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Celebrate Earth Day April 22

April 12, 2010 by Melisa M. | Comments (0)


Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment, held on April 22. It is celebrated in many countries and has been receiving added attention in current years with the newfound popularity of going green and our increased consciousness of how we are harming the planet. As active motivated women, we, here at CRAVE, think Earth day is a wonderful chance to help women discover new ways to help our earth and conserve it for generations to come. The Nature Conservancy has some wonderful tips to do just that, pertaining to activities a lot of women deal with in their everyday lives.

Use reusable totes

You can help save oceans when you use reusable shopping bags instead of plastic bags. Sure, it’s a small step — but it can make a big difference in the health of our oceans. Unfortunately, 90 percent of the debris that washes up from our oceans are man-made and shouldn’t be there. Most of it has – unfortunately – come to be expected: derelict fishing equipment, disposable plastic bottles, plastic bags, cigarette butts, bits of unidentifiable plastic, Styrofoam. To help encourage others, share where you take reusable bags or where you’ve found your favorite tote.

Eat food

Just like you, conservationists, fishermen, chefs and consumers are working together to find new ways of living off our oceans and waters while keeping nature healthy. In a day and age when many of us “harvest” most of our meals by filling a grocery cart or skimming a menu, it can be easy to overlook nature’s role in putting food on our tables. This is especially true when it comes to seafood. For centuries, the oceans’ bounty seemed inexhaustible. Now, as scientists unravel the intricate relationships between fish and the vast lands below the water’s surface, we’re gaining a clearer picture of how humans have altered our oceans’ ability to provide for us. The Conservancy is tackling the problems by working with communities to restore degraded habitats and rebuild depleted fisheries. But sustainability also depends on how fish are brought to market. A service called FishPhone is Blue Ocean’s sustainable seafood text messaging service that instantly puts sustainable seafood information at your fingertips. To find out about your seafood choice, text 30644 with the message FISH and the name of the fish in question. They’ll text you back with their assessment and better alternatives to fish with significant environmental concerns.

Green your gardening

Even while you’re gardening in your very own backyard, you can make a big difference in the health of the ocean. Fertilizers and other chemicals used in conventional gardening are washed into watersheds and eventually to sea, where they can harm coral reefs and other marine life. To help cut back on pollution, go native! Native plants require much less water and fertilizer than non-native plants do. Make your own compost! Composting kitchen scraps is a great way to create (free!) all-natural fertilizer. Set your mower to a cutting height of 2”-3” — which will eliminate undesirable weedy plants. Don’t rake your clippings; leave them behind as fertilizer. You can even try square-foot gardening. This method uses 90% less water and 95% fewer seeds than a traditional backyard garden and requires no chemicals!

You can find all the details on these tips and plenty more at earthday.nature.org

Do It Yourself Design Inspirations We CRAVE

March 22, 2010 by Lilla | Comments (0)


Spring is finally just around the corner. We are gearing up to do all our regular spring cleaning tasks – flip mattresses, wash curtains, and finally organize our junk drawers. One of the highlights of spring is rebirth and getting a new lease on life . Well, how about doing the same for your home or an old piece of furniture? Small changes are sure to make a large difference in any home! We love to turn to designspongeonline.com for inspiration and really love the before & after posts. Check out some of our favorite makeovers:

Do you have any home DIYs plans for spring?

The Time Has Come for De-cluttering!

February 24, 2010 by Melisa M. | Comments (0)


February is on its way out and spring is just around the corner. That could only mean one thing. No, not warm weather, not blossoming flowers… spring cleaning! It’s time to de-clutter your house and if you wait any longer you’re going to regret it! But we all know that getting rid of clutter can be an intimidating task. It’s messy, it’s complicated and it’s exhausting. But the rewards will certainly outweigh all the work when you’re home is spotless and all your neighbors are jealous. So we’ve asked the experts and found some de-cluttering tips to help you get through the war known as cleaning!

This is what Austin Interior Designer Heather Blue Harkovich, of Heather Scott Home and Design, has to share on the subject:

The first principle is try to prevent clutter altogether.  It seems a lot of clutter comes from paperwork. When you bring in the mail (usually from the car or side door into the laundry room), have an area to sort it immediately and drop the junk mail and catalogs into the recycle bin, shredder or trash.  I suggest an organizer or basket in the area where you bring the mail in- put bills in one slot, put items you want to read later in another.  Do not bring the paper past that sorting area.  It helps to make that area look nice/fun with accessories, such as cute containers for pens, envelopes, stamps, etc.  Make the area a mini post office.

 In a family room a lot of times clutter comes from too many ‘things’- whether it is magazines, remotes or accessories.  Try to cull through the magazines weekly.  Have a storage area in another room for magazines you want to save or read again, and just leave out one or two.  Have a basket or lidded box on the coffee table or ottoman for remote controls.  Everyone loves framed family pictures, but when you have too many for the space, the area starts to look cluttered.  Also, people have a tendency to collect a variety of frame styles over a number of years.  The frames can get dated, so a home owner should take a step back and look at the picture frames with fresh eyes.  I recommend clients have a few (perhaps 3) coordinating frames in a particular area.  You can always take those extra photos and put them in a basket or scrapbook to sit down and flip through at any time.

 I highly recommend installing a closet organization system, such as California Closets.  It isn’t inexpensive, but you will feel like it is great money spent.  You can fit all your clothes in one area- versus having them spread out in coat closets or guest bedroom closets.  For one project, we hired ‘ The Clutter Consultants ‘ to come to the client’s house and organize the re-hanging of all the clothes into systematic categories. 

Here are some more great tips from Austin Interior Design Writer, Adrienne Breaux.

De-clutter: You’ve not only heard this organizing tip, you’ve probably seen it, read it and even experienced it yourself a time or two before. It doesn’t get any easier, but the number one thing you can do to get yourself re-organized is get rid of stuff first! Don’t try to tackle it all in one day—just take a room per week. Systematically go through every drawer, door, cabinet and even evaluate furniture to see if you need (notice I didn’t say want) an item anymore. Don’t stop to reminisce, and don’t second guess yourself.

Know who you are: People create messes in different ways. Some people are dining room table pilers. Others are leave-a-trail-of-stuff-as-they-walk clutterers. Still others let chores pile up until the tasks seem impossible. Knowing how you create a mess is your first line of defense. Do you pile everything onto your hallway table as soon as you walk in the door after work? Move the table. Do you always leave your shoes and coat in the living room? Incorporate a basket to stash your stuff. Always losing bills? Place a mail sorter right inside your door for immediate filing.

Do the daily 20: Any search on the Internet will give you tons of great organizing ideas from customizable cubbies to under the bed storage to pricey and detailed closet hardware. If so much of this is available to us, then why are we still such a mess? Because many people don’t invest the time needed in keeping themselves organized. After dinner or right before you leave for work in the morning, set the kitchen timer to 20 minutes and use those organizing tools you already have in place—place loose paper in your filing systems, put laundry in hampers, rearrange your shoes on those expensive shoe racks you bought. You’ll surprise yourself with how much time you actually do have to devote to organizing even when you think you don’t have a minute left in the day to spare.

Know the zones: An old trick I use in my own life is paying special attention to a home’s main zones. These are spots in the house that when clean, even if other parts of your home are a mess, will make you feel like you are cleaner and more organized than you really are. Some examples of the zones: the kitchen sink, the couch, the dining table, the bed and the bathroom counter. So what’s the point of only organizing a few spots in your house? Well, if you really don’t have a lot of time in your day, spending your 20 minutes on zones will be a good start in organizing your whole house. And, believe us when we say that a house that even just seems more organized will make you feel a ton better, and make you want to organize more!

Home is Wherever You Hang Your Hat

February 23, 2010 by Lynn Edwards | Comments (0)



For those of you who have read my Rachel Ray blog you know I’m culinarily challenged, but love those food shows. I’m equally as inept at home design & décor but I love me some Design on a Dime (although I don’t actual DO either). I love the word “home.” I grew up in a small rambler with seven people, one bathroom and no dishwasher, but it was home. My Dad still lives there and it’s amazing how it feels sleeping in that house. It’s awesome when we all go home with our families, the bathroom line is just a little longer now with 23 people. After college I became a vagabond and lived all over the world, followed by 18 years as an army spouse. The Army has this cute little sign that says “Home is where the Army sends you.”

Needless to say, my “home” has been a stinky room the size of a closet, a grass hut in the middle of a rice paddy, an apartment on the 75th floor, a condo near a strip mall, a large sprawling tudor style, and approximately 5000 hotel rooms. I love all that cool stuff you get for your home when you get married but I made a critical mistake and had a really small wedding. Turns out I received three place settings of my formal china. When we’d have another couple over the fourth person had to eat off a plastic power ranger plate. I’m so home décor challenged I have lived for months with no pictures on the wall, have gone 20+ years without buying window treatments and I don’t have more than two bath towels the same color. When people ask me what “theme” I have decorated my homes I answer with a mid-modern century “pot pourri”.

As a joke one year my friends bought me an entire set of holiday plates. I now have salt & pepper shakers with snowmen on them…so stinking cool! I think chicks that wear hats are fashion forward stars, those with holiday-themed china are domestic goddesses….now I’m one. There are some staples I love that seem to make a house a luxurious home…a million pillows on your bed & lots of thread count sheets, a system to organize your plastic wear & lids, real flowers on your kitchen island, and that’s living. Oh, and whoever invented that electric fire place switch needs a raise…big time! I love huge tubs but have spent little time in them. The time I did spend was usually jockeying around to get comfortable around all those hot wheels in there with me. I did build a water feature on my deck once. I loved it, yeah for Lowe’s. I looked like a landscape architect genius just by putting part A into part B and firing up the hose. It was great to fall asleep to but it made me have to get up and pee all night long.

Oprah says make your home an oasis…take a look around and think about what you can do to make your house a little more “homey”…even if it’s just a $2 apple pie scented candle.

Put a Spring in Your Step with these Hot Colors

February 22, 2010 by Madeline C. | Comments (0)



When we think of spring we think of pastels and floral prints, but those just seem a little too passé and boring. What will you be wearing this spring to spice up your wardrobe? Here are some of the color trends that you won’t want to miss out on. Pick up a few bright accessories that are both trendy and timeless.

Turquoise – We’re pretty sure this is on EVERYONE’S hot-list, along with other aqua-colored hues. This vibrant color turns every outfit up a notch, making you just exude that cool confident aura that will make you the center of attention. Splurge on a Jamie Joseph brightly colored stone ring. We love this Sea Blue Chalcedony Ring for a beautiful eye-catcher.

Light Pink – More specifically, champagnes and corals are two “light pinks” that won’t have you gagging on pastel and cotton candy. Champagne is the closest you can get to a nice neutral color while adding a little pop! And for coral, try some of Cara Lyndon’s hairpins, we recommend Coral Wheel . Whether your hair color is light or dark, this feminine flair will turn heads.

Yellow – In every shade and size. Add a dash here or there or a big bright bag to have everyone around you smiling. Evoking sunshine and happiness, everyone could stand to integrate this cheerful color into their wardrobe or even their home. Try a bright throw pillow to add to your living room, we like the yellow Gloria pillow from Henry Road. The great thing about throw pillows is, when spring is over, you can just throw them back into the closet until spring comes again!