Do you have a favorite holiday? Do you think it’s a crime to let Halloween pass by without plastering your home in cobwebs, ghosts and ghouls? Or perhaps Christmas just isn’t Christmas unless your home is filled with garlands, ornaments and figurines?  Everyone loves getting a little festive during the holiday season, but if you have your home on the market, a word of caution: restraint goes a long way. In fact, when staging your home for sale, you want holiday decoration to be as minimal as possible. Holiday decorations can clutter a home and make it difficult for a buyer to picture living there for the rest of the year. Also bear in mind that not everyone looking at your home will celebrate the same holidays (or celebrate with the same enthusiasm) as you do, so it’s smart to be considerate of those viewing your home. And if you must decorate for the holidays, please be sure to remove all decorations in a timely manner! Lingering holiday décor suggests a level of neglect that may cause a buyer to question what else is being neglected in your home…

 Need quick updates on everything from current interior design trends to sound advice for staging your home? Subscribe to my blog! It’s super easy, just go to the Blog tab on my website at www.thehomestylist.com, and you can choose either to subscribe to my blog in your favorite reader or have it sent directly to your email account! Already on the Blog page at www.thehomestylist.com? Just look to your left, enter your email address and click on the Subscribe button. You’ll get insider access to the latest news and views on interior design. Not to mention lots of insider tips and tricks for transforming your home from plain old functional to fabulous!

Have you been thinking about putting your home on the market but are worried now that summer is almost over you’ve missed out on peak real estate season?  You’re in luck! You still have time to get your home listed and sold this year.  Most people are surprised to learn that there is almost as much buyer activity in the fall months as in the spring.  While technically considered off-season, the real estate market does experience an upswing in early fall due to a combination of factors. For homes in the north of the country, fall foliage and landscaping often show homes off to their best effect. And across the country, off-season buyers tend to be highly motivated, stable buyers. So now is the time to get your home staged and ready for sale by the new year!

Just put your home on the market? Or are you looking around  the home you love and seeing that it could use a little updating…on the cheap? Are you stumped on just how to give your home a miracle makeover? Subscribe to our newsletter! Every month you’ll get heaps of fabulous decorating and staging advice delivered right to your inbox!

AND for a limited time only we’ll send you our exclusive look at the reality of television home makeover shows (that’s right, HGTV, we’re talking about you) when you subscribe to our newsletter. If you’ve ever watched a home improvement and wondered, How do they do that?, we’ve got the answers for you (and they just might surprise you!).

So, quick, go to our home page at www.thehomestylist.com and click on the Subscribe To Our Newsletter link. Trust us, it beats waiting for Ty Pennington to knock on your door! 

Now that you’ve put your home on the market, it’s time to stage it beautifully so it will sell quickly (and hopefully for an enormous profit!). One of the most critical areas in your home to stage is the entryway. You want to impress buyers the minute they step through your door, and in order to do that, your entryway must be tidy, inviting and effortlessly stylish.Because you never get a second chance to make a first impression!

Reality check: most of us are still living in our homes while they’re on the market, the operative word here being live. And life is sometimes pretty messy. Here at THE HOME STYLIST we have some easy solutions for keeping your entryway neat and attractive. For example, as you can see in this photo, corrale backpacks on hooks hung on kid level. Not only will it help make you look organized, it will actually help you be organized!  Want more great ideas for organizing your home? Visit us at our website, www.thehomestylist.com.

You know how much we here at the offices of THE HOME STYLIST love our wall stickers. They are, hands down, the most effortless way to update any room. Just measure, peel and stick, and instantly a wall goes from blah to brilliant, with no muss and no fuss!

But what if a wall sticker could do more? What if it could not just add some style to a room, it could give it a healthy dose of organization? Sounds like a dream come true, right? Well, as we suspected, dreams really can come true at TARGET. That’s where we found this little gem of a dry-erase calendar that is actually a wall sticker. Don’t get us wong, we love the proper, wall-mount dry-erase calendars too. But the idea of spending at least fifty bucks to put more holes in our walls makes us cringe ever so slightly. This particular product not only has all the benefits of a traditional dry-erase calendar (at about one-third the cost!), it also has space for a to-do list and important contact information. And installation is a breeze! Whatever will they think of next?!