Make Your Home Shine With These Virtual Staging Tips and Tricks

If you’re getting ready to sell your house this year, your home will need to shine from the inside out — and you’ll need to prep it for in-person and online showings with buyers. As you get started, the following tips and tricks will teach you just about everything you need to know about staging and selling a home in 2020.

Preparing Your Home to Sell

If you’re selling a home, the following resources will help you to get your house ready and prepare for what’s to come.

• Start by decluttering your belongings. You could donate unwanted items to charity or sell them on Craigslist, OfferUp, or Facebook Marketplace.

• Make a few upgrades and repairs to your home, such as painting the front door and pressure-washing the siding.

• As an alternative to touring homes, you can show your home virtually through live video-chat tours and 3D walkthroughs.

• Make sure you’re cleaning and sanitizing your home before and after physical showings with prospective buyers and real estate agents.

Staging Your Home for Virtual Tours

Whether your potential buyers are viewing your home in-person or online, these resources will help you to stage your home in a way that highlights its best features.

• Optimize your staging efforts by scheduling a phone consultation with Feng Shui expert Yvonne Phillips.

• Tackle every item on your deep cleaning checklist. A clean home photographs and films much more beautifully.

• If you’re vacating your home before listing it, you’ll want to use virtual staging tools to showcase the property to buyers.

• Before filming, you’ll need to clean and depersonalize your home, let in natural light, and find a safe place to put your animal companions and their supplies.

• An efficient 3D tour will feature everything your buyers want to see, including the dishwasher, microwave, and other appliances.

Additional Resources

Now that you know how to show a home virtually, these resources will answer some of the other questions you may have about selling a house in 2020.

• Six Pros and Cons of Virtual Home Tours

• Hiring a Contractor to Make Repairs? Here’s How to Do it Safely

• 7 Expert Home Staging Tips You Can Do Yourself

By applying these virtual staging techniques as you show your home, you’ll sell your house faster and stay safe. You can certainly host in-person showings for serious buyers, but these tips will help to keep physical home tours to a minimum.

Image via Pexels

Author: Natalie Jones

Feng Shui for Healthy Work-Life Balance

We’re all striving for more balance in our lives, as the alternative leads to stress, anxiety and disease. An unbalanced life is an unhealthy life. Whether you’re a recent grad or a seasoned professional, maintaining equilibrium between your working life and personal time is critical to maintaining balance.

Feng Shui is all about balance and intentionally creating it in your own everyday reality. Ancient yet innovative, this 5,000 year old practice from the east provides tools to allow healthy energy to flow through all areas of your life. By taking command of your space, your surroundings won’t take command of you, freeing up energy, focus and time in subtle and obvious ways. Simply being organized at both the office and home, and establishing clear boundaries will help you feel less scattered and stressed.

Feng Shui Your Lifestyle

Are you living to work, or working to live? Excessive hours spent at the office takes away precious time from your personal life, relationships, exercise and play, and deep relaxation of body and mind. Setting clear boundaries to avoid your work life creeping into your home life is the first step to establishing balance. The art of disengaging from the workplace is different for everyone depending on your profession, but leveraging your personal “me” time is the first step. For example, disabling your work email on your smart phone when you get home, signing up for recreational activities that get you outdoors and exercising, or saying “no” more often to unrealistic demands.

Feng Shui Your Office
A relaxing, calming and orderly work environment is not only easier on the nerves, but a pleasure to spend time in. Be sure your work space is supporting you, not draining you!

• Clearing clutter is essential to the healthy flow of energy, as excessive piles of papers and debris are disorderly and scattering. Cleaning out your work space will allow fresh chi to flow smoothly;

• Invest in organizational tools and workplace practices that promote efficiency and time management;

• Replace glaring fluorescent lights with softer lighting, full-spectrum lights, sun lamps or crystal salt lamps;

• If possible, lighten up any dark and drab wall colours with brighter tones such as yellow, green or blue, which boost happiness, creativity and calmness;

• Place inspirational pictures of happy occasions, which promote self confidence and empowerment;

• Healthy potted plants will disperse negative chi, as well as playing soft and uplifting music.

Feng Shui Your Home
Although invisible, the energy that flows around your home greatly impacts the quality of your well being, and if energy becomes blocked or stagnant, this imbalance can lead to symptoms such as lethargy, irritability, depression and poor sleep.

Applying the Feng Shui Bagua Map to your home, (as pictured below), the front entrance represents your Career area, so be sure this is clear of all clutter, allowing fresh energy to flow. Having a healthy family and/or friends is vital to a happy and balanced life also, so be sure to pay attention to these areas of the home, by placing positive pictures, crystals and other intentional objects to promote health in your personal life.

Along with a good cleaning of your home of old and useless objects and fresh paint with bright, calming colors, there are five elements to incorporate into your environment to promote balance:

• Earth – Stones, plants and healthy soil to enhance the grounding balance of the earth element. Colors representing earth include brown or yellow.

• Wood – Wooden planting boxes, or decorative wooden pieces such as a carving, bench or bamboo pieces. The color representing wood is green.

• Metal - Wind chimes, planters or copper decorative pieces. Colors representing metal are white, gold or silver.

• Water - Still or slow flowing water such as an indoor fountain, bird bath, pond or pooled water from a stream. Colors representing water are black or blue.

• Fire – Candles, lanterns, fireplaces or an outdoor fire pit. The color red represents fire.

Applying a few changes to your work space, home and overall lifestyle choices will naturally promote more work-life balance and uplift your energy and well being.

Chinese New Year 2019

Chinese New Year starts on February 5th and lasts for 15 days. This is China’s most colorful and important event of the year. This year it is named “The Year of the Yin Boar.” There are a total of 12 animals and they rotate throughout the years. There are many activities that happen during this time. On the first night of the celebration, there are fireworks to let go of the old and bring in the new, just like we do here in the USA. Also, on this night, they open all the windows and all the doors in the house to allow the old year to go out! They have large parades and the lion dancing sways back and forth to the beat of the drummers. On the 5th day of the New Year is the Chinese Lantern Festival and it is very colorful and beautiful. You will see paper lanterns made of the animal of the year and also large lanterns that are displayed in their parade’s animal. Clean your house well in advance of the New Year. Do not sweep or clean on New Years’ day or it will represent you sending your wealth out the door. All brooms need to be in closets.

1. Wear some red on Chinese New Year Day, since it is believed to be a happy color and symbolizes a bright future.

2. Clear your mind of clutter on this day and make sure that your living areas are clutter free.

3. Give out red envelopes with a dollar bill coin to families and guests. The red envelopes can be purchased on Amazon.com.

4. Decorate your home with nuts, oranges and sweets on a beautiful tray. You most certainly should add chocolate gold coins to this mix as well.

5. Entertain your friends and laugh and enjoy the evening.

6. Open every door and every window on the stroke of midnight to let out the old year.

7. Clear your mind of “clutter” this day and keep your thoughts bright and optimistic for the coming New Year.

8. Don’t scold your children or cry on this day for if you do, it will symbolize what you are coming year will play out for you.

9. Postpone washing your hair this day as you will be washing out your good luck.

10. Display large bowls of oranges on the tables to give to your friends and family as gifts. Feng Shui expert Grandmaster Too has shared her traditions with students and followers of Feng Shui during her training sessions. She has told them that early in the morning of the New Year, she brings in a truck full of oranges and she rolls them from the front door straight through her whole house. She is creating her own luck by following this ancient tradition.

Chinese New Year Day

1. Wake up New Year’s morning to good music, friends, and partners and just be grateful for your wonderful life. Do all things on this day to establish habits for the year. Make plans to do what you wish to do for the rest of the year. Really enjoy yourself and create peace and harmony this day and it will follow you through 2019.

2. Wear something new and take care to look extra special that day. Do not dress in black or white that day because Chinese look at those colors as funeral colors. Do your hair and wear something new and take care to look extra special that and a touch of red for good fortune.

3. Do your hair & makeup, but do NOT wash your hair this day as it is symbolic to throwing your good luck away.

4. Since this is a day to be festive in your mood with a joyful atmosphere, you should not argue with others on this day. Say ONLY nice things and do not lose your temper. It sets the tone of peace & harmony for the year.

Happy 2019 the Year of the Yin Boar!

Thanksgiving Day in the USA

The very first Thanksgiving Day event was not considered an event, it was a happening! Everyone came together and brought their best displays of food and sat down for a meal that provided them with soul comfort and celebration for the end of the harvest season.

Today we still celebrate with our family and friends and even those who are far away from their families usually have a family to support them, whether they are the college student or one of our military who happens to be stationed in our area.

People were integrated with the earth because they harvested their own fresh food, they baked their own bread and of course, used everything locally. They used vines to make baskets and they used gourds for drinking cups and they used straw for mats. What a concept for us now as we try to bring this back into our lives! So many look at the buy local as something new! Our décor today is mums, gourds, corn on the cob and straw and they are all of the earth.

When you think of our baked brown turkey and stuffing and acorn or butternut squash and sweet potatoes; they all represent these same traditions as in the past. Some tips that will ensure that everyone has a comfortable relaxed atmosphere are:

A roundtable or an oblong table will create good family relationships and great conversations. No worries if you only have a square table, the softness of a tablecloth and round dishes will also help your family to have a good experience. The elements of Feng Shui are, metal, earth, wood, fire and water. If these elements are in our surrounding area in the room this will also support a well balanced environment.

If you happened to use green placemats and have a salad in that location, this would cover the wood element. If you would add to the table the white dinner napkin, it is symbolic of the metal element. The addition of lovely candles and now you have the fire element to keep people energized. By placing a goblet of water on the table, you will have covered that element also. Your food will be the best of all of these elements as it is of the earth!

 Here are the basics:

• Create great seating arrangements.
• Set lovely dinner table décor and settings. Now is the time to use those dishes in the China Cabinet and the real silver.
• Complete the whole process with the addition of the 5 elements of Feng Shui. 

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

If you would like to know more about Feng Shui or would like to schedule a consultation or training with Yvonne, please call 412-215-8247 or email yvonnephillips1@aol.com

Feng Shui for Your Front Door

You can pick up a Feng Shui book and everyone will tell you to paint your front door red to bring in the strong Yang energy. This door is very important because it brings to you the very auspicious energy that will nourish your house. Maybe you don’t like the color red and just maybe the whole housing plan has red doors. Is there any help for you?

These doors located at Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh have the beautiful Victorian colors represented in the entrance area.

All Feng Shui experts will tell you to look at the five elements when doing your Feng Shui. The elements are what helps you put your home or office in balance and keeps you strong and focused.

The following is each element and color that represents them:

• Fire - Red.
• Earth -Yellow. 
• Water - Blue/Black. 
• Metal - Gray/white.
• Wood - Brown/green 

Then you have to consider the following:

1. What is it you are trying to accomplish in your life? In other words, have you set intentions? For example, do you have a home office and need encouragement to keep focused and clear on what you are to accomplish each day? Paint your front door the color of Metal, either gray or white. 
2.  If you are looking for calmness and the energy to come to your home for abundance, use the color of the Water element, either dark blue or black.
    
3. If you are looking for healing in your home or growth of your business, use the Wood element and you will cover both bases. Use the colors brown or green.
    
4. The Earth element will take care of bringing in the energy for good health. It also provides stability and is a grounding force for everyone in the home. Use yellow or light beige. 

The Fire element will bring in the strong yang energy and support you in your career and also support you in your fame and reputation area. These colors are the reds, dark oranges and purples. What color is your door? Share your front door color on my Facebook page here.