Make this House a Home

Some of you ladies read my bouquet article and thought to yourselves, Self, this bouquet is literally genius, but my house needs a touch of drama!

Well girls, this one’s for you.

If you find that despite following the gospel of Our Lady Martha Stewart, despite spacing every towel in the linen closet at least two inches apart to allow airflow and despite arranging your living room into perfect clusters of Louis XVI chair-sofa-chair, despite coordinating every pillow, doily and flake of drywall to fit into a professional triadic scheme, your home still reeks of being occupied by organic human bodies, I have just the thing.

What you need is attitude. Passion. Flare. Flame. Inferno.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by choices when coordinating the ideal house fire. You’ll find more than everything you need in the housewares section at Bed, Bath and Beyond. They have kerosene, lighter fluid, gasoline (if you’re a bit old-fashioned). You’ll find flammable rags next to the dinner napkins and wine glasses with the wine glasses to make a chic, classy molotov. Of course, some people find charm in a more Little House on the Prairie look, in which case you can find gingham cloth and mason jars at Joann’s Fabrics. Or the southern states. Or really anywhere you hear someone being referred to as “uncle dad.”

You may find it tempting to section off an area of your home and put some sort of flame retardant substance around to make sure the fire burns only where you want it to, but the most charming thing about a house fire is the absolute lack of control. The unpredictability. Let that fire consume your home. Your doilies, your drapes. Let it jump from chair to sofa to chair and eat the hand-embroidered upholstery the way you wish you could eat bread.

Light those matches, throw those molotovs, sit back, and have yourself a ball while the house decorates itself. I personally guarantee you’ll be on the front page. Not of Architectural Digest, but surely something. 

Bouquet Know-How: Make it Pretty, Make it Pop!

Girls, it’s a constant struggle making your house a home. We work and sweat and slave over every little throw pillow and scented candle to create the illusion that it’s more than just a comically undersized box of garbage-secreting monkeys that you are indebted to for your entire adult life.

My favorite little trick? Flower power! A well-coordinated bouquet of flowers can create a powerful piece to mask the smell of you and your family’s awful monkey odors and bring color and life into a room.

The first thing you want to do is decide the primary color of the bouquet. It should match the primary color of the room in which it will be displayed so that contrasting colors can be added subtly in the mix. Is your home a mixture of white walls and off-white carpet with white plastic blinds? Try to have the main body of the bouquet be a collection of leafy flowery bits. My favorite kind is a large-petaled flower that I call Those Big Pink Shits. 

Now that you have the body of Big Pink Shits, try to make it pop with some contrasting flowers such as Those Little Purple Shits and some leafage. You want leaves that are large and showy, so I usually pick a large green selection that I believe is called Big Ass Leaves. Just google it, you’ll see.

Finally, you’ll want some contrasting foliage. Try those long wispy bits, I believe they’re called Pokey Bastards, cause they’re always up in a bitch’s eye.

There you have it! Slap it all together and your house is now a home.