Looking for a last-minute Mother’s Day gift that has some thought to it? Try assembling a floral arrangement! All you need are scissors, a shallow design dish, floral foam and some flowers and greenery. The flowers and greenery we chose can be picked up at the grocery store or your neighborhood florist. Feel free and get crafty, venturing out into other flowers, depending on what Mamacita likes. …

Just as the word “adventure” implies, traveling is a way to experience the unknown in an exciting, bold way. Whether you’re the type to make an annual mecca to one specific beach or you are spontaneous in your choice of destination, the memories are sure to be unique each and every time. Traveling is a way to live the unfamiliar and to write a new chapter in the stories of our experience. These types of memories are some of the greatest and most priceless souvenirs we can take home since they allow an escape from everyday routine.

Isn’t it funny, then, how something as mundane as a notepad with a hotel’s insignia across the top or a receipt from “Pete’s Famous Barbecue” can suddenly hold such intrinsic value? While we can’t display the mental images of our travel memories, we can make the most of little mementos by giving each a special place in our homes.

Shadow boxes are a classic and functional way to showcase travel memories since you can think beyond 2D, displaying anything from train tickets to seashells. Try grouping multiple boxes together to really jump-start your travel reflections.

The best part? Like the experiences themselves, no two shadowbox displays will be alike. …

This DIY home (literally) project is too cool not to share. Would you go prefab?

Silhouette artwork is certainly not a new concept. Personalized outlines of family busts have been around for centuries, but the look of this type of art display has evolved a great deal over the years. Emerging as quite a trend in the past year, you will find silhouettes on pieces of raw, unfinished wood, as wedding cake toppers, glass mason jars, plates and even laser cut into custom-made necklaces. And of course, you can always find them behind glass.

For our own silhouette art at home, I chose the “behind the glass” option. It was simple, inexpensive and such a great way to celebrate my fiance and I as a family.

Looking for something to do with all those wine corks you’ve accumulated over the past month — er, I mean, year? I’m a fan of easy reuse-recycle projects that don’t take up too much time, effort or money. This one is super easy and takes about five minutes.

Looking for a fun decoration for your spring celebration? Try these easy-to-make, cheap tissue paper poms that our art director created for our March/April Breathe Magazine launch party. We hung these from a patio ceiling and they added just enough whimsy and color for our celebration. All you’ll need is colorful tissue paper and some garden wire! …

A room’s focal point can come in several different forms. It could be a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, a wall of built-in shelves or a bay window. But if you don’t have a large budget for pricey construction projects, don’t worry because there are simple and inexpensive solutions that can add tons of pizzazz to a space.

One option is to paint a feature wall. You could go one of two ways with this process: paint a single wall in a bright solid color, or get a two-toned look with a stencil. While stenciling is a bit more work than a single solid color, the added pattern will really make your feature wall the star of the show.

I jumped paintbrush first into stenciling in my own living room. The reason for resorting to paint and a stencil was to fix a slightly lackluster room. The space already had a lovely pale turquoise color on two of the walls, but the rest was a dull beige. For a color lover such as myself, I wasn’t seeing enough personality in the room. So my answer to the problem was stenciling a portion of the space to infuse character. …

These small pieces of functional wood are yet another manifestation, this time of my father. A DIY-er himself, I immediately went to him for help with this project, knowing that he would be able to make the thing I had pictured in my head. As a professional carpenter and wood craftsman, he listened to my description (complete with flailing hands and high octave voice) and proceeded to deliver these three beautiful pieces of wood. Though rough in some ways, he took time to sand and seal the tops of each coaster, something I did not request but adore nonetheless.

Running my hand over the silky grain of these pieces, I am not thinking about how fabulous it will look to set my spring-time glass of lemonade on top (although, as you’ll see in a moment, it is), instead I think about my dad and the care and time he took to build yet another piece of art from a tree.

In the March/April issue of Breathe Magazine, you can read up on how I celebrated the arrival of Spring by bringing the outdoors in. My fiance and I don’t have the pleasure of an outdoor space since our townhome backs up to a parking lot. But just because a lovely blooming garden of flowers wasn’t in the cards didn’t mean I couldn’t ring the new season in with gusto.

Instead, I took time to brainstorm ways to decorate our home with natural materials and infuse the indoor spaces with Mother Nature.

As much as I wish my home looked like those perfectly neat and perfectly organized homes on designer websites and advertisements, I must admit to myself daily that it’s just not going to happen. I won’t be able to photograph our studio for my blog without also capturing the all-too-necessary cat litter box in the corner, …