It's Great To Be Home

Quivering For Art

August 6, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 3 Comments

It’s always fun to get a sneak peek into what other people think about you – which is exactly what this quiz from ArtQuiver is designed to do.

Basically, this art website, which specializes making original artwork available to the public, analyzes your responses to a variety of question to determine the artwork that you should be drawn to – your “unique artistic taste profile.”

When I first ran across this quiz on Decorology, I was totally intrigued and had to give it a whirl. The quiz consists of a series of paintings which you are asked to rate on a 5-star system – after you’ve rated a slew of paintings, the computer starts rating the paintings for you, and then ultimately provides you with a huge list of original artwork that is supposed to float your boat.

Here’s what ArtQuiver thinks I should like:

While there are definitely some questionable recommendations (man in cowboy hat?), I would say that about half of these paintings are ones that I would actually enjoy looking at every day. Whether I’d be willing to pay hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for artwork picked by a computer is another question, but it’s fun nonetheless.

Take the quiz for yourself right here. How’d they do?

Homebody Queries: Do You Like Ranch Or Arts & Crafts?

May 14, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 10 Comments

I’ve always been partial to both – ranch makes just about anything taste better (try it, you’ll see), and what’s not to love about arts & crafts time – best part of elementary school, if you ask me.

Oh, we’re talking about houses? My bad.

But that brings me to my question – what style of house do you secretly (or openly) lust after? Does it match up with the style of house that you actually live in?

In my case, I’ve always been in love with Tudors and Arts & Crafts-style homes – love them beyond all reason. I grew up in a Tudor-style house, and there are tons of beautiful little neighborhood filled with Tudors sprinkled around Dallas. I always thought that I would live in one, but the hubster and I nixed Tudor after Tudor while we were on our house search – they were gorgeous and unique and exactly what we wanted visually, but we couldn’t get past the awkward layouts leftover from another era. As for the Arts & Crafts homes, there are a few around Dallas, although they’re mostly new builds because they aren’t native to our area – and they’re pricey, to say the least. Ah well, a girl can dream!

So we bought our little ranch house. And you know what? Turns out I never really knew what I wanted until we lived in this house – maybe it doesn’t have the gorgeous exterior of a Tudor or period details, but this little sucker delivers – a perfect layout, tons of space, and turns out it was fully customizable. What’s not to love??

And maybe I was never really destined for those other houses. Here are the results of a quiz I just took:

I guess our little ranch house was meant to be after all! (Although I’m not sure I like being described as “simple” . . . I guess I’ll let that one go. Where are my sweatpants??)

What type of house are you? Click here to take the quiz for yourself.

All images courtesy of FrontDoor.com and Southern Accents.

I Love Your Personality

May 4, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 7 Comments

Ever tried to sum up your interior design personality in a word, or a phrase?

I have – you see, when my husband and I first embarked on our big remodel, my mom thought that it would be a good idea for us to sum up our design styles so that we could find common themes in our preferences. She had each of us pick our favorite thing that we had purchased together, our most-loved wall color, our dream piece of furniture, and several words that would describe how we wanted our home to feel, etc. Then we wrote each of these things on a piece of poster board so that we could compare and contrast our styles. Turns out we weren’t so different after all – I wanted a classic and comfortable home punctuated by pops of color, and my husband’s ideal home was traditional and neutral (without those pesky pops of color).

Once we knew what styles would work for both of us, we were able to create a home that fit both of our tastes perfectly – if you check out our house, you’ll see what I mean.

Of course, you don’t have to create a big poster to find out your interior design style – sometimes all you have to do is take a quick online quiz. I took a few minutes last night to try out a simple design personality quiz, and it turns out that my design personality is “Raffia.” Why it’s called Raffia, I have no idea, but the description was pretty accurate:

And while I prefer truer colors than the ones depicted above, I do love green and that picture is gorgeous – the saffron yellow lamp bases, white sofa and orange-y/coral pillows combined with dark woods and wicker are right up my alley. I guess I’m pretty predictable!

Wanna see how predictable you are? Just click here. Be sure to fill us in on your results!

Image courtesy of Pratt & Lambert.