If you don’t want to carve faces or characters into your pumpkins this year, consider an all-around design that you can use to decorate your home. Martha Stewart’s celestial pumpkins are elegant and unique. And they would look great at night, without being scary to the little ones. Making these twinkling pumpkins is fairly easy. Cut a circular opening on the bottom of the pumpkin and remove the flesh and seeds as usual. Leave about 1/4 inch thickness all around the pumpkin. Use a 1/4 inch bit and an electric drill to drill holes around the pumpkin. Put a string of small white lights inside and place one bulb in each hole. With the pumpkin right side up, the plug and wire should run out from the bottom. via Martha Stewart [Read more]

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition designer Michael Moloney recently teamed up with Domino Magazine to stage the Domino Bazaar Modern Bathroom Design class, sponsored by Oral-B’s Pulsonic electric toothbrush. The event was held at H.D. Buttercup on October 17, 2008 in California. Anybody here who was able to attend the class – raise your hand, please. Lucky for those of us who weren’t there, we can still learn from Michael’s bathroom design tips, straight out of the master class. Michael’s approach in designing for the home is both eclectic and fresh. He blends the new and trendy with the practical to create a home that is both comfortable and, functional, uniquely suited to each family’s personality and needs.... [Read more]

After I wrote my post about how I use my planner to manage the work/home balance, I realized that I also need to organize my family’s calendar. It’s easy now that my kids are small, and we only have preschool to deal with. But as they get older, I know I will have to have a system in place to stay on top of everyone’s schedules. I’m curious to know what calendar other families are using to keep track of everything. I’d love to know so here’s a poll for you: {democracy:3} Creative Commons image via Flickr [Read more]

I want to share with you how I organize my planner to juggle tasks for my home and for work. As far as planners and calendars go, I’ve always been partial to paper. My planner of choice is a FranklinCovey compact binder, which I think is on its 4th or 5th year with me. Aside from FranklinCovey, there is only one other paper planner that I love. That is the Quo Vadis Trinote, which worked very well for me as a graduate student. But it’s a bound notebook, and I’ve since found more flexibility in my refillable binder. For those who don’t have a FranklinCovey store nearby, the affordable 365 line is available exclusively at Target, which is where I got mine. My binder is divided into the following sections: The Calendar... [Read more]

There are quite a few posts about clutter control and housekeeping that I go back to again and again. There is just so much information and inspiration in these posts that one reading, or two or five, is not enough. Here are three of my favorite posts from all over the web, just perfect for your weekend reading . Top 100 Posts for Organizing Your Life 18 Five-Minute Decluttering Tips to Start Conquering Your Mess Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things [Read more]