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Home with Lisa Quinn shares affordable decorating tips.

Fabrics and Finishes you do NOT want in a Home with Kids and Pets:

• White linen
• Chenille fabric with a loop (bad for pet claws)
• Velvet (it's a fur magnet)
• Silk (too fragile)
• Ivory Berber carpet (shows dirt and pet claws can ruin it)
• Light travertine
• Highly polished slick wood floors (show scratches)
• Pale wall color swatch -- matte
• (In general my advice is stay away from light colors, solids, and delicate fabrics.)

Family Friendly Furnishings and Finishes:

• Sturdy print upholstery fabric (multi-colored to hide stains)
• Leather -- rugged
• Crypton fabric
• Deeper toned paint swatches for wall color -- semi gloss
• Slate tile
• Distressed wood
• A swatch of a patterned area rug
• Midtone carpet (non-loop)

Marni Jameson is the author of HOUSE OF HAVOC: How to Make -- and Keep -- a Beautiful Home Despite Cheap Spouses, Messy Kids, and Other Difficult Roommates. For more information visit http://www.marnijameson.com.

About Marni Jameson: She is a nationally syndicated home design columnist, and author of the best-selling The House Always Wins (DaCapo/Perseus, April 2008). Marni's hugely popular syndicated column, "At Home With Marni Jameson," appears in more than 30 newspapers throughout the United States and Canada reaching 7 million readers each week. Though her column is humorous as well as helpful, Marni shares her serious side in some of the nation's most prestigious print media. A long time writer for the Los Angeles Times (more than 200 features), she also writes for other top-tier media, including Woman's Day, Family Circle, Child, and Fit Pregnancy. She has been a guest on numerous television and radio programs around the country.Whether she's writing about rescuing Romanian orphans, urging better diagnostic testing for breast cancer, living with AIDS, making better real estate decisions, getting in shape, or being a better parent, Marni hopes that through her work, others will live better, longer and help those who need help. Jameson graduated with distinction from the University of Kansas, William Allen White School of Journalism, consistently rated one of the top journalism schools in the country. She later received her master's degree in writing from Vermont College, and taught writing at UCLA for nine years.

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