Natalie Espinosa

I recently discovered that if you are renter, like me, one of the easiest ways to make a space feel more personal is to change the light fixture. It can change the overall mood of a room and it also gives you the opportunity to select the kind of light you want in your home. Of course, in my case, the change was extreme as we only had bare bulbs to begin with, but it’s incredible how a relatively simple task can make such a difference!

Many years ago a teacher told me that you could steam out a dent in a piece of wood (one where the wood fibers had been compressed, not where they had been removed) using a wet rag and an iron. This technique was meant for unfinished wood, but unfortunately, most of the wood we deal with in our homes has some sort of finish on it. With some research I learned that this technique can work with finished wood but it depends greatly on the type of finish you are dealing with.

We just purchased a new handmade area rug and in effort to keep it looking good we researched some of the best maintenance and cleaning tips. Here is what we found:1. Vacuum, vacuum, vacuumYou should vacuum your rug regularly. Some sources say you should do this daily (yikes!) to prevent dust from settling in the fibers, but don’t worry, other sources say that vacuuming once a week or once every two weeks should be enough.

In Mexico, Christmas festivities officially begin with the Posadas, a series of nine parties occurring every day from the 16th until the 24th of December. Posadas are said to have been invented by the Spanish priests who in their attempt to convert the locals to Catholicism began holding nine masses before Christmas due to the similar timing of the celebration of the birth of the Aztec god of war, Huitzilopochtli.