Seven Decorating Tips from House Horrible Magazine

We’ve had a lot of doctor’s appointments lately, so I’ve been reading a lot of dumb magazines.  My favorite features are the ones that show some enviable tableau from someone’s home, and then glibly explains how to achieve this effect.

I don’t mean to promote envy, but it occurs to me that my house is full of uncommon little scenes which you may or may not want to recreate in your own home, depending on how much crack you’re smoking.  And so I present:

Seven Quick Ways To Spruce Down Your Home

–1–

AMERICAN PRIMITIVE MEETS PRIMITIVE SCREWHEAD

This effect can be achieved by allowing your teenage daughter to be the only one in the house with her own bedroom — the trade-off being that her room is the one everyone else has to tramp through on their way to their own rooms.  Her only recourse will be to hang a sheet in front of the most sacrosanct part of her living quarters, and to make that sheet as threatening as possible.  To prep for this project, expose your child to inappropriate movies and heavy doses of sarcasm at an early age.

–2–

AT HOME WITH CHROME

These gorgeous gold footprint stencils adorning the back steps simply scream, “Yes, yes, spray paint anything you like, just let me finish this post!”  Or maybe that was me screaming.

–3–

TEACH THE CHILDREN WELL

This fin de siècle vignette captures the very moment when our family made its last stab at homeschooling, and then gave up and just taught the kids poker.  For an edgy touch, someone seems to have taken a bite out of the bulletin board.

–4–

I DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT THIS IS

You can achieve this effect by leaving the camera lying around unguarded.

–5–

SHOCK AND AWWWW

Classic trompe l’oeil:  to the untrained eye, it may appear that Mama went to the bathroom for a couple of minutes or an hour or two, and the little ones got into the paper plates and glue.  But in fact, what you’re really seeing here is:  “I make a fwower for you, Mama!”

–6–

NO SURFACE LEFT UN-GODZILLA’D

A progressive approach to decorating, with a twofold purpose:  one, to encourage creativity in your children; and two, to give parents plenty of practice rehearsing the phrase:  “He’s going to grow out of it at some point, right?”

–7–

NEVERENDING PARTY

You’ve heard of shabby chic?  This is happy bleak.  Tie festive balloons to your mailbox every time a kid has a birthday.  Never get around to untying them.  Feel shame daily.

Well, that’s it.  Now you know how you, too, can have . . . House Horrible.  Don’t forget to check out Conversion Diary for everyone else’s Seven Quick Takes!