This guest post is written by Jay Harris. Jay is a Home Depot sales associate and a regular contributor to Home Depot’s blog. His interests include home lighting, home automation, and solar panels.

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The kitchen is one of the most active and important rooms within your house—one that gets quite a bit of attention when it comes to home makeovers. You’re in and out of the kitchen constantly. Between preparing meals each day or just grabbing a quick snack, it seems like you end up in the kitchen more than any other room. With this much foot traffic, it needs to be a room that looks decent and represents your home properly.

Lighting can play a big role in helping this come to fruition. Lighting also plays a big role in how your color scheme will set the mood for the room. Kitchens are meant to be inviting rooms—they entice the appetite and help you to relax and unwind from your day.

Let’s illustrate how light can play a role in making kitchens stand out.

This guest post is written by Alex Jackson. Alex, who is a keen interior design follower, wrote this blog on behalf of Bathshop321 and frequently offers advice on interior trends, household improvements and repairs.

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Are you wondering which colour will be modelled by bathrooms this year? Whether you’re looking to update a main bathroom, powder room, or master bathroom, you’ve probably been pondering on which colours are trending this year. Easier said than done, right? Well in this post we’ll be seeing creative ways to replace tiles with textures, graphics, and colours -- ranging from dark and dramatic to ultra bright and vibrant. While large renovation makeovers require massive amounts of money and time, a quick lick of paint can brighten and update a bathroom in minutes. Here’s the low-down on the interior design and colour trends for 2012 and beyond.

This guest post is written by Annie Josey. Annie is a blogger for Pegasus Lighting, a specialty lighting retailer committed to helping everyone have a positive learning experience in lighting. Annie is also a fellow color enthusiast, and has made it her goal to use lighting to brighten up the lives (and living spaces) of everyone she meets.

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Color-loving homeowners can have some of the most attractive abodes around. Their houses have vibrant front doors and their yards gush with lively flowerbeds. Perhaps they have colorful bird feeders hung from porches or trees, or bold mosaic tiles around swimming pools and along walkways. They outfit their decks with bright chairs and whimsical umbrellas to shade them from the sun, but what happens when the sun goes down, and all that lovely color falls into shadow?

If you’re one of these homeowners, losing out on all your favorite shades the minute the sun sinks down might seem tragic. But, with the right outdoor lights, you can keep your favorite colors looking vibrant AND compliment your décor with even more color.

Here are 4 ways to add to and enhance your yard’s hues with light:

Uniting all dish towel lovers for this post. If you're not a fan of awesome dish towels, it will suffice if you are a fan of really cool patterns printed on textiles. If you haven't checked out the online shop Leif, make sure to do so. They have some incredibly unique and really cool stuff on their website from decor accessories, paper, candles, and much more.

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I found a fun collection of items that are sure to spruce up any kitchen quite fast. The paint chip placemat is a perfect addition to any table. And, it comes in different colors, so you can mix and match or just play it safe with one color all around.

Leif definitely covered all the popular patterns of the moment in their textiles section of this online shop. Houndstooth is becoming an increasingly popular option, and I think this design and color palette would surely brighten up any room, don't you?

Cityscapes! Talk about a different take on a cityscape. Great addition to my tea towel collection.

I love the bright colors in this lattice design. This might just be my favorite, if there was a way I could choose a favorite.

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And just for fun, I love their take on bottles that we have all the time in our home anyway. These vases were created from dish detergent and yogurt bottles. Awesome.

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Which pattern your favorite? And do you love these vases? Now it is your turn, create some fun palettes from these cool dish towels.

Comment to let us know your thoughts and make sure you pin your faves!

As crafters and sewers, we emerge from our cozy winter projects and start looking for fresh, colorful crafts that will get us ready for warm weather ahead. So we've put together a collection of spunky spring crafts to kick off National Craft Month.

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We bring you a the latest trends in DIY to brighten up your life be it you prefer to sew, work with fibers or even glue, it's all here in a bundle of color and style!

20-min Tote DIY | Repurposed Jeans Bag DIY | Boxed Pouch DIY | Diana Hobo free pattern | Kindle Slip-Case |  Felt Checkbook Holder DIY | Easy Knit Produce Bag DIY 

If you make anything this spring, it has got to be a new bag, clutch or tote of some sort. Changing up your carriers or adding new ones to your collection will add a little skip to your step for certain! The 20-min tote is an awesome way to utilize a great print you want to see hanging around and that denim bag is the trendiest done with repurposed jeans.

Those adorable boxed pouches can be used for organizing anything from makeup, hair irons, art supplies, accessories, you name it.  At the end of the day, most of these are the quickest projects to start your spring crafting off right. In addition, a great book by Kay Whitt came out last fall called, Sew Serendipity Bags which would also be an excellent choice full of colorfully inspired patterns, as her style is unbeatable!

Blue Clover Pants modeled on author Sarai | Skirt & Dress

What better to go along with a new bag or tote accessory than a new outfit? The Colette Sewing Handbook, is chalk full of spring and summer fashion patterns perfect for any beginner to intermediate sewer. Sarai also continues to offer tips, tricks, more in-depth tutorials and alteration ideas (usually with tutorials) to the patterns in the book.

In addition to all this available support, she features real sewers from around the globe on the Coletterie blog, with photos of finished outfits from the book and a small interview. A great sense of community and an excellent purchase that keeps on giving.

Coffee Filter Flowers | Felt Hair Pins | Felt Dahlia | No-Sew Vase Flowers | Bottle Cap Button Flowers | Felt Hair Accessories  

Heading away from sewing projects, here is a colorful collection of minimal to no-sew DIY flowers to get your floral fever on. Between crafty arrangements for your table or something to adorn and accessorize with, they're all full of texture and color!

patterns (scroll the page to find each): Green Grocer Tote | Daisy Motif  | Loopy Roses | Irish Roses | Love You  | Mabel Pillow | Granny Garland

Springtime brings flowers, farmers markets, celebrations and an itch for warm weather and sunshine. This is the time to start getting some summer-loving colors on and around you! A cheery market tote, a bright celebration banner or a few unique flower patterns to add to your lapel, hair, shoe clips, bag, you name it - bring some flowers out before they actually sprout!

Techniques (also need to scroll to find each): Larksfoot (technique) | Squiggly Wiggles (technique) | Granny Squares

Check out these wonderful techniques. The Larksfoot (shown above) works so well with an ombre palette, the Squiggly Squiggles is fun and funky and really pops with a large, loud palette and granny squares, well gee you can do so much with them!

Hawaiian Flowers FREE printable PDF crochet pattern

If you're looking for a great way to color block and add some palette-love to your body or abode this spring, get cracking on one of these fabulous projects from Sarah London, author of Granny Square Love.

LOVE pattern | Cartwheels pattern | Wind Swept pattern | Snow Globes pattern

If quilts were nothing special to you before, they will be after you take a second look at, Quilts from the House of Tula Pink. Tula is a total trend-setter for an entirely new kind of quilting. If anything, her projects will give you fantastic inspirational colors, textures, patterns and shapes.

So what are you working on right now? What medium is your favorite to work with and what colors are seeping in to all of your projects?

Spring Palettes:

 More COLOURlovers spring palettes...

When deciding to paint a room we tend to have a heck of a time picking that perfect paint color. But some crafty people took it a step further using paint chips as inspiration for a paint replacement. Beyond that, there are some crafty ways to reuse those billion paint swatches you are left with once you finally pick your perfect paint color. Here are some quick tricks, easy DIYs, and all around great ideas inspired by paint chips. For lots more paint chip ideas, check out our Pinterest board.

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If you are looking for the perfect way to create a statement piece in your house, and you are a lover of color, this might just be the perfect thing. And the best part is, the cost is extremely low (depending on how many paint chips you can get from your local paint shop).

Source: Paint Wall, Bedroom, Wall, Stairs

Some may think the garage is merely a place to hide the fact that you drive an SUV keep your vehicle & all the stuff you'll probably never use again safe from the elements. But remember all those other great things that have come out of garages? : bands, inventions, companies, etc. The garage is really a conveniently located creative space to explore your latest idea, so it's nice to see that some people are reflecting the creativity going on behind the door outwardly by giving their doors some color lovin'.

Thomas Hawk

turkus

If you've ever picked up a shelter magazine, then you know that painting a room is the first step in any interior makeover. The Color Spotlight series will provide inspirational images, paint swatches, and palates to help anyone in a color conundrum select the perfect new hue for their space.

First up in the series: light blue. I'm willing to bet that nearly half of you spent the first years of your life in a baby blue bedroom. Not only is it a color that we associate with newborn boys, it's also very calming, evokes the ocean and the sky, and pairs nicely with nearly any accent color.

(House Beautiful, paint swatches via Mythic)

One of the things that can help uplift your mood is a bit of certain colors. Rich, fun  and bright tones seem to work well. Green and yellow is a nice marriage of tones and always makes me think of lemon and lime. They seem to be big in certain items throughout the Spring and Summer months, which makes perfect sense since they pair up nicely and give off a cheerful feel. Do these two give you are positive feeling?

pillow | lamp | napkins | web cam | map | vase | lanterns | glasses | blanket

As the warm weather approaches  I find myself mentally preparing for the upcoming season. Certain things, such as fashions and soirees, enter your mind and you begin to anticipate what is in store and what colors you might wish to see. Bold, bright, airy and cheery colors are usually what I envision. And yellow (bright and cheery), black (bold) and white (airy) are what are currently on my mind.

pillow | clock | throw | bowl | lamp | agate slice | table | art