Category: home improvement

Employee Frame of Mind

As a manager or business professional, you know you need your employees to be at the top of their game for your business to succeed. So you need to offer them a temporary escape from the grind to stay fresh. By turning your break room into a Parisian caf with some French country home decor, you allow them to be relaxed on their scheduled breaks and return to work refreshed and ready to perform. It s an easy and inexpensive way to motivate your employees and to wow potential clients.

A splash of paint, a whimsical tablecloth, a Van Gogh print and a few French country home decor knickknacks will turn your lifeless break room into a refreshing place for your employees. They will communicate with each other, talk about their days, brainstorm ideas about key clients and come back to work with fervor and desire to excel. They may initiate contests or competitions trying to outperform one another.

Making some simple additions and changes to their environment will also give them a sense of security and community. Showing them you are willing to spend some company money and time for their happiness will increase their loyalty to you and the company. Your employees want to work for a company with feelings, a company that cares about them.

Wowing Your Clientele

The right splashes of French country home decor will maximize the comfort of your space and adding a high quality cappuccino machine will increase that benefit. Imagine you are going to a business meeting, the salesman you meet with leads you down a corridor to a cold, white, sterile room not very soothing.

Now imagine being led through a flower printed colorful curtain into a room quaintly accented with all the right pieces of French country home decor, sunflower prints on the walls and a handcrafted vase with a bouquet at the center of the table. As soon as you come to rest on your handmade wicker chair, you re offered a frothy cup of cappuccino and a selection of pastry. This is how potential clients want to be treated.

The Easy as 1 2 3 How to

With theme decorating being the latest craze these days thanks to the DIY network and HGTV, stores are devoting large portions of their floor space to these types of items. One visit to a shopping mall could net you all the French country home decor you need to make your fantastic transformation.

Visit the furniture store for a few chairs and maybe a hand painted wooden cart for your cappuccino machine. A stop at the department store will land you your vase, sugar and creamer bowls, a tablecloth and some matching towels and clock. Last but not least, drop by the art store to pick up a few Impressionist reprints and you should be all set.

Keywords: Home Improvement, Home Decor

For anyone who writes magazine articles, getting something published in Elle Decor is a major coup. It is a very prestigious magazine and also pays well. An article in Elle Decor really belongs at the top of any writer s resume. When writing about any subject, before you submit a story about a home for Elle Decor magazine, you must do your homework and research to catch the editor s eye.

Choosing the Right Subject

The homes featured in Elle Decor magazine are only the finest and the most elegant. So if you pitch an article about shabby chic or primitive decoration, the editor is unlikely to want your writing. Homes that fit Elle Decor magazine can be found in every city, but you, the writer must figure out where. A good place to look is your city s Christmas or spring tour of homes. Only homeowners who have great decor and are proud of it would put their home on a tour.

When you think you have identified a house for Elle Decor magazine, check through back issues to make sure that particular house has never been profiled. Also, make sure your angle is fresh. The editor will never take a story on a home s distinctive topiary, for example, if she ran another topiary story the previous month.

Elle s editorial board requires sophistication first, but beyond that, the magazine features style from all over the world. Elle s home decor style is usually quite international in fact. The magazine is originally French after all.

Sending Your Query

Just like with any magazine, you must find out about Elle Decor s editorial guidelines the magazine s rules for submission. There will be a different word count limit for each section: features, reviews and trends. Some editors require that you send relevant pictures with your submission. All require that you include reference to your previously published work.

Because Elle Decor is such a prestigious magazine, it can be hard to find the right contact information and the editorial guidelines. Getting this information and sending a dazzling letter to the right person at the right time is actually part of your pitch. If you can get a piece of paper in front of the right editor, always a busy woman with plenty of secretaries to intercept bad letters, it shows you probably have the tenacity of a good writer.

For the brand new writer, Elle Decor might not be the best choice because previously published articles are so important. After you write for some other magazines, find a good topic and send it to the right editor; you might find your writing in Elle Decor.

Keywords: Home Improvement, Home Decor