Shade Trees and Shrubs

Color Palette for your Home

How to create a color palette for your home. Having a defined interior color scheme for your home isn’t as intimidating as it may seem.

The best place to start is with color. More specifically creating a color scheme for your home will ensure that one room ties into the next nicely, even if the style of each room is a little bit different. And, creating an interior color scheme, or color palette for your home will make your decorating choices so much easier because it will narrow the number of choices you have.

But choosing colors for your home can be really overwhelming so you will have to come up with a process that would ensure a unified color palette and would be able to use that decor in more than one room.

Starting with your favorite color means that you won’t be getting sick of it any time soon. Now if your favorite color is cobalt blue then to go paint all of your walls that color, but you can most definitely use it as a starting point.

The point is the color evokes emotion. So, think about places or views that make you feel awesome and start to notice if there are certain colors off that color palette, you can bring into your home that contrast that will give you those same feelings.

99.9% of us aren’t on an unlimited budget which means that we’re always trying to figure out ways to work with what we already have. So, think of things like already existing furniture, cabinetry, countertops, and flooring. Figuring out contrast when looking at these things when choosing paint colors. You want to look at the color and decide if the base color has red, green, blue, brown, or yellow and go with a pasture off that main color. For instance, I have green tile in the kitchen and blue in the bathroom, painting the rest of the upper walls will have to be in contrast with the existing tile.

Shade Trees and Shrubs

Boxelder Trees, A Native Revisited

Boxelder trees are an easy-to-grow, very adaptable maple. The wood of boxelder maple trees is soft and has no commercial value. Boxelder maple tree facts tell us that this maple usually grows on riverbanks or near water in the wild. Some boxelder maple trees are male, and some are female. The females bear blossoms that turn bright green when they are pollinated. These trees have brittle, weak wood. That means that the trees break easily in wind and ice storms. In addition, boxelder maple tree information confirms that the tree seeds, found in winged samaras, germinate very easily in wet soils. Finally, female trees attract boxelder bugs. These are insects some ½ inch long that don’t cause many problems in the garden. However, boxelder bugs are problematic as winter comes on. They like to overwinter indoors, and you’ll likely find them inside your house.

Boxelder tree in landscaped
Boxelder tree

So why grow boxelders? If you are having trouble getting a tree growing, you will not with a boxelder. Now, there are several attractive cultivars of boxelder including “Aureo-Variegata”, “Flamingo” and “Auratum”. The cultivar “Aureo-Variegata” is noted for its leaves bordered in gold. “Flamingo’ has variegated leaves with pink margins and is somewhat available at local nurseries. “Auratum” has abundant gold leaves but is a little harder to find. Also, there are male varieties like the male “cottonless” cottonwoods that do not attract boxelder bugs.

"Flamingo" Boxelder variety of Boxelder treee
“Flamingo Boxelder
Vegetables

Colorful Vegetables Add a Variety of Health Benefits

Colorful vegetables add a variety of health benefits. As a child, you were probably encouraged to eat your greens. But what about your blues, reds, purples, and yellows? Can eating an array of colorful vegetables really improve your general well being? The short answer is a ‘yes’!

The whole concept of so-called ‘superfoods’ I believe was little more than marketing spin. It seems like everything from grapes, beets to berries are superfoods. The health benefits of these foods are often exaggerated, caught up in a sort of nutritional one-upmanship that ultimately creates a fog of confusion; it’s hard to know what to believe and how far to trust the fantastic claims made.

The truth is that all fruits and vegetables are superfoods in their own way. It’s also fair to state that fruits and vegetables of different colors offer different nutritional advantages. So a purple carrot offers a different set of health benefits to a traditional orange carrot. Blueberries – the go-to ‘superfood’ – are of course good for us, but so too are red currants, blackberries, and strawberries. They all bring something unique to the table.

Let’s explore the carrot as an example. You may (or may not) be surprised to learn that carrots come in a range of colors, the result of their origin or breeding. All of them are good for us, but for a variety of reasons. Purple carrots have higher levels of anthocyanins, which contribute to heart health, while red carrots are rich in lycopene, a pigment known to safeguard eye health. Yellow carrots, on the other hand, contain high concentrations of lutene, a pigment shown to slow the hardening of the arteries.

The conclusion to be drawn from this is that there’s something in the claim that eating a rainbow of produce is good for us.