Decorate with Outdoor Curtains and Draperies

BEFORE – This outside cabana looked and
felt bare without any draperies.  Plus the roof alone was no reprieve from
the scorching sun.  My customer asked for my help on this project.

AFTER – Pulled back draperies are made out
of outside fabric, so weather elements are not a concern.  When not tied
with a contrasting tie, draperies can traverse to cover any part of the cabana.

These outdoor draperies add comfort
and warmth to the space below the deck, that’s otherwise not very attractive.

source www.maisondecor8.blogspot.com

Close-up of the outdoor curtains
under the deck

source www.maisondecor8.blogspot.com

Decorated with bright colors, and
using draperies, cushions, and tablecloth, this outdoor space is a perfect
example of bridging inside and outside.

Source www.Sarahleeb.com

 

Design Showhouse – Transformation

Vitalia Inc. was honored to be selected as one of the design firms to be featured in 2011 Chadds Ford Decorator Showhouse.

The sunroom was our space of choice because it could showcase window treatments (our specialty), was light & cheery, and, frankly, could use a lot of help and TLC.

The work begain in January, and it took a full 4 months to transform the space from an old, dark, and dingy room to a contemporary and happy place.

Before: dark woodwork and drab walls

Before:  old cushions and boring windows

 

Hand-rendered perspective of the finished room

A fresh coat of white paint on the woodwork and lively apple green paint on the walls

Bright colors, geometric patterns, clean lines – ALL contribute to an updated, fresh, upleveled sunroom

Of course, what would we be if we didn’t have stunning window treatments

A perfect sun room to kick off your shoes after a long day’s work…

Pictures with Santa

5 EASY WAYS TO GET MORE DONE DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON

Halloween marks the official start of the holiday season. In just few short weeks, it will be time to stuff your turkey, decorate your tree, and spend obnoxious amount of money on stuff we don’t really need, aka presents.

This is also the busiest time for us in the home furnishings industry. After all, all the turkeys in the world won’t make the dining room look beautiful, but a new coat of paint, new table, and new window treatments will.

So we try to handle the combined increased pressures of our business with personal lives, which often comes with overwhelm, stress, and frustration.

What’s a business owner to do?  Use these simple 5 tips to tame the holiday craziness and get more done without losing your head.

1. Concentrate only on the money-making activities.  Hm, what do I mean by that…  As entrepreneurs, our to-do lists are never-ending, right?  We don’t operate from 9-5.  And we don’t think within boundaries.  There is always more to be done to grow any business. Update the website (or to build a website to begin with).  Try a new product.  Get an assistant.  Start a blog.  Begin using Facebook.  Organize your office.  The list can go on and on.  But during the next two months, I want you to only concentrate on two things:  your client work and marketing.  These are the two activities that go straight to your bottom line.  Anything else that comes during the day gets put on a back-burner until January.
2. Do a Thanksgiving promotion. Most businesses send out Holiday cards in December.  I recommend you send yours out in November.  There is no better time to show your appreciation to your clients and prospects than during the time of Thanksgiving.  You will stand out of the clutter simply because there is relatively less clutter and traffic.  And, as busy at you may feel now, you do have less on your plate in the beginning of November than in the beginning of December.
3. Write everything down. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t write something down, I will forget it.  If forget it, it doesn’t get done.  Very simple.  So if I want to get things done, I must write them down.  As soon as they pop in my head.  Regardless of where I am.  If I’m driving, I pull over.  If I’m working in my office, I stop what I’m doing.  If I’m working with  a client, I do a very quick “give me just one second” and I write it down.  Another tip, is to always write it down in one place.   Business or personal – all gets written down in one place.
4. Calendar, calendar, calendar. Thank heavens for smart phones, what did we ever do without them?  But while they make syncing more efficient, they don’t instill the habit of putting all of your appointments on the calendar.  And that’s exactly what I’m talking about now.  No matter how small or big, business or personal – it must have a slot on your calendar.
5. Do it now, not later.  Procrastination is never good, but it is especially limiting during your busiest time of the year, when you’re trying to cram more business, more parties, and more shopping than physically possible.  As soon as you hear that little voice in your head saying “I’ll do it later”, that’s your red flag.  There is no later.  You have to stop and make yourself do it now.  One of the techniques I use if the task is big is to chunk it out.  My mentor Neen James calls it the 15 minute rule.  Break up the task into smaller, more manageable  parts that take only a few minutes (15minutes or whatever time you feel comfortable with).

As you’re plowing through the Holiday season, make your decisions through the filter of the 5 tips above.  If you do, I guarantee that you will get more done.

My most recent dance competition – it was fantastic!

Vita Firing it up on the dance floor at NJ State Open

HOW SAFE ARE YOUR SHADES?

Did you know that in September 2010, Consumer Product Safety Commission released a new version of the standard that outlines requirements for cordless treatments?

You also may have heard a lot of buzz in the news about recent recalls.

But you’re probably thinking “I’m just a small 1-person operation, it doesn’t affect me”.  Right?
Wrong.

I recently listened to a webinar put together by three leading window covering associations that tried to clarify the new standard.  In the spirit of productivity and in an effort to save you time, here is my best summary of the webinar, laced with personal impressions and perceptions.

• The standard is a very long, technical, and confusing document, filled with a lot legal jargon.
• Its goal and purpose is to specify and give best definition of cordless treatments (includes shades, traversing rods, and any other treatment that uses a cord)
• Its function is not to enforce the standard. 
• Unfortunately it falls very short of explaining how to fabricate them and more importantly, how it affects designer’s product offering, now that roman shades as we know them are no longer available.
• Consumer Product Safety Commission has made it clear that compliance is a must
• Target date for compliance is March 3rd, 2011.
• Compliance is a must regardless of whether children are present in the household
• Compliance is a must regardless of the size of the business
• There are consequences for non-compliance, but it was not clear what they were
• It is up to the individual designer (and our lawyers) how to handle customer release forms.  No  form template was given during the call
• Although the standard is old, its recent visibility is new.  Because of this recency, it is not clear what options designers have if they want to specify the “roman-shade” look.
• One thing was pretty clear, this will affect our industry in a pretty big way.

As you can see, this is not a clear-cut situation that gives a lot of direction as to what to do next.  More information will be released as we go along.  And I promise to relay this information in the most clear-cut, understandable, and up-to-date terms.

HOW TO FIND MORE TIME

You probably know that the very title of this article is a contradiction.  Can there be more time?  Did anyone discover more than 24 hours in a day?  Was it hiding somewhere and we just didn’t know about it?

Of course, we know that there isn’t such thing.  But there IS such thing as using the time that you have more productively.  In other words – how to achieve more results and better results within the same amount of time that we all have in a day.

Here’s how.

1. Act vs. React. One of the worst situations that we can find ourselves in is reacting to something.  We didn’t know it was coming.  We didn’t anticipate it happening during a day.  So we suddenly are in a reactionary mode, where things are spinning out of control, time is going by, and the planned to-do list isn’t diminishing.  To be in the state of acting ( vs. reacting) takes planning.  Planning takes some time.  So the first tip is to take the necessary time to plan your day, your week, your month, your year.  Plan what you want to accomplish in your business life, in your professional life, in your kids’ lives, your family life, etc.
2. When planning, use a calendar. They say that setting goals without a timetable is like dreaming.  Same logic applies to planning.  To create a plan without aligning it with your calendar is like writing a long college term paper on “alienating identity as the common theme of the post-modern literature”– after all that work, you wonder what was the point.  Your plan needs to have dates next to each line item.  For example, let’s say you’re trying to be better at your networking activities.  I suggest you make a list of all groups you might be interested in, plan to spend 2 hours researching all of them, identify 3 that you will join, and plot all of their meetings for a year into your calendar.  Once it’s in your calendar, it’s an appointment (much like a client appointment).  Honor it.
3. Make only 1 to-do list. How many of you have a to-do list?  I bet everyone said yes.  How many of you have multiple to-do lists?  I bet many of you said yes to that.  How many of you have multiple to-do lists AND have additional post-its, scraps of paper, napkins, perhaps with additional reminders of what needs to be done?  I bet many said yes to that too.  The key to being productive is keeping ALL of your to-do’s in one place.  It should be a simple table with 4-5 main categories, in which your tasks fall.  Note that one of these categories should be “personal”.  Everything that comes up during the day, should go onto this to-do list (not on a   scrap, post it, or napkin).  Update it daily to delete items that are done, and add items that you’ve written manually.  Keep it clean.  Keep it simple.
4. Let someone else handle it.  Of course another term for it is delegate.  One person can only get done one task at a time.  Two people can handle two tasks during the same amount of time.  Three people can get done three tasks during the same amount of time.  You will never be as productive trying to get done everything in your business and your life.  Without a doubt, the very first two big areas which every designer needs to delegate out is doing quickbooks and administering purchase orders.
5. Don’t do it as often. Ask yourself:  how many times a day do you check your email?  How many times a day do you check your phone voice mails?  How many times a day do you check your texts?  How many times a week do you check your mail?  I challenge you to cut that number down in half.  Or better yet even more than half.  For example I check my mail only once a week.  There is nothing in my mail box that’s so urgent that can’t wait until Sunday morning, when all the mail for the week have been delivered.  I don’t even take it out of the mailbox, so that the big pile of envelops and magazines doesn’t become an eye sore and starts stressing me out.  By doing it this way, I save myself time and aggravation of not doing the same routine activity every day.
6. Do one thing once. You should only touch something, physically or virtually, once.  Be that an e-mail, piece of mail, customer file, vendor binder, or anything else that you come in contact with.  If you touched it and read it – make a decision on what needs to be done with it and do it right there and then.  Putting it away in a pile only procrastinates the decision, but doesn’t eliminate it from your mind.  And if it’s sitting on your mind, it’s preventing you from being your absolute best productive self.
7. Let go of perfection.  Making something perfect is a belief that will hold you back from achieving quick results.  It will take you time and energy to add that one finishing touch to your presentation, or to add that one extra photograph to your blog post; or to tweak your website one more time.  But will that extra touch and tweak bring you the extra income that would be lost during the time that your presentation, website, and blog are in process?  And what additional things could you have done that would have brought additional income had you worked on something else?  I’ve heard it said, that you should get your project up to 75% perfect, and then move one.  Course correct as you go forward.
8. Have a start and an end in mind. Often times, we put a start time to a project.  For example, I will start researching the fabrics for this client at 10am.  Then we lose ourselves in our work and before we know it hours have gone by and we are still searching for that perfect fabric and that perfect trim.  Instead, have the end time in mind.  So say to yourself – I will work on this project for one hour, from 10 to 11am.  Psychologically, our bodies and mindsets adopt to this new deadline and work much more productively.  It’s a similar concept to when you’re going on vacation and you must complete your to –do list, no questions asked.  One of the great ways to keep yourself on track is by using a very simple kitchen egg timer.  When that ding goes off, you’re done.
9. Turn off your email.  This is very simple, but very hard at the same time.  We have a love-hate relationship with our email in-box.  We all complain that it gets out of hand, that it’s too big, that we get bombarded with information all the time.  Yet, we can’t help it, but press the F5 or the send/receive button much too often than we should.  So to tame the temptation, I invite you to turn off your email completely.  Decide which parts of the day you’ll check it and only turn it on during those times of the day.  I also encourage you to check your email only when you’re in the position to deal with it.  There are 4 ways of dealing with it:  read, respond, delete, move to folders.  If you don’t have the time, energy, or desire to do all of these things, don’t check your email at that time of the day.
10. Batch the alike tasks. Batch your client appointments.  Batch your installations.  Batch your personal appointments.  Batch your in-office tasks.  Batch your ‘at the computer’ tasks.  By doing things that require the same state of mind, same physical presence, same set-up – you’re saving yourself a ton of time!
11. “When will I do it VS. I have to do it”.  I hear it time and time again:  “oh, yeah, that marketing thing, I really have to do it.  Someday, definitely. “  Or “I know I need to be doing more networking, I’m really going to do it”.  I strongly encourage you to make an appointment with yourself right now, put it into the calendar, and respect that appointment with yourself.  Get into the habit of asking yourself “When will I do it?”  vs. saying “I have to do it”.  So for example, you’ve been wanting to start an ezine, and it’s been on your list forever, but you just haven’t gotten around to doing it.  If it’s the case with you, I ask you to look at your calendar right now, set a date and time, and do it when you said you’d do it.

Congratulations to all of our winners from our VIP Business of Design Book Launch Party

• Ronica VanGelder – winner of the 5 Part Audio Course – “5 Ways to be the Next Design Marketing Star”, compliments of Kelly Galea, The Design Biz Coach – www.thedesignbizcoach.com
• Dawn Williams – winner of a $50 Gift Certificate to the Minutes Matter Online Store, compliments of Debbie Green, founder of Minutes Matter – www.minutesmatter.com
• Ruth Banks – winner of a 45 minute consultation and Dewey Color System, compliments of Margi Kyle, Design Doctor – www.doctormargi.com
• Lois Laidlaw – winner of the brand new book “Business of Interior Design, Proven Marketing Secrets to Attract More Clients, Make More Money, Have More Freedom, And Love Being a Designer”, compliments of Vitalia Vygovska, Window Treatment & Productivity Expert – www.vitaliainc.com
• Lucinda Reed – winner of a 1 year free membership to DSA, compliments of Natasha Lima-Younts, Designer Society of America – www.dsasociety.org
• Jennifer Crawford – winner of “live” video training of how to do a walk through and stage a clients home as well as how to redesign a room, compliments of Mary Larsen, Mary Larsen Designs – www.marylarsendesigns.com
• Denise Willard – winner of the book “Marketing Interior Design”, compliments of Lloyd Princeton, Design Management Company – www.dmcnyc.com
• Janice Ward – winner of the e-book, “Get Clients Now: How to Attract Ideal Design Clients”, compliments Kelly Galea, The Design Biz Coach – www.thedesignbizcoach.com
• Marna Conner – winner of the brand new book “Business of Interior Design, Proven Marketing Secrets to Attract More Clients, Make More Money, Have More Freedom, And Love Being a Designer”, compliments of Vitalia Vygovska, Window Treatment & Productivity Expert – www.vitaliainc.com
• Mary Bowden – winner of a 2 part audio class on “How to put on a Successful Trunk Show from Start to Finish”, by Margo DeGange, Degangi Group – www.margodegange.com
• Kelli Chitty – winner of a $50 Gift Certificate to the Minutes Matter Online Store, compliments of Debbie Green, founder of Minutes Matter – www.minutesmatter.com
• Patti Anderson – winner of $50 off WCAA membership compliments of Jenna Abbott, Executive Director Window Coverings Association of America – www.wcaa.org
• Michelle Eaton – winner of a 30 minute coaching session with Anna Jacoby compliments of Anna Jacoby Interiors – www.annajacobyinteriors.com
• Cherie Rissi – winner of ‘How to Host a Successful Telesminar”, compliments of Nika Stewart – www.nikastewart.com
• Maureen Quinn-Donovan – winner of $50 Gift Certificate to the Minutes Matter Online Store, compliments of Debbie Green, founder of Minutes Matter – www.minutesmatter.com
• Stacey Just – winner of the brand new book “Business of Interior Design, Proven Marketing Secrets to Attract More Clients, Make More Money, Have More Freedom, And Love Being a Designer”, compliments of Vitalia Vygovska, Window Treatment & Productivity Expert – www.vitaliainc.com

WIN THESE AMAZING GIFTS-They are yours FREE JUST for Joining the Party!

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