Terriks, that's a good one!! The issue I'm having with some suggestions (both here and from a couple of "real life" friends) is that I don't want this title to sound like it's the name of my business... if you know what I mean. For example, Resourceful Interiors sounds like a great name for a business. Kinda wish the editor had assigned a name. This is a lot of responsibility! (Although maybe not -- for all I know, this column will get cut after the first issue!) Right now I seem to be focusing on: House Proud Feathering Your Nest Department of the Interior If it helps, here's my rough draft of the beginning of the first column. And can I just say it is very difficult to write only 300-500 words on a topic! Okay, so here's the beginning. If you have editorial comments, please be kind, but basically I'm just including this in case it helps you to "vote" on a column title (just to clarify -- the title I'm looking for is for every column, not specific to the topic of this first one). January is a time of renewal and resolutions. By now, the tree, the menorah, the boxes and gift wrap have been cleared out, and you may be looking around your home and feeling like something is missing. No, not the shedding Christmas tree or the balls of crumpled wrapping paper. But maybe a few things around the house are not...quite... right. Everything looks okay, but you're not excited about your living room. Your kitchen's a mess. Your bathroom is blah. Perhaps as you peer around your spaces, you'll find that you've committed some basic decorating sins. Care to redeem yourself? It's not very difficult. Sometimes it's even fun. Following are just a few of the sins you may be unintentionally guilty of.

Have you been to the Apartment Therapy site? It's not just for apartment dwellers; they have showcased a lot of homes as well. It's a combination of a home design/decor blog with a lot of decluttering/organization/cleaning tips on the side. Twice a year, they run month-long challenges to improve either one room of your home or your entire place. One challenge always focuses solely on the kitchen. I did that last year, and even though my kitchen was in pretty good shape, I did declutter about a boxful of random things, and I reorganized several cabinets. I noticed over the holidays how much easier baking was when all the supplies were conveniently located. The kitchen challenge included cleaning everything, sorting through all pantry cabinets and the fridge, restocking, and then a final week of little projects to make the space prettier or function better. Most of the decor is pretty modern and some of it does tend a bit towards minimalist, but there are plenty of posts on more traditional interiors as well. They have spin-off blogs on the kitchen and cooking, kids' spaces (if you need organizational tips for kids' toys and clothes), technology and being green. Here is a link that might be useful: Apartment Therapy

I never heard of doing this kind of thing, but I was just looking at the Islander System website, and they sell a pattern to make greeting cards using sewing. Of course, that is not what you are looking for, but it does seem to be out there. I wonder if you could find a craft magazine at a bookstore that had directions on how to do this. It may be too late for Valentine's Day, but there will be St Patrick's Day and Easter and birthdays and so on. Good luck to you. Rosefolly

I was surprised to see 100 house plans between 500 and 1000 sq ft on that link. Scott, I have never had the opportunity to think about building a small house from scratch, as it were, but I have had lots of fun making the small homes I have lived in more user friendly. My advice is to think like a boat builder. Look for nooks and crannies in which to build storage. Think about the space above a staircase. Can you squeeze a closet, cabinet, or bookcase above the place where the staircase ends? My last house had a big cedar closet there that you entered by opening a bookcase in the living room. You needed a stepstool to get in, but it extended into the attic at the top. It was worth having to duck your head when you got to the bottom of the basement stairs. Another place we found room in that house was in a 10 x 10 room off the kitchen. It was once a back porch, and had a vaulted ceiling. It was too small for a dining room, since a staircase for 6 steps had to be worked into the design. On the opposite wall, smack in the middle, was the back door. On the end where the ceiling was highest, I designed a platform only 45" deep, going the 10 ft length of the room. It was level with the kitchen floor on one end, a butted right up to the molding of the back door at the other end. We had enough room on that platform to put a stack of drawers and small counter, two 3 ft wide 12 inch deep pantry cabinets, and a blind-corner utility cabinet in an "L" at the end. A railing separated this section of the room from the next section, which was the stairway going down the 30-some inches to the floor of the old porch. Bench seating under the windows there was storage space, and we even installed doors so you could get under the platform of the pantry galley for more storage. My builder laid indoor-outdoor carpet there to crawl on. Yes, we had a basement, but this storage was just off the kitchen, so worked well for roasters, soup pots and other big kitchen stuff. Our rain gear, boots, and dog supplies went into the benches, which were right near the back door. When I designed the kitchen remodel, the first two contractors I showed my diagrams to showed no interest. One told me that there was not enough space to build a platform for the pantry and room to walk in front of the cabinets. The other did not even do a bid. The third guy showed interest, took out his tape rule, and said that it would work. That, my small homers, is how I met Jim, my contractor for every project ever since. When putting the kitchen together, he added two knick-knack shelves in places that I had not considered. He worked around room contours that made for strange cabinet sizes, but since we had a local cabinet company, they could make the odd sizes at no extra cost. Just like Eatrealfood did in her kitchen design, you just work around things and be grateful when you get half a cabinet's worth of usable storage!