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How to create feng shui at home

Chinese New Year is the perfect time to revamp your home and bring some fresh energy to your space.

The ancient Chinese art of feng shui is a great way to put together a beautiful home by bringing in a positive flow of energy. Here’s how to bring some happiness to your home using a few basic feng shui techniques.

1. Bring positive energy into the home

In feng shui, energy enters your home via the front door, so it’s important to keep that area clear of clutter, yet warm and inviting.

Get rid of any mess in that area and instead, show it some love by perhaps placing a stylish console table to the side or laying a beautiful doormat or runner on the floor. It can even be as simple as regularly maintaining your front door by giving it a new coat of paint or cleaning it with a lint-free cloth or sponge to remove dirt and dust.

2. Declutter your living room

In feng shui, your living room should be clean, light, airy and free of clutter to attract positive energy.

Different shaped mirrors and various kinds of lights are a great way to bring light and positive energy into the room if you don’t have many windows.

While feng shui may dictate how to configure your home, one of its basic rules is the importance of creating a beautiful, balanced home by using common design principles. For example, choosing the best sized couch or rug for your living room.

3. Bring the outdoors in

Plants are a wonderful way of creating a feng shui-friendly home by activating positive energy in your space. The best time to introduce new plants into your home is at the start of the month or year when it symbolises a healthy beginning for you, your family and loved ones.

When it comes to choosing plants, look for those with curved or round leaves, instead of spikes or thorns. For example, peace lilies, philodendrons, bamboo and ferns.

The best spots to place plants in your home are in the east, south and southeast areas.

Don’t forget to take care of your plants – dying plants bring bad energy into the home, so water them as needed, put them in a sunny spot in your home and place them in beautiful pots.

4. Water = wealth

In feng shui, it’s believed that a water feature or fountain can attract abundance and wealth, from great work opportunities to financial success.

Ideally, the water will be constantly flowing and placed near your doorway (but not blocking it) to attract extra cash or career opportunities.

The best place to put your water feature is in either the east, southeast or north corners of your home. Avoid placing it in the bedroom or underneath the stairs.

How to create the perfect outdoor space

Create an outdoor space that will make your home the number one go to for family and friends gatherings.

Identify the purpose of the space

Go outside and envision your ideal outdoor space for you and your friends and family.

Ask yourself questions including, Will we be eating and drinking a lot outside? Are pets going to be roaming the area? Does this have to be a kid-friendly space? Is this space protected from rain? How many people will need to fit comfortably in the space?

Decide on the main upgrades to the space

Once the purpose of your outdoor space is identified it is easy to understand what you will need to enhance the atmosphere of the area. A must for a social outdoor space is of course a Barbeque – how can a family/friends outdoor get together be complete without one? It can’t! You can get your perfect barbeque from Barbeques Galore.

Furniture is an important element of an outdoor space, it can make or break the comfort of being outside. The Furniture Shack in Aspley has a sale on right now on a whole range of their outdoor furniture. Out On The Patio can also assist in finding the best outdoor furniture for your friends and family to enjoy.

Of course you will need to make sure you have a trendy place for afternoon drinks! Rice Furniture in Aspley has bar tables and bar stools that will make your home the number one preference to go to. Also, if you are looking for other brands, our Furniture Stores in Nunawading is hosting the Good Guys Nunawading and the Adairs Nunawading, and it would be awesome for you that will spend some time in this city.

If you are looking for a more casual atmosphere, perhaps a comfortable place for children to hang out at, The Furniture Shack and Out On The Patio have the perfect outdoor tables to go with your lounge.

Live Music Every Sunday!

Don’t miss the live music performed at Rice Café every Sunday from 11am – 2pm. It’s the perfect way to spend your Sunday sessions – eating a delicious recovery brunch, sipping on a colourful milkshake and listening to live music.

Creating space in small bedrooms

Small bedrooms can have a big impact with the right design and use of space. Whether you opt for the illusion of space or embrace what you have, there are endless ways to make a small space livable and chic.

Choose the right colours

Colours can make a world of difference to the look of a small bedroom. The darker the paint on the walls, the heavier the atmosphere and the more enclosed the room looks. Select light coloured paints, preferably pastel shades to make the room look open, light, and airy. Or you could look at light coloured wallpaper with small light patterns or designs.

Stay Minimal

All rooms tend to collect junk and the bedroom is the worst of them. Take a close look at your small bedroom. What are the non-essential things in it? Remove them all and see how much more space you suddenly have.

It may not be floor space, but even having an open dresser top or uncluttered bedside table can make the room seem more open.

Creative storage

Optimise your space with creative thinking and creative storage from Howards Storage.

There is space under the bed and at the bottom of the closet that often is lying idle. The space under the beds is ideal for exercise equipment or things that are needed just once on a day. To make access even easier keep your old shoe boxes to use as storage so they can be easily retrieved. High mounted (but not unreachable) shelves on the walls will also free up space below giving the room a more clean and open look.

Lighting

Lighting plays an important role in how a room looks. This does not mean that brighter is better – a bedroom lit up like a Vegas casino is not a place that you will be comfortable in. But keeping the lighting reasonably bright and using pendant lights or standing lights to focus the lighting ensures that there are no areas that are in shadow or sudden changes from bright areas to darker ones will give the room a feeling of being more open. Andrews Light Up can help with providing the perfect solution to get the lighting right the first time.

Custom Bedding

Investing in custom bedding to suit the size and style of the room. This will allow you to optimise space while complimenting the look and feel of the room.

Snooze in Aspley offers custom beds with nifty storage solutions and decorative bed heads to suit any style!

However, if you want more options to choose your furniture, you can go to our centre and check out all of our furniture stores in Aspley!

Create a stylish home office

Declutter

Clear your workspace from piles of random papers and folders, books you are not using and other clutter that has made its way into your office. If you have not or will not use the item in 3 months, put it away.

Get organised

There will no doubt be folders or books you will need at hand. Use magazine file holders or stylish boxes to neatly store them. Open rattan baskets available from PillowTalk also look great.

Light it up

Add a table lamp to your workspace. It will lift the mood and with the great range of lamps available from Andrews Light Up, you’ll be sure to find one that can become a feature.

Extra seating

If you have space why not add an occasional chair and create a reading nook. Perfect for off-screen work, you can position the chair to maximise natural light. Why not talk it up a notch and invest in a Lazy-Boy from Recline Furniture.

Add more colour

Using an accent colour against a neutral palette can make the room ‘pop’. Denim blues and lush greens are the colours forecast for the year ahead.

Style it

Your bookshelf has so much styling potential. Work it right. While there are no hard and fast styling rules, some great tips are to stack books horizontally and vertically, add a collection of objects, layer objects and incorporate some artwork.

A breath of fresh air: Our favourite indoor plants

If you are looking for that single, secret ingredient that has the ability to make just about any room look better, it’s a plant. The humble house plant is well and truly back on trend, and for good reason. A splash of healthy greenery instantly lifts a space to make a room feel fresh and welcoming.

If you feel like one of your rooms is lacking a little something, try adding one of our favourite plants for the home and if you feel that you don’t want the responsibility of care for it opt for a fake plant from Pillow Talk or Rice Furniture in Aspley!

Devils Ivy

Also known as golden pothos, fights nasty toxins like xylene, benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene. Just be sure to keep this plant out of reach of your cat or dog as it’s toxic to pets.

Boston Fern

Ferns can typically be quite tricky to care for but the Boston fern is the most tolerant of the bunch. They prefer moist soil, indirect sunlight and humid conditions, so they’re an ideal plant for the bathroom. Not only do they provide a lush green display, they filter out the irritating chemicals, Xylene and formaldehyde.

Chinese Evergreen

This easy-to-care-for plant can survive in most conditions, even with low light and little water. It helps filter out a variety of air pollutants and begins to remove more toxins as time and exposure continues.

Weeping Fig

Often referred to as Ficus (like most plants in the fig family), Weeping fig’s love the light and don’t like being moved so it’s best to find a nice sunny spot in your home for it to stay and only re-pot when necessary.

Peace Lily

This popular indoor plant survives with very little sunlight and only needs watering about once a week, depending on the weather. Peace lilies cleanse your home of pollutants like acetone – a carcinogen commonly found in nail polish and paint. Keep this one away from your fury friends also.

Flamingo Lily

Native to the tropics, this exotic flowering plant prefers a warm and shady environment and daily misting helps to prolong its flowers. They are known to be effective in removing formaldehyde, xylene, toluene, and ammonia from the air.

4 tips to a well-dressed bed

Looking to the achieve that hotel feel right at home? Get started with these 4 tips:

Vary the sizes, colours and textures of decorative pillows

Different sizes and colours provide interest and variation. To achieve that hotel feel, go all out with layers of European pillows, multiple standard pillows and at least three decorative cushions to finish it off. The result is dramatic, plush and polished.

Play with colour and patterns for a more casual look

Simple, clean white bedding can be offset with a highly patterned coverlet for an artistic feel. Pillow Talk in Aspley has a beautiful new range of quilt cover sets and throws this Autumn to help add colour to the bedroom.

Or, if you want to spend some day in Alexandria Sydney, the Alexandria Home Centre has a lot of stores for you, as Decorug, Brescia Furniture and more.

Invest in good sheets

The easiest way to snazz up your bedroom is to outfit your bed with a gorgeous set of sheets. To keep the hotel room look, go for a crisp, white set of sheets that are at least 1000 thread count.

Hotel rooms tend to use sateen or percale sheets, but you should choose the material that feels most comfortable to you. The experts at Sheridan Factory Outlet will be able to help you put together the perfect set to fit any look.

Consider the lighting

You’ll notice that almost all hotel rooms have lamps or sconces on either side of the bed. This always helps pull the room together visually and also allows you to turn off the overhead light and create a warm and cozy mood in your space. Set the mood with Andrews Light Up to finish off the look.

3 chic bathroom storage solutions

The bathroom is one of the most high traffic areas in any home. It’s where we go to prepare to take on the day, and it’s where we head to wash up and decompress when the day is done.

Add a Storage Cart

What a difference a storage cart can make. If you’re like so many who are short on cabinet storage, take matters into your own hands. Howards Storage offer a large range of storage solutions especially designed for the bathroom. Take it one step further and roll your towels and add a succulent or two, and you’ll feel like you’re in a spa each and every day.

Organise with draw dividers

If you’re like the so many of us who have bathroom drawers overflowing with products, miscellaneous items, and general chaos then pick up some draw dividers from Howards Storage and finished off the look with well organised draws which will make the morning rush much more satisfying.

Get creative with mason jars

When it comes to DIY organisation, the wonders of the mason jar know no bounds! Present your glosses, cotton balls, and tiny toiletries in the cutest way imaginable by taking advantage of this sweet idea. All it takes is a little paint, glue, and a few animal toppers.