You have come home from work, and it has been a hard day. Bickering at the office, clients who are not sure what they want, and a boss who needs those reports yesterday. You have a cup of coffee, and you find your self here on AR reading this post. The spouse is shouting “Are you on AR again?! Can't you do the lawn now?”. You know that you need this time to unwind, so you look for a quite place. The kids are jumping around the office, supposedly studying, so you retreat into your bedroom. You close the door. Position those pillows so that you are comfortable. The coffee still has wisps of steam rising from it, so you are good to go. You turn on the lap top to continue reading your favorite blogs. You are comfortable in this room, but may I ask you why?

My daughter just had her second birthday party yesterday. This may seem an odd thing to say, but I dread my wife's parties. Why you may ask, because she creates a long honey do list for redecorating the house, but I started before she finalized her list. I am doing little updates all of the time, but I started changing the style of the home early this time, because I did not feel like redoing the garden beds and painting the rooms the day before a party again. This time around I managed to make the home more comfortable with some simple things.

I had my plan in action. My wife generally takes out all of my indoor plants to the patio, so I have none in the house. I never could understand this habit, but she has been consistent in it. I noticed that my mother-in-law does the same thing, so there must be something behind it. Since the patio is now full, I placed several heavy large plants around the house. With so much to do, she let them be. On the day of the party, several people commented on how nice they look, so I think they are safe. Plants just really make a room feel different. They add a warmth, so you may consider looking into adding them to your house if you want an easy way to give it a feeling of comfort.

The other problem area for my wife has been family photographs. She constantly is removing them from the walls. I am not sure where this habit comes from, but she always seems dissatisfied with them. This time I was clever. I took her to a store for some supplies for the party, and I hung around the frame section. Inspired, she picked several matching frames that were on sale. This meant that I had to pull out my levels and tape measure to set the pictures up on that last day with other things to do, but we had a nice collection of family snaps on the wall.

Alright, maybe I was a little sneaky, but It made my room to sit down and read that much more comfortable.