Home is truly our external heart and as such it needs a lot of care and attention in its decorating and development. Invite friends and family to contribute to the creation of your home. A house is merely a dwelling; it becomes a home when you use your heart to express your environment in a comfortable and inviting manner.

Here are some easy ways to celebrate your home with friends and family.

Housewarming by the Room

So few people it seems remember to throw a housewarming or if they do it is a couple of years after moving in. So, to get this ball rolling, don’t wait for the entire house to be complete; instead, celebrate room by room. Very few folks decorate their entire home at once anyway, and it counts to measure the small successes, even if it is a powder room, not to mention the big successes like a kitchen or bath remodel.

How many entertaining opportunities have you missed by waiting to get your house complete? Remember if your friends are waiting to see your drapery and not you, you might want to consider some new friends! Life is in the connection, not in the stuff. Celebrate every step rather than waiting for just one big one.

Celebrate your home with room by room housewarmings!

Stock the Pantry Party

No one likes to show up at a party empty handed and this is an easy way to get guests to bring what you need and want, while you share the welcome of your home and hospitality.

Create a master list of pantry stockers desired or even register if you are including kitchen appliances like blenders, toasters, and food processors. Let everyone know what you are into, whether it is a pantry full of bottled water, chips and dip or you are a bit more of a cook and want great exotic spices, tins of imported specialty foods, and international flavors. Sure flour and sugar are necessary staples, but I bet you can get more creative.

On appliances and kitchen tools, think hard about what you want and what you’ll use. Sure some are almost required like the blender and even a toaster still, but what about a divine bread maker, the latest ergonomic palm held peeler, a butterfly trash can by Simply Human, or a classic wine rack. You can even suggest gift cards from favorite big box retail kitchen good stores like Bed Bath Beyond, Williams Sonoma, and Crate and Barrel.

Celebrate your home with a stock the pantry party!

Grow the Garden Party

This is one of my favorites as I’ve come relatively late to the realization of a green thumb. The grow the garden party is ideal if you enjoy potting house plants, or dream of a cutting garden, or perhaps harbor visions of growing your own herbs and vegetables. Invite your friends to an outdoor picnic and while you provide the food and drink, ask them to provide a plant or garden tool.

Of course you may want to suggest gift cards from local nurseries for those that are green thumb challenged, and you’ll want to specify full sunshine or shade for desired plants. The point is that you get a more eclectic mix and when all are in bloom, they remind you of each guest and their personal contribution. You could even name each plant with tags after the person that provided it.

Celebrate your home and Mother Nature with a Grow the Garden Party!

Demolition Bash

Okay, you’ve made the decision to remodel and it is a big project. Kick it off in style with a Demolition Bash. Perhaps you are tearing out the kitchen or bath making way for a major update or reconfiguration. In any case, it’s got to go. Be sure you time this with your contractor’s schedule, and invite friends to bring a dish and a camp out in your newly emptied space.

(If you have handy careful friends you can actually invite them to assist with demolition, but be cautious in mixing a party atmosphere with hammers and other serious remodeling tools.)

It is always rewarding to enjoy even a day of the space unfinished before the work of putting it all together gets underway. Do be sure you have made all of your decisions at this stage and you don’t open up the event to brainstorming. Too many opinions will only result in confusion and frustration.

Remodeling can be an exhausting and sometimes chaotic process so celebrating at demolition can make it that much more tolerable. Be sure to plan the next bash at completion!

Paint Party

Personally, I can’t think of anything I’d rather avoid, but I can do it myself if necessary without training. (Heck, I once sponge painted my whole house, since the contractor had reversed the paint colors in the final coat!) But I do have friends that not only enjoy painting but actually find it relaxing, imagine it.

So if you have one or two rooms to get done and would be willing to do the same for friends or family (turn about is fair play in this), plan a painting party. You supply the paint, of course, but I’m betting you have friends with extra drop cloths, ladders, and even brushes that will be game to come and join you for an afternoon or a day of painting to be rewarded with pizza and beer or a cold cut sandwich buffet and icy sodas.

This can save the cost of a contractor and actually make an otherwise mundane and potentially arduous task fun. Many hands make light work, so invite others to help.

Celebrate your home with friends that will help you transform a room or two and a Paint Party!

For more great ideas on celebrating your home, be sure to check out Part II of this article. And if you are ready to get the full scoop on Celebrate Your Life! The Art of Celebrating Every Day, go to www.theartofcelebrating.com. Author and lifestyle expert Melissa Galt speaks with audiences nationwide on how to add the celebration to life every day by honoring ourselves, our family, our friends, our careers, our travel and adventure, our health and much more. You can find out more at www.melissagalt.com.

We all have a creative spirit whether it manifests itself in a talent for home improvement, sewing, craft projects or perhaps computer programming and writing music. Too often we suppress this side as a part of ourselves we will indulge when there is more time. There won’t ever be more time and we need to develop and nurture our creative spirit at all times. This will help us to be better balanced and rounded individuals and allows us to share gifts with others on another level.

Here are even more opportunities to celebrate your creative spirit!

Garden Magic

I know you are thinking you have a black thumb, well get over it. I thought I did to but just until I really started to dabble in my garden and realized that if something didn’t make it, it might not have anything to do with my thumb, but instead the neighbor’s dog, too much sun, or just a finicky plant disposition. Sharing plants and planting tips is a wonderful way to indulge your creative spirit.

Pick a Saturday and plan to spend the time in your garden and a friend’s sharing gardening tips and digging in the dirt. Be sure to take a pot or two to say thanks for the help and these can go in the garden too. (While I love indoor live plants, my pets love them a bit too much too!) I tend to like an organized chaos of blooms with layering of color and species, others are much more orderly and formal in their choices. There is no right or wrong just what blooms and what needs extra care.

Grow your creative spirit with travels in the garden.

Photo Memories

One of the best gifts I ever got was from a friend that had spent Thanksgiving at my home with another friend. She had taken photos and put them in just a small album. They chronicled my oven catching fire with marshmallows from the sweet potatoes (you do know this tradition, don’t you?) then the arrival of the fire department much to my embarrassment. I offered the brigade a bottle of champagne for their trouble but they politely declined. This same friend then proceeded to land the no longer flaming sweet potatoes on her blouse during dinner! It was a riot and the picture album stayed on my desk for over a year, a happy reminder of a wonderful holiday with friends.

The power of photos is often underrated and while until digitals appeared I had the unique knack of cutting off people’s heads and being perpetually out of focus (thank goodness for digital do-overs), I now take photos everywhere and share them widely. It is a way to capture the present for the future. Celebrate your creative spirit with digital memory making, keep it simple.

Paint a Plate

Sometimes we can take a lesson from the craft projects kids bring home. I often see painted plates in client’s homes and I am familiar with the trend of the last few years to go to a do-it-yourself pottery source where you can paint your own plates and have them fired for use at home. This is an easy creative outlet and fun to wrangle friends or family into joining you.

You can either make the plates for decorative purposes or for everyday. You could even make one as a gift and have everyone sign it with a quote or quip. Personal makes a difference in a world where we can buy everything.

Sign a Pillow

I used this idea when I was back in grade school and realize I am going to resurrect it for my next bash. A large canvas style pillow and a package of colorful sharpie markers can take the place of a guest book and then be tossed into your décor for a memory making accent. Each person that comes in signs the pillow with a comment about the event, and it becomes a personal reminder of a great time.

If you really want to carry this a step further, have everyone sign a flat piece of fabric and then when you have collected enough of these from a few years of celebrations they can be put together to form either a wall tapestry of memories or a floor cloth (sealed with polyurethane). Tap into your creative spirit for preserving moments of celebration.

Jewelry Making

There is such a wealth of bead making places available now, sometimes at a craft show but even at the mall. This is another fun way to realize your creative spirit with handmade baubles and bangles. Whether you make something for yourself or family or friends, it is personal and unique.

This won’t appeal to all. I’d just be interesting in picking the beads out and then moving on and letting someone else do the assembling, but then rumor has it I have ADD! There is still creativity involved and I have friends that would defer on the bead selection and delightedly sit patiently and string them all. (It is great when opposites attract!)

Celebrate your creative spirit with the making of bright and shiny objects.

Home Improvement

You may be one of those TV wonders that keeps up with all the DIY shows and can actually DIY a project! I admire you and applaud you, I am not. This is a creative gift and can save you a lot of money in labor costs, and be a rewarding celebration of your own creative spirit.

Whether you want to tackle a dog house complete with lighting and air conditioning (yes, a friend just did this!), or build a deck off the back of the house or maybe you’ll try something on a slightly smaller scale and complete a simple bird house on a stake, have fun with it, get the kids involved if you have any and be open to help from friends and family.

It is not about doing it yourself but in sharing your creative spirit with others in a generous manner that really makes the difference.

We all have a creative spirit whether it manifests itself in a talent for home improvement, sewing, craft projects or perhaps computer programming and writing music. Too often we suppress this side as a part of ourselves we will indulge when there is more time. There won’t ever be more time and we need to develop and nurture our creative spirit at all times. This will help us to be better balanced and rounded individuals and allows us to share gifts with others on another level.

Here are some opportunities to celebrate your creative spirit!

Craft Corner

Establish a craft corner or room in your home. This can be as simple as converting the spare (guest) room closet into a place for projects that might include sewing, hot gluing, collage making, scrap booking and more. It could be as significant as devoting an entire room to these pursuits or creating an exterior work room/tool bench for the pursuit of significant home improvement projects.

You are more likely to cultivate your creative spirit when you have dedicated space to it and organized the tools and materials in an accessible and fun manner. Baskets and boxes of assorted craft materials with a table surface to work at is often all that is needed. You may even be able to create a make shift space in a laundry closet by designing a drop down cover to place over the washer and dryer and using shelving above to store art supplies.

The key is to unleash your creative spirit in a way that works for you. This can also turn into a place for children to work on their school projects.

Scrapbooks/Scrap-pillows

Scrapbooking is now an actual art form. Gone are the days when it merely meant sliding photos between sticky pages and leaving it at that. Today it is about incorporating all manner of mementos with photos and including clever captions, family sayings, and priceless quotes. The challenge is still of course when will anyone slow down long enough to truly enjoy such artistry. I encourage clients to create wall collages instead that can be displayed on stairwells and enjoyed by all in the family every day.

Scrap pillows is also a unique idea that would make a great gift for family. It entails creating a memory pillow with a silk screen of photos stitched to the pillow and other mementos adhered for collage effect. This is often most effective in a country or Victorian decorating scheme.

Greeting Card Originals

I have a faux finisher and artist friend that makes his own holiday cards. Each is a work of art and I have to confess I never opened my birthday card as he had caricatured on the envelope and I don’t want to destroy it! You don’t have to be an artist and it may be easier to do this for the occasional birthday than to tackle a major holiday with a host of cards all due. You can use computer imagery, color copies, original photos, and collage items (coins, fabric scraps, charms, trinkets) you can make this a personal statement and it can even become the gift.

I remember growing up that whenever we asked my Mom what she wanted the answer was always the same, a letter from each of us. Yikes, I couldn’t buy that and it sounded too easy, for years I ignored the request and loaded her birthdays and holidays with scarves and picture frames and other goodies. The year I finally listened, she burst into tears she was so pleased.

Handmade is so rare these days, it means that much more. Tap your creative spirit so share an original greeting with a friend or family member.

Recipe Swap

Yes, I can cook and very well when I want to but I hate to follow recipes and tend to keep my favorites in my head, under six ingredients with limitless variety of add-ins to make it special (or as some friends say “weird!”) Other friends are awesome in the kitchen turning out dishes that my caterer asks for the recipes! Let’s level the field a bit and do a recipe swap.

Now the fun in this is that you get to sample all the goodies you are getting recipes for. Often this is done at holidays with a cookie swap but since I am never big on following rules, do this a couple of times a year and make one appetizers and another salads or casseroles. It is not limited to the ladies by any means, many men are better cooks and really enjoy it. Do a kebob recipe swap, a novel idea and it will get everybody grilling. Or plan a beverage recipe swap just in time for the heat of summer so you get some fresh punch and summer cooler ideas.

Looking for more fun way to celebrate your creative spirit? Be sure to check out Part II of this article on Best Life Design.