Hot Ideas on Curing the Beige Blahs of Winter by Rose Bennett Gilbert on Creators.com

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Hot Ideas on Curing the Beige Blahs of Winter

Q: Our living room is just plain boring. We're stuck with beige walls (in good condition, darn it!) and our furniture is upholstered in off-white (ditto). The one thing the living room has going for it — the major reason we bought this house — is a tall, rubble-stone fireplace that we use during the winter.

But what else? We need a new cocktail table. What should we buy? Our other furniture is dark mahogany.

A: You're already halfway home to the cure for your blah living room, thanks to that focal-point fireplace. With flames dancing on the hearth, it will be the center of attention that helps dispel the boredom of all the beige.

Fresh flowers and interesting artwork should do the rest, until spring brings weather too warm for fires. Then you have to wax creativity. Start by finding an interesting cocktail table, something out of the ordinary — meaning, forget matching your old mahogany furniture. Some suggestions: a rusted, wrought iron base under glass, dry-stacked stones with a marble top or an old, railroad luggage cart on wheels.

Variety is what you're really after, variety in attitude and in textures to spice up that beige background. In the pictured calm-colored living room, the tall, stone fire surround and the mirrored coffee table add important visual life to an otherwise tame setting. We borrowed the photo from "Speed Decorating" (The Taunton Press), a book full of almost-instant, fix-up ideas by Jill Vegas, the professional home stager. (You may know her from NPR or HGTV. If not, click on jillvegas.com.)

Not surprisingly, Vegas offers good advice on what to do with that center fireplace out of season: Fill it with a cluster of fat candles. Invest in decorative white-birch logs.

More eye-catching ideas gleaned from designer show houses: a pyramid of low-light-loving plants; a pile of large, attractive stones; a lighted aquarium; an arrangement of dried flowers; an old-fashioned, hand-painted fireboard that fills the black void with color throughout the warm-weather season.

Q: We love all things Southwestern, but we are having trouble finding bedroom furniture that goes with our collections of Indian rugs, tooled-leather chairs and the like.

We'd settle for reproductions, but where should we look?

A: Click on museumfoundation.org/licensed.html — the Museum of New Mexico Foundation's website.

In 1998, the museum started licensing reproductions of important furniture from the Spanish colonial era to the 1800s.

You may love their recent introduction: the massive, ornately-carved, walnut-veneered Manderfield bed, which is named after the man who packed it up and brought it west to Santa Fe in a covered wagon.

Q: What exactly is Bakelite? I inherited a pair of dresser lamps that look and feel like ivory, but my mother remembers that her mother was proud of her "Bakelite."

A: Bakelite is a kind of early plastic developed in the late 19th century. It was patented by the Belgian-born inventor Leo Baekeland, who gave his name to his creation — which, in turn, gave home decorators an interesting new material. Bakelite was used for everything from lamps like yours to radios to kitchen appliances and even to coffins (according to New York Times antiques writer Eve M. Kahn's recent interview with Baekeland's great-grandson, Hugh Karraker).

Lucky you if your Grandmother's lamps turn out to be the real thing — Bakelite is a must-have for many collectors today. How to tell: Warm up the lamp base by rubbing it with your thumb, and then sniff. Bakelite was a formaldehyde compound, and your nose will know instantly if you have the right stuff.

Rose Bennett Gilbert is the co-author of "Manhattan Style," "Hampton Style," and five other books on interior design. To find out more about Rose Bennett Gilbert and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.