In my humble opinion, knick-knacks= trinkets, (a.ka. JUNK)!  Too many knick-knacks (or trinkets, or junk) can clutter a room and quickly ruin a beautiful design.  Your furniture will feel lost amongst the clutter.  Your guests and your family will become dizzy upon entering the room because their eyes will have trouble figuring out what to focus on.  Remember, size & scale are important not only when choosing furniture, but also when choosing accessories.  Forget the knick-knacks & be on the hunt for fabulous accessories for your home!  What’s the difference?  How can you tell?  Little items or smaller scaled items make little impact.  Consider where the accessories will be placed in your room.  Will it make an impact from across the room?  Will it show up or be mistaken for one of your child’s toys?  Still not sure what to look for?  Take a look at a few examples…

The lamp, floral, basket weave vase, & wood charger on a stand are all in scale with the large round bedside table.

A well done silk floral brings life and loads of color to this rich wood dining table

Colorful hand blown glass vases add drama to a rectangular glass cocktail table

An electic mix of accessories give style to this dark wood round coffee table

All accessories pictured above are available at IBB Design Furniture Showroom in Frisco, TX.  Shipping is available nationwide.

I like to buy greeting cards in bulk so I have them handy when I need to send a birthday or special occasion card.  My desk drawer was full of them & hunting through the unorganized stack to find the right card was starting to get on my nerves.  So, I came up with a simple solution.  Here’s how I organized my greeting cards & made a decorative statement at the same time.

This is also a really great solution for organizing items other than greeting cards.

Want to ensure a restless night’s sleep?  That’s right… I said restless.  Try painting your bedroom walls red.  That should do the trick.  I recently saw a guest bedroom featured in a well known publication with so much red that it looked like a bottle of cherry cough syrup had expoded all over the room.  It made me sick just to look at it.  I can’t imagine actually trying to sleep in that room.  Ok, hopefully you’ve caught on that I’m NOT encouraging you to go paint the walls red.  Paint the town red, YES.  Bedroom walls, NO.  Seriously though, red is a wonderful color & I use it quite frequently in my designs.  However, it has to be used logically.  Red is a stimulating color.  Many color experts say that shades of red stimulate conversation and also appetite. 

So, red is a wonderful choice for dining areas, kitchens, etc if you want it on your walls.  One of my favorite dining rooms ever was painted a vibrant bordeaux red by Ralph Lauren.  It also works great as an accent color, which COULD be used in a bedroom.  Think art, bedding, pillows, or even drapery panels. Red is a dominant color and needs to be used in conjunction with less “agressive” colors to stay grounded.  Trust me, red walls in your bedroom may sound like a sexy idea, but it will have you and your significant other seeing red after many sleepless nights.