Updating home pays big dividends

How one owner got a home fixed up and on the market in a month.

Healthier Paula Deen into portions, plate architecture

Food Network star and Southern cookbook author Paula Deen, who a year ago announced that she has type 2 diabetes, is sharing her tips on cooking to live a healthier, longer life.

Book stresses importance of face (not Facebook) time

One is more delightful for being told one is delightful.

Slacker-chic tips for decorating your home in a hurry

Whether it's an actual holiday or just the impending arrival of company that prompts me, I turn to my stash of go-to, never-fail decorations. These décor mainstays can change like chameleons depending on the circumstance.

Sometimes you need two agents: one to sell and one to lease

A month ago - and halfway through his two-year lease - the tenant who rents my house in Colorado told me he'd bought a house.

Know when aging parents need to change living arrangements

My brother and I had a plan for our aging parents. The plan was they would not age. They would never need to move from the house where they have lived for 45 years.

Everyday linens make meals feel special

Though I knew better, I couldn't wait to use the pretty new table linens that arrived in that day's mail. "Made for every day," the website assured. That was all the encouragement I needed.

Web can bring world's décor into your home

This summer will bring another staycation for me. No Italy or Istanbul. No Tibet or Taiwan. No Egypt or England. If I want an escape, I'll have to rely on my fantasies - and the World Wide Web.

At Home with Marni: 2012 New American Home flush with design, building innovations

I just toured the New American Home, the showcase house for the 2012 National Association of Home Builders, which met this past week in Orlando. I left with a bad case of toilet envy.

At Home with Marni: Kicking organization up a notch

Questions: If the problem with getting organized is not having enough time, why are there so many books on organizing? If people don't have the time to clean up their acts and get their stuff together, how on earth do they have the time to read a book about it?

At Home with Marni: An anchor piece can bring unity to styles

This is what happens when you're a health reporter with a weakness for home design. I go to this party, which is to raise awareness (and money) for women who have heart disease. Like many parties for worthy causes, it's held in a very worthy home.

At Home with Marni: Planning for future begins with letting go of your stuff

Ten years ago, while building my last house in Colorado, which I really thought would be my last house, contractors kept telling me to think of the next owner. I kept thinking: What next owner? I'm never moving.

At Home with Marni: Eating pizza out of a box? Mon Dieu!

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but Americans need to hear this: The French are better at living well than we are. Way better. Compared with the French, we Americans are galumphing, unrefined, consumption-addicted clods.

At Home with Marni: It takes a little luck to find the right look

People say I'm lucky. I don't really see that, but I'm going with it because I need to if I'm going to get through the holidays without blowing my budget, my cool, my mind, or my diet. (Did you know that stressed backwards spells desserts?)

At Home with Marni: Find a faux Christmas tree for every budget and style

If I had to do it over, which I actually do, I would gather new holiday decorations the way I'd build a new wardrobe.

At Home with Marni: Seize the opportunity of a holiday décor do-over

I can hardly bring myself to tell you this. I've lost all my Christmas decorations. Twenty years of accumulated Christmas decorations, including the tree, are gone. I don't have one stocking, not a strand of garland, nor a string of lights. All went to Goodwill.

At Home with Marni: Cheap design fit for a Saudi prince

In pursuit of my mantra, Look rich, be cheap, I go on every design-house tour I can.

At Home with Marni: Buying a house or car? Leave emotions at home

Editors note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series on how car-buying tips apply when buying a house. Part 1 "Buyer's Market? Beware," which appeared in the Nov. 6 At Home section, was on shopping pitfalls and strategies. Today, it goes from finding the house or vehicle to getting the keys.

At Home with Marni: Buying a car: a trip into a harrowing new world

Everything you need to know about buying a house, you can learn from buying a car.

At Home with Marni: Author spoons out a plateful of advice on finding just the right dish pattern

Ranking up there with other huge, irreversible life decisions - What should I major in? Is this Mr. Right? Should I get a tattoo? - is this critical question: Which dishes should I get?

At Home with Marni: Halloween marks start of par-tay season

Here's what I love about Halloween, by the time it rolls around, after a dry stretch that's lasted since the Fourth of July, I'm ready for some holiday festivity. I welcome an occasion to change things up around the house, and it's so easy: Carve a few pumpkins, spread a few cobwebs, hang a …

At Home with Marni: There's beauty in dings, wrinkles, fading

So what if the kids have made a few too many trips across the wood floor on Rollerblades? Who cares if the drapes look as if someone used them to wash the car?

At Home with Marni: Change your mind frequently? Here's a wall covering for you

Afraid of commitment? Check. Don't know where you'll be living next year? Check.

At Home with Marni: Clean, covered outdoor rugs last longer

I was very excited when I brought home my first outdoor rug five years ago. I put it on the back deck, where it did everything an area rug is supposed to do indoors, only outdoors. It defined the space, and added welcome pattern, texture, color and pizazz.

At Home with Marni: The master of the mundane

Some people get all gaga over movie stars and sports celebrities. Not me. The fact that someone has a fetching way or can hurl a ball through a hoop from 50 feet does not impress me in the least. Genius, however, gets me every time.

At Home with Marni: Dream home required patience, not to mention vision and sweat

Achieving dreams takes effort and patience. Achieving dream houses takes effort, patience, intestinal fortitude, humor and a masochistic tendency.

At home with Marni: Dad's Day gifts with no strings attached

"What do you want for Father's Day?" I ask my husband, Dan.

At Home with Marni: Full closet makeover reveals hidden space

Moving to a house with smaller closets has forced me to get smarter about closet organizing. In my new place, closet space isn't just smaller overall, but the master closet area is divided into three closets: his, hers and I don't want to go there.

At Home: Decorating key is making things belong

"I need some serious advice," my new friend Sheila wrote in an email. "I have all this furniture from my old house, plus a mish-mash of art and stuff, and minimal space. I don't know what to do with it all."

At Home: Decorating key is making things belong

AFTER: Angling the couch to take advantage of the view, grouping pieces for a conversation setting and weeding out little things that didn't belong transformed this living room.

At Home with Marni: You spend so much time at work, make your workspace your own

As some of you know, I recently got a real job. Besides writing my weekly column, I'm also now a full-time reporter. My new job is the kind with regular hours, benefits, other people and my very own cubicle.

At Home with Marni: Display storage is attractive, convenient

I hesitate to write this column for two reasons. I'm reluctant to encourage mass storage, no matter how stylish, because, on the whole, we Americans have too much stuff.

At Home with Marni: Figure out what goes with you, what stays

Ever since it dawned on me that I was really moving, and not just talking about moving, I've been overwhelmed.

At Home With Marni: Renting viable for housebound job hunters

Our house wasn't for sale, or even for rent. So the only way I can explain how it is I'm writing this column while sitting in the cab of a 26-foot moving van taking me to Orlando is simply this: Fate always gets her way.

Primed for painting

Once again, my false confidence and I forged ahead with a job, and read the instructions afterward. Apparently, not just men do this.

At Home with Marni: Adding human touches feels good

0n those days when my teenagers have frayed my last nerve, the plumber has stood me up, the dogs have torn the just-repaired screen, my husband asks what's for dinner before he says hello, and the car service lights illuminate my dashboard like a Christmas tree, I've found needlepointing to …

At Home: Catch de-clutter fever and feel lighter, organized

If clutter truly is decisions delayed, I'd better start making up my mind. My house is giving me a case of purge fever. I want to go back seven years, to the last time I was in control, that one brief day.

At Home with Marni: Pillows punctuate the style of a room

I'm thinking, as I knead my throbbing temples into pie dough, of how so many things that look easy aren't, like ice skating or making lasagna (those layers!), or, more specifically, picking throw pillows.

At Home with Marni: Paint should be the last thing you choose

Just when I thought I had this decorating business down, I find out a basic rule I had relied on - pick your wall color first - is just as wrong as a purple cat.

At Home with Marni: Try life in the slow lane, pair says, and do it now

When the angels were handing out patience, I was in the thick-hair line. I hate to wait. I like fast service, fast thinking, fast computers, fast lanes and fast results. When I was a child, I thought Slow Down was my name.

At Home with Marni: Projects will stretch your brain and your budget

Sometimes other people make me feel so dull. I mean, I look at a burned-out light bulb or a used subway ticket and see trash. Others see a vase or material for a woven place mat.

At Home with Marni: Your wrinkled carpet can look young again

Ahh, January - the month when people the world over resolve to eat less, exercise more and visit their plastic surgeons.

At Home with Marni: Your wrinkled carpet can look young again

Carpets can develop wrinkles over time. Fixing the ridges can extend the carpet's life, because it will wear out faster along the ridgelines and can crack.

At Home with Marni: Your wrinkled carpet can look young again

Having carpets professionally restretched can extend their life and save you a pile of money in the long run.

At Home with Marni: Finding the vibe of a welcoming home

I did not set out to be a home design expert. When I began writing this column seven years ago, I was just another frustrated home improver who wanted a great look on a shoestring budget.

At Home with Marni: Finding the vibe of a welcoming home

To avoid another boring photo wall, try taking images you like, cropping them creatively and having them stylized, enlarged and stretch-mounted on canvas. Each of these canvases is 4 feet tall.

At Home with Marni: Notable points: Details matter, design to dwell, fix what you can

Here's what I love about my job: Not money. What money?

At Home with Marni: Holiday parties: keeping the talk on track

Last week, while talking to an informed woman about what is wrong with most holiday parties, I had one of those forehead-smacking moments. Dang! That's what's wrong with my parties.

At Home with Marni: Accent home's 'human' qualities

Like every kid, when I was a girl, I drew pictures of houses. They always had a pointy roof, two equally spaced windows with four-square panes, and a door smack in the middle. Occasionally, I'd add the obligatory stick-figure family in the yard standing by an apple tree.