Decorating for Valentine's Day
Relieve Winter Blahs by Giving your Home a Romantic Makeover
Use Valentine's Day as an excuse to decorate your home and to add life and warmth during the long winter months.
With the holidays over, many people begin to feel the winter blues settle over them. It’s easy to understand why with fewer hours of sunlight, the cold chill of winter setting in and no celebrations with loved ones on the horizon. To combat the blahs, crank up the volume on the next big holiday, Valentine’s Day.
Even if you’re single, you can use this holiday to boost the warmth and love you feel at home. Save some of your red holiday decorations and keep them around to be used in different ways. If you’ve added a few red accessories to your standard décor, like throw pillows or blankets, keep them around and give them even more company by adding more red accents. Try dressing up potted plants with red ribbons tied around the pots, switch to red candles, mix red Christmas glass ornaments with dried red roses or other flowers. Remember that photos add sentiment and mood to your rooms, so select photos of loved ones, maybe even weddings of your ancestors, to give your home that feeling of love and family.
To add a little life to your home in the winter months, add a little life. A plant goes a long way to boosting the vibrancy of a room. Small plants can be layered, the pots stacked together, to create a centerpiece or eye catching display. Larger plants, especially tropical ones, tend to do quite well inside during winter months, as long as they’re properly watered, and bring almost an exotic feel to a room that has recently been stripped of its holiday tree.
Hearts are a little cliché, but if done correctly you can create a very romantic, almost Victorian look. If you’d rather stay away from the obvious, consider adding a lot of visual interest by combining new fabrics with interesting patterns to your home; stripes and polka dots, floral themes with gingham. Select colors that are warm and rich; shades of red can be contrasted together to delight the eyes by adding layers of depth. Different textures and colors together keep things exciting and invigorating during those cold months.
Decorating involves more than visual and tactile stimulation; if your home is closed up during the long winter months, you’ll want to make sure the olfactory sense is also properly stimulated. Keep your home as fresh smelling as possible, the addition of plants will help, but routine cleanings and washing of linens and rugs shouldn’t be omitted. Be careful when adding candles or other artificial scents as they can layer upon each other and end up making your home smell more “stale”.
For some people, spicing up their home in the dead of winter gives them a new sense of life and makes everything seem just a little bit brighter.
