Your home is the place where you make memories, relax, and spend time with those you love the most, and tHere no room more used than the kitchen! With winter weather finally out of the picture and the sights and smells of summer filtering in through open windows, it's time to shake off the cobwebs and get your kitchen summer-ready!
While the open schedule of the summer can make it a great time to plan a major remodeling project for your home's kitchen, it doesn't have to take a major commitment and expense to get your space ready for the season.

Freshen-Up Your decor

Summer is about sunny days, stunning outdoor colors, and fresh, light decor, so now is the perfect time to do a mini-overhaul on the most important decorative features of your kitchen. Without breaking the bank, you can update your kitchen and bring the beauty of summer into your home by focusing on:

• Walls: Are the walls in your kitchen looking drab, dark, or dated? Whether that eggplant color is no longer bringing you to the Tuscan countryside or you are tired of staring at plain, boring white walls, now is the time to change-up the look with a fresh coat of paint! To embrace the summer season, focus on a neutral color palette that brings depth, warm, and light reflection into the space.
• Lighting: Natural lighting is the key to a summer-ready kitchen, so break out the cleaning supplies and give your kitchen windows a once-over to get the grime of winter off of the glass. You can also take this opportunity to replace bulbs with daylight LEDs, or put in a bright new light fixture to light-up the room on dreary, rainy days.
• Decorations: When you are considering decorating your kitchen for summer, the theme is ?nature?! Think of fresh flowers, household plants, and light, earth-tone hues when choosing the best decorations for bringing the beauty of the outdoors into your home.

Focus on Functionality in the Space

Styling your kitchen for summer is no doubt a lot of fun, but the kitchen needs to be more than just a showroom?it has to be functional! With the kids home from school and summer parties being planned, you want your kitchen to have great flow and an organized appearance to let you have more time to join in on the fun. In order to do this, try:

• Getting Rid of Clutter: Kitchen clutter can make the room incredibly hard to work in, so start with clearing off the countertops and other kitchen surfaces to instantly lighten the space.
• Planning Minor Updates: From replacing cabinet hardware to painting cabinets or throwing down some new flooring, small-scale remodeling projects can have a big impact on function.
• Reorganizing the Essentials: The surfaces that you see aren't the only things that need to be organized in the kitchen! Take the time to go through your cabinets and drawers to get rid of anything you don't need and reorganize everything that you do.

tHere nothing better than opening the windows, inviting guests over, and enjoying a summer meal in your home's kitchen, and getting the heart of your family's home ready for summer is easier than you might think! With a few simple updates, you can transform the space from the cave-like feeling of winter into an open-air summer paradise to create a welcoming room that you love spending time in.

?Hillary 2016!?, shouts a man from the crowd of over 10,000 at the Temple Universitybasketball arena during Hillary Clinton?s Q&A session with USGBC CEO Rick Fedrizzi after her Keynote speech last night at Greenbuild 2013 in Philadelphia.

Ms. Clinton, realizing that the comment had to be addressed since everyone in the arena heard it, replied, ?There are some hecklers that I Don't mind so much.?

So does that mean?.well, right now, it doesn?t matter because Hillary was there to talk about green building and sustainability. Talk she did, and with knowledge and tenacity she spoke.

Ms. Clinton stressed that not only is green building good for the environment and human health and well-being, but it's also good business! This is the win-win phenomenon of green building that has always made so much sense. When you invest in sustainable building and improvements, not only are you providing work for the construction industry but you're saving money on energy and creating healthier more productive places to live and work. This is the economic ripple effect that can occur when people invest in construction work. And there is even more potential for a domino effect when the construction improvements are sustainable in nature.

Ms. Clinton, you're bangin? your figurative hammer right on the head of Constructonomics.

And if Ms. Clinton gets her way when she?s pres?ummm, I mean, if Ms. Clinton?s visions come to fruition, there will be a lot of literal hammers banging on heads of real nails in the midst of many more sustainable construction projects. And the ripple effect of sustainable construction or dare I say, Constructonomics, will snowball into a full blown wave of economic benefit. (Three metaphors in one sentence ? not too bad!).

Jon Bon Jovi, who played for an hour and a half after Hillary?s speach, sang (first with a solo acoustic guitar and then with the full band),

?Whoa-oh, we are half-way there. Whoa-oh, we are livin? on a prayer?.

I think this, once again, applied quite metaphorically to our situation because our planet is just about livin? on a prayer while Hillary Clinton is half way there??half way to 2016.

My brother Mark and I recently taped a TV show for PBS in the Bay Area, CA on decks.

We discuss that there's a lot more to a deck than most people think. We also touch on foundations and drainage issues.

If you're into this sort of thing, Mark and I have three more construction-related shows posted on my blog.