It’s that time of year when we maybe get a little introspective and start to take stock of how the last year has gone. Did we lose that weight we wanted? Read all those books? Finally get on board with this whole Twitter thing we’ve been hearing about?

Since home is, for many people, an important extension of self, Apartment Therapy recently featured five home resolutions they’ll be keeping in the next year. Great ideas, and it inspired us to think about what resolutions we want to do, home-wise. Here goes:

• Organizing: We’re going to rid ourselves of extraneous paper and shred old bills, as appropriate. We’ll also be organizing our closets and not just shoving the mess into there. New closet organizers, boxes and bins may also be pressed into use.
• Cooking: Eating out and supporting local restaurants is great, but cooking at home not only saves money, but allows you unprecedented control of the food you put into your body. Plus, you can flex your culinary muscles and become known for sparkling hosting and fabulous dinner parties.
• Curb appealing: With all the zeal over interior decorating, it’s easy to forget the home’s exterior. No more! This year, we will be painting, repairing, refreshing and landscaping to make our houses the envy of the neighborhood. New walkway? Flowerbeds? Our only limit is our imaginations!
• Greening: We want to make this year the greenest ever. So we’ll be looking at ways to make our homes — and our lives — more energy efficient. We’re going to try to re-use stuff more, evaluate whether we really need something and think of ways to buy locally as needed.
• Learning: We’re going to attempt to pick up some sort of DIY skill this year. Whether that means something like learning some home repair basics, or a softer skill like making our own throw pillows, we’ll be doing it for ourselves.

New Year’s resolutions are notoriously difficult to keep, but we believe that if you start small and have a purpose, it can be done. What are your home resolutions? Let us know in the comments.

Thanksgiving Centerpiece Ideas: Poppies and Posies
Design*Sponge
If you are looking for a beautiful DIY autumn centerpiece for your Thanksgiving table, check out this step-by-step guide and prepare to wow your guests.

Consider This! A Multi-Course Plated Thanksgiving Dinner
The Kitchn
“Sure, it’s traditional to pass huge platters around the table in one merry food frenzy at Thanksgiving. And, yes, we’ll be busy enough just getting all the food prepared, so why throw in the extra step of multiple courses and plating food individually? We’ll give you two big reasons why we’re thinking about doing this.”

Thanksgiving Specials Across the U.S.
Open Table
If you’d like to be giving thanks for not having to cook, check out Open Table’s guide for where to eat on Thanksgiving Day.

101 Head Starts on the Day
New York Times
“For cooks, most Thanksgiving problems are brought about by the sheer number of dishes competing for the stove: It’s not easy to roast a turkey and sweet potatoes for 20 at the same time. The best solution is to make food in advance, like one of the dishes that follow.”

It’s Thanksgiving; We’re Doomed
City Room Blog (New York Times)
If you feel like Turkey Day might make you crazy, you’ll like these Thanksgiving stories from psychiatrists. Don’t forget to check out the numerous comments for tales of Thanksgiving disasters, which might make you give thanks for a relatively normal celebration.

It’s hard to believe, especially with the unseasonably warm weather in much of the country, that Thanksgiving is almost upon us. For most people, the Turkey Day feasting and festivities aren’t a last-minute impromptu deal. There are traditions to be upheld, food to be made and occasionally even some family holiday squabbling to be soothed. So you’d better be organized!

Better Homes and Gardens has a great Thanksgiving countdown checklist. It’s pretty exhaustive, but here are a few of MLuxe’s favorite tips:

• Don’t forget to order your turkey, especially if you are getting a special bird.
• Make sure you have enough in the way of plates, cups, silverware, etc. Don’t have enough place settings of your fine china? Use the everyday stuff for the kids, or ask your guests to bring some of their china. It will look eclectic and chic!
• Think of something — anything — to keep the kiddos occupied. If it’s warm enough, how about touch football or Capture the Flag? If it’s an indoor day, make sure you have some good board games and DVDs around.
• Set the table the night before — it will take some stress off your day-of preparations.
• Lastly, don’t forget to defrost the turkey with time to spare!

What are your favorite Thanksgiving preparation tips? Does your family have any special traditions? Let us know in the comments!

Photo courtesy of tuchodi on Flickr

Apartment Therapy recently featured some self watering planters — perfect for those of us with irregular schedules or who can’t quite remember that all living things need water! Now, they’re not completely maintenance free — you will have to put water in every so often. But once the water is in, you can sit back and watch your plants grow.

There are quite a few options out there, but our favorite is the Grobal Self-Watering Planter designed by Karim Rashid (see some of his work for the myMarvin project here). The Grobal comes in enough colors to satisfy any decorating scheme and features Rashid’s signature curvy lines. With something as easy as this, there’s no excuse not to try growing something this summer!

Photo courtesy of A + R

What’s all the fuss about indoor-outdoor living? It’s more than just dragging a few lawn chairs onto the deck. Indoor-outdoor living can add real value to your life.

The Census Bureau estimates that 2 million Americans will add a deck or patio to their home every year. And with more people choosing to stay at home rather than taking expensive vacations, money spent on outdoor space can be very well-used.

Additionally, there are many steps along the indoor-outdoor living spectrum. Maybe you just need to add a patio to grill out, or a deck to watch the sun set. You can also choose to completely re-landscape your yard to add beautiful gardens and comfortable seating. Or maybe you will add an outdoor kitchen for a completely new room.

Let’s talk about improving what you have. Interior Decorating Buzz suggests taking your current porch or deck and making it just a little bit nicer. Got a porch swing? Make sure it rocks easily and doesn’t creak. Consider painting it a cheerful color for a focal point. Durable wicker furniture doesn’t have to be expensive. Depending on the size of your porch or deck, you can create “conversation pits” for an intimate feeling. And don’t forget to accessorize! Adding things like large urns can add a lot of interest.

If you want to go the kitchen route, there are two options. One is the true outdoor kitchen and the other is an interior kitchen that is designed to be deeply connected to the outside. Re-Nest takes a pictorial look at the interior kitchens. (Hint: if you are considering going this route, consider a door like Marvin’s Ultimate Lift and Slide).

And Outdoor Kitchens Guide gives a review of what to think of when planning an outdoor kitchen. A couple big points are to think carefully when it comes to budget and space available, and do your homework when choosing appliances.

With a little forethought you can make a beautiful space to enjoy outdoor living.

Photo courtesy of Eberly & Collard Public Relations on Flickr.

A refrigerator can be a focal point in the kitchen, as well as serving the very important purpose of keeping food fresh and cool. Unfortunately, fridges can also be big energy users. Unless you plan to build an icehouse to store your perishables, it may be time to think about a more energy-efficient fridge.

To start with, look for the ENERGY STAR label. This label indicates that a product meets energy guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Energy.

Over on Re-Nest, 10 fridges’ ENERGY STAR ratings are listed. Check it out–it’s a good place to start when considering replacing your refrigerator. What other attributes are important to you for looks and performance?

Image courtesy of Re-Nest.

The food we prepare and eat leaves us with certain scraps that we don’t know what to do with. Yes, making coffee and fresh orange juice is tasty and healthy, but what do you do with the leftovers? Re-Nest tackles some issues that kitchen gourmands may wonder about…

According to their experts, when you are done with juicing your own fruits and vegetables, there may be lots of pulp left over. As easy as it is to scrape it into the trash, there are a few alternatives: mix it into pancakes or breads, use it as a base for a sauce or, if you truly can’t do anything with it, compost it.

For disposing of coffee grounds, you have even more choices. If you’ll be hitting the shower after your morning coffee, mix your coffee grounds with soap for an exhilarating exfoliator. You can also use the grounds to scrub your hands to get rid of food odors. And if there are unpleasant odors in your fridge or car, or on your pet, those leftover coffee grounds will do the trick.

Now that you’ve properly disposed of your morning coffee and OJ, there’s always the matter of the newspaper. Recycling  it might be your usual earth-friendly course, but if you are a crafty knitter, consider making yarn from it when you’re through reading.

Good morning and wake up to a green day!

Image courtesy of How can I recycle this on Flickr.

[Editor's note: Yes, we're still (or already) talking about gardening. Just think of this has early prep to inform your gardening this spring.]

Being able to grow anything has always given me such satisfaction, particularly when it’s something I can eat. The early spring offers so many opportunities to grow vegetables without a lot of space. This is the time of year I start what I call my salad garden.

Early spring’s cool temperatures are ideal for growing some of my favorites. Green onions, radishes, English peas and broccoli will spice up any meal. And since I’m such a salad person, I grow plenty of arugula and a wide range of leafy salad greens, such as my favorite: Buttercrunch lettuce.

I like to start my first crop with young plants and then sow seed for those that follow. In no time my vegetable bed will be full of delicious, tender, fresh lettuce. There’s just something about homegrown that is hard to beat.

The seed of many cool weather crops will germinate as soon as the soil begins to warm a bit. I coax the seedlings along with little plastic covers that I’ve made for my raised beds and they have the added benefit of protecting them if the temperature drops suddenly.

Many salad greens grow so quickly I can harvest several crops before it is time to plant the warm season vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers and squash.

If you don’t have room for raised beds, you might try growing some salad greens in containers. It’s a great way to make the transition into spring even more enjoyable and you may find that what you grow is too beautiful to eat.

Christmas traditions are numerous and varied: trimming the tree, singing carols and waiting for Santa to come. For many people, one of the most treasured and passed-down traditions are Christmas cookies. Christmas is only a few days away, but it is easy to whip up a few batches of your favorite seasonal treats.

Epicurious offers 25 recipes for Christmas cookies–plenty to choose from!

If you want to swap your delicious Christmas cookies, consider a cookie exchange. Better Home and Gardens has some helpful hints for a successful party:

• Don’t invite too many people — 8 to 12 is the right amount. Although you want to make sure there are lots of cookies to exchange, you don’t want your guests to have to make massive amounts of cookies.
• Make sure you know what sort of cookies everyone is bringing. You don’t want everyone to show up with peanut butter blossoms!
• As the host, you will need to provide beverages and maybe a few snacks–not too many, since you’ll be filling up on cookies!
• A cookie exchange is a great time to bring out all your fun holiday decorations and dishes.

Happy baking!

Image courtesy of  Key Lime Yummies Bakery on Flickr.

MSN Real Estate, via House Beautiful, has three very amusing slide shows on state-of-the-art kitchens from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s. The really funny thing, however, is that most of these kitchens look pretty palatable to the modern eye. Function-wise, they may need to be updated, but they still look beautiful.

See if you can guess what decade each kitchen is from:

The decades are, from the top: 2000s, 1970s, 1960s, 1990s, 1950s and 1980s. Take a look at the rest of the kitchens in the slideshows. The more things change, the more they stay the same…maybe you will find yourself taking a cue from the past for your next kitchen project!

Images courtesy of MSN Real Estate.