Craft projects or decor, wardrobe planning, website design, or even landscape and garden planning — whatever you create, much of your success will depend on an attractive colour palette that has balance and harmony.

There are lots of fun colour scheme tools online, but only one that I count as an essential colour planning utility, coming back to it time and time again for design inspiration — Pic2Color.

Go on…. give it a try!
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What makes Pic2Color different from most color-picking tools is one simple trick. You give it the URL of a picture, or browse your computer for a saved photo, or just let the tool pick one at random and see what happens…. Pic2Color will create a colour scheme for you, using the hues of that image.

As I seem to be on a bit of a self-improvement kick at the moment, let’s see what I can do about organizing the pre-mealtime chaos with a little bit of planning ahead for this week’s supper meals.

And what better way to plan meals than to go along with Laura the Organizing Junkie‘s Menu Plan Monday? (I’ve been meaning to do this for ages, but usually I’m just not quite organized enough!)

With armloads of fresh produce coming in from the garden each day, and overflowing the stalls at the local market, it only seems right that there’s a bit of a “Celebrating the Garden Harvest” theme to our meals right now…

Monday:
Leftover Pork Roast
Ginger-Roasted Autumn Vegetables

Tuesday:
Pan-Fried Halibut
Mushroom Rice Pilaf
Pearl Onions, Green and Yellow Beans

Wednesday:
Squash-Carrot Soup
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Green Salad

Thursday:
Cherry-Tomato Surprise Meatballs
Mushoom Rice Pilaf (leftover from Tuesday)
Snow Peas, Baby Carrots

Friday:
Atlantic Salmon Steaks
Beer Bread
Cucumber Salad, Green Beans Amandine

Saturday:
Stuffed Green Peppers
Caesar Salad

(The stuffed peppers on Saturday will use up the extra ground beef from the meatballs on Thursday — I buy it in the economical large size package, so it goes for several different meals, but do cook it all up at once to avoid spoilage, then freeze a few small packages of the cooked ground beef to pull out when I need them.)

Sunday:
Roast Chicken
Boiled New Potatoes
Mashed Turnip, Green Peas

(According to my clever-clever plan, that Sunday night chicken will be a big one — it’s going to make a lot of lunchtime sandwiches for the next week. The skin and bones and undesirable bits go into a large container in the freezer, for making a batch of chicken soup stock later on.)

Should we talk about dessert?

The early apples are just beginning to hit the local farmers’ market, but I only grow the later varieties like Macintosh and Cortland, so I’m holding off on apple-based desserts. Blueberries and blackberries are out in rich abundance, however, so we’ll be enjoying blueberry pie and crushed blackberries in cordial over ice cream for a bit of a sweet after supper this week.

Okay, well, that’s the menu… now, to see if I can manage to follow it!

As you may have gathered by now, I’m all in favour of planning a room arrangement on paper, first, especially when it comes to shoving a heavy armoire around. Scale models or furniture templates are essential to interior design. But life-sized templates? That’s a new one on me!

I haven’t had a chance to try out samples yet, mind you, so can’t give a review based on firsthand experience — but the basic idea is certainly a good one.

And, what with the holiday home-makeover season rushing up upon us, I decided just to put the word out about the DIY site and let you explore for yourself!

Here’s what the company has to say about its light-weight, life-sized, reusable templates — and I must say that the first paragraph is totally reading my mind:

“Furniture Templates” From Design Yourself Interiors, Inc.
Are An Affordable And Useful Holiday Gift for Home

New “furniture templates” from Design Yourself Interiors Inc. are the perfect holiday gift for anyone remodeling or moving into a house, condo or apartment. Get a perfect fit for all furniture and fixtures in every room in the house, condo or apartment before making any expensive purchases.

Top interior design firms nationwide have been using DYI templates to accurately plan every room in their clients’ homes — and now these professional, lightweight, life-sized and re-usable “templates” are available to consumers. Great for designing or remodeling the living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom, nursery, home office or patio.

DYI templates are the creation of two high-end interior designers turned entrepreneurs — Kathy Wagner and Melody Davidson.

“We are delighted that our DYI templates are now available to consumers and make both an affordable and useful holiday gift,” said Kathy Wagner, co-founder of Design Yourself Interiors, Inc. “For only $30 our DYI templates bring all the expertise of a high-end interior designer into every room in a consumer’s home. Our product will save time, money, and hopefully the heartache that comes with the realization that the wrong piece or size of furniture was purchased.”