand. You know who can make them? You! Your hands can make amazing furniture that you will cherish for a long time.

Here are some fun eco-furnishing ideas that your house would love to showcase and you would surely brag about because you made them yourself.

  • Mulch Pop Art – You will need a picture frame. You can repurpose one or purchase one at a thrift store. Purchase some mulch and separate them in to 8 different buckets. Add a different paint color in each one. Just toss the mulch a bit so that it does not get clumpy. Now take the glass off the picture frame. You have your frame backboard now to make art pop. Use eco-friendly wood glue on the frame backboard. Use the mulch and make a colorful word, or face. Get creative.
  • Pebble Hot Pad – Collect some river pebbles or stones and glue them to a circular piece of wood. Now you can use it to put your tea kettle and hot plates on.

hot-pads-river-pebbles-eco-decor

  • Yarn of Fate – In this case… ‘fate’ will be ‘photos’. Go to a salvage yard and purchase old nails, at least 30 of them. You will need some strong twine too and clips. Find a bare wall in your home. Use a pencil and mark out where each nail will go. Make them far apart from each other and have some zigzag. Now hammer them in. Now tie the twine to one of the nails and loop it around the other nails to make lines. When you get to the last nail make sure the twine is strong and tight. Tie it up. Now look for old photos of family, friends, yourself, postcards, etc. Clip them along the twine. You have a one-of-a-kind collage piece.
  • Tree Stump Side Tables – A very simple d.i.y. Get a tree stump with a flat surface. Dry it out, and then chisel away the bark. Now sand it down. You are done. Take an extra step if you want by painting them or adding some varnish. It is up to you.
  • Eggshell Candles – Save those eggshells after you crack them. Give them a good rinse and let them dry. Fill them with wax and a wick and you have the best eco-friendly light ever. You can even make them colorful by melting crayons and filling the eggshells with your color of choice. Set them right on top of the tree stump table.

eggshell-candles-eco-friendly-idea

  • Tree Shelves – Find a thick tree branch. Saw of any excess, and screw it in the wall. You can display small plush toys and trinkets.

There you have it! You can now make these simple yet fun furnishings for your home. The best part is that they are all eco-friendly. Look at nature differently. The next time you are out looking for something to bring into the house remember to ask yourself if you can make it and if there are materials already available for use. Get to having fun the eco-conscious way.

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Eco Tips Home Design Home Improvement

The Eco-Friendly Beginner’s Guide To Living Green

eco-friendly-green-home-tips

recycleSo you want to be ET and live that green-thumb life. Do you even know where to begin? Starting an eco-friendly way of living can be easy if you follow the right steps and it can be hard if you do it the wrong way. This simple guide should get you going on the right path to living environmentally conscious.

Getting Started

Rule 1: Get yourself in the green mode. Ask yourself if you are ready for the change.

Rule 2: Do research by going to the library.

Rule 3: Ask yourself again if you are ready.

First Steps

  • Ask friends that are living the green life for some helpful advice.
  • Tackle the change one step at a time.
  • Ask a contactor to help guide you with the necessary changes your home needs to go green.
  • Know that it will take a while until you are living the green life to the fullest.
plants-gardening-eco-friendly-winter
http://ow.ly/Fu4xP
  • Take anything that is not eco-friendly out of the house. It will be tough getting rid of things but is a necessary step. Fine, you can keep two things.
  • Start from the inside out. No need to green the outside when the inside cannot benefit from it.
  • Remember: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Second Steps

  • Replace furniture with earth-friendly furniture. Pottery Barn, antique shops, and thrift stores are great places to purchase refurbished items and eco-friendly items.
  • Remember to recycle old items and turn them into new items.
  • Use eco-friendly paint to decorate the walls.
  • Remember LED is for thee.
  • Keep decorating minimal.

Final Steps

  • Plant locally because the vegetation has a better chance of surviving because it is used to the weather conditions.
  • Purchase used stuff instead of new things. Read e-books instead of books.
  • Stay away from plastic. I mean it! It will kill you…not really, but you get the point.
  • No more fast food, soda, or junk food. Purchase food from a farmer’s market.

farmers-market-fruit-veggies-eco-friendly

  • Grow your own crops. Nothing is better than making fresh food with vegetables from your own garden. Just remember to take care of the garden the eco-friendly way.
  • Say bye to your gas guzzler. You should purchase a hybrid, ride a bike, or take mass-transit.
  • Keep up the routine.

Extra help:

  • Look for eco-friendly products while you shop.
  • Keep reminding yourself that you are helping Earth live longer.
  • Remind visitors that they are guests in a green home.
  • Do not be ashamed to be a tree hugger. Trees love being hugged.
  • At least once a month, you have to watch Fern Gully. (optional)

You’re done!

There you have it. Now you have no excuse on not going green. Better your environment and decrease your carbon footprint. By the time you make your home a fully green zone; you will be very pleased with the outcome. Who knows? You might even change other people’s minds.

I hope this simple guide helps you out in the long wrong. Unlike ET who went home, you get to stay put in your eco-friendly green home. Deal with it. Remember to turn off the lights. Good night.

Categories
Eco Tips Furnishings Home Decor Home Design Home Improvement

Innovative Multi-Purpose Furniture Ideas

couch-bookshelf-storage-seat
http://goo.gl/bYqFjR
desk-bicycle-parking-wood
http://goo.gl/6WhkXS

Maybe you are looking to make your home eco-friendlier. Perhaps you live in a shoebox apartment in New York City and do not have much space for a lot of furniture. Who knows? You might be one of those people who simply hate being conventional like the rest of the world. Whatever your reasons are, multi-purpose furniture items can provide you with a fresh concept that takes your living space to a whole new level.

Shelving space is always an issue in most homes but not everyone can afford to buy a 6 or 8 shelve monstrosity. So why not turn something you don’t use into something useful. Take these folding chairs for example. Not only can you use the area where you park your butt to put books, plants, and decorations but you can also use them for closet space by hanging clothes on the base of the seat. All you have to do is nail those foldable chairs to the wall and you are done.

chair-hang-seat-shelves
http://goo.gl/GyIoHG

If you want a bookshelf and a workstation but don’t have space for both then here’s the best of both worlds. This blue furniture houses a chair, a desk for your desktop computer and plenty of space for your books all in one unit.

Another item that’s super useful for those of you who are spatially challenged is the “madame est servie” mirror that is more than what it seems to be. When you’re ready to iron you simply tilt it and lock the unit into place. Once you’re done, you tilt it back and you have a mirror again which you can use to look at yourself as you get dressed.

madam-mirror-ironing-board
http://goo.gl/yyKg5h

If you’re single renter of a one bedroom apartment who also happens to like bike riding, then you can buy this table which allows you to park your bike and use it as a chair while you enjoy your tea, coffee, a drink or a small meal on top of the wooden table.

There’s nothing worse than sitting alone without a place to rest your martini on, which is why this chair is so cool. The chair within the chair pulls out so that the exterior frame becomes a mini-table where you can rest your drink on.

For those of you looking to redesign your interior space, there are plenty of options to choose from such as the bookcase and levitating sofa. The base works as shelf space for all of your books and magazines and the above it is the sofa where you can sit and read for hours. Whenever you need something just reach under your legs and voila! Instant reading material!

couch-bookshelf-storage-seat
http://goo.gl/bYqFjR

Who says you can’t have fun in the dining room? This table serves as a pool table so you can have fun with family or guests and once the food is done cooking you simply turn it back into a dining table and sit down to eat.

pool-dining-table-elegant
http://goo.gl/UJcBDV

Multi-purpose furniture helps to make your home greener by making your indoors sustainable and healthy without sacrificing design, beauty or functionality.

Categories
Green Building Home Design

Better Than My Own House: Out-Of-This-World Birdhouses

basket-weave-treehouse-design-eco-home
http://goo.gl/FHe81K

Treehouses are becoming more than just slabs of wood nailed together on top of a high tree. Oh yeah, people are getting creative with their treehouses. Some include an actual working elevator lift! if that’s not enough for you, they may also include solar power panels, and running water. That sounds better than my own house!

Treehouses nowadays are being made by using the actual tree. Other treehouses are being deemed works of art. They are so big that they seem to be made by a humongous bird. In reality they are just made by a human like you and I, but one that is extremely creative. If I were a bird I would want to live in one of his special nest houses.

Patrick-Dougherty-tree-sculpting-weaving-design
http://goo.gl/Rl1ICR

The amazing artsy human who created this is known as Patrick Dougherty from North Carolina. His nest houses are so wonderful and unique that he is known as a branch-bender extraordinaire/artist. He basically sculpts growing trees into shapes that form a house, a bird nest, a cocoon, a clay pot, etc. The weaving ideas are endless. He has a background in sculpting and a love for nature so it comes to good use in his field of work. He is a winner of many awards and his living art has traveled through the whole United States, Japan, Brussels, and many more locations worldwide. I find it tough to bend one single tree branch; how he does it, I will always marvel over his strength. We normal folks call it art work, but Patrick calls his amazing sculpted work ‘stickwork’. I say tomato, you say tomatoe. You’re unbelievable, Patrick! Your work should be called “magic”.

With over 200 sculpted pieces of work, Patrick decided to showcase them all for you in his published book, Stickwork. My favorite piece of his is called Just Around the Corner in New Harmony, Indiana. It looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings realm. Each branch is bent to perfection.

Just-Around-Winter-Patrick-Doughert-design
http://www.stickwork.net/featured/

Not everyone can be Patrick, but you can be you. Learn to create your own nest house, treehouse, inside decoration, birdhouse or backyard sculpture. It just takes a little bending of your creativity. I recommend doing some research first on what type of wood works best for the type of project you want to do. There are three types: Dogwood, Live Oak, and Elm. These are used in the craft of pleaching: molding and weaving trees to create structures. You can also just create a tree house of your choice, and weave wood around it. It will take time because trees do not grow real fast. The outcome will be spectacular, though and of course, you should use branches that are already on the floor.

Three tips on how to begin.

      1. Plan out the tree house. Make a sketch. Doodle away! Get creative and don’t be afraid.
      2. See if it is safe to build on your specific tree. Get a tree expert to come out and check if you’re planning something on a large scale.
      3. Measure twice, cut once. Do not waste wood. Recycle as much as possible.

The great thing about building a treehouse for your kids is that the measurements can be adjusted. Want an adult treehouse? Make the measurements bigger. Want a birdhouse? then make the measurements smaller, like real small. Nope, smaller than that. Smaller. There you go.

Nest houses, sculptures, huts, giant bird houses, and unthinkable tree houses are all possible. Get inspiration from Patrick Dougherty. Get inspiration from the Ewok village in Star Wars. Be creative and weave something good.

Categories
Green Building Home Design

Welcome To My Pallet House

pallet-house-eco-design-green-building
http://goo.gl/F5oiEo

Welcome To My Pallet House

As a child I always wanted a tree house, but ever since I saw Fern Gully, the movie, I did not want to hurt the rainforest. As an adult, I can now build my own tree house using reusable pallets. Thanks to two students from the University of Vienna who designed the Paletten Haus, I am able to make my childhood dream come true.

Want to make your own too? Go to a Home Depot and you’re bound to find wooden pallets being used to rest heavy objects or merchandise on top of them. But you will more than likely find a bunch of them next to an industrial trash bin outside of your local warehouse or supermarket. A lot of these stores receive these pallets during shipping of a large crate full of items. So they’ll actually be more than willing to simply give them to you for free if you ask for them. I actually got 4 different stores to hand them over to me for free, and none of them refused. This means that you’ll be able to build a house, an extra room, a shed, or even a cabin out of this stuff without having to spend so much on material.

You can go online and find blueprints on how to build one of these eco-friendly shelters just like that. It’s so easy in fact, that you can probably build a simple small shelter using about a hundred of these pallets. With the right power tools, nails and of course, help from your friends and family, you’ll have a 250 square foot home in a week or two. The stacking of these wooden pallets is fairly easy when making up the house. Just make sure that you make it so that the roof is slanted. This way, debris, snow, and water will slide down rather than getting stuck on top of your home.

So why go for these wooden pallets to make a modular style home as opposed to buying conventional material like plywood? Well for one thing, they are a whole lot cheaper than other types of wood, metal or other materials. You can even build a chicken coop, or tiny play house for less than $25 dollars. Click here to see a cool video on how to build a chicken coop.

Another great advantage is the fact that these bad boys are strong and durable. After all, they have to be if they’re able to hold heavy loads of items at hardware, department store and supermarkets. You certainly wouldn’t expect a company to use something flimsy to hold up merchandise that can tip over and crush a customer. With that same logic, you wouldn’t want to build a house that could be blown away by the wind or that your 2 year old daughter could bring down by leaning on it. With some common sense, you can stack up and nail these wooden pallets so that they create a bulky and sturdy house.

Now if there’s one thing you can say about wooden pallets is that they are easy to find. You don’t have to risk going to the hardware store and finding out that there isn’t enough material because there are as many wooden pallets out there as there are ants running around the planet. In the extremely rare event that a hardware store does not have any, you can scavenge the back of malls and shopping centers until you find enough pallets.

Learn about building one on your own here: DIY Pallet House. Sometimes you may find a pallet that has been damaged or one of the planks has come loose. Don’t worry. They are easy to fix. It’s just a matter of hammering a couple of nails and the pallet will be as good as new. Creating a home out of shipping pallets is not only an affordable way to build but it saves a lot of time, manpower, and is eco-friendly.