SATURDAY SCOOPS
Redecorating your home requires flexible planning

Advertiser staff and news services

1. Theme: Thumb through magazines.

2. Fabrics: An important first step.

3. Floors: Consider your style.

4. Paint: Try a quart before a gallon.

5. Accessorize: Have fun!

The pros often succeed by improvising on original concepts, taking chances and adapting as they go. But how can you build a flexible plan that will guide you to a stylish decor? Follow these five steps before you tackle a decorating project:

Pick a theme

Magazines and books provide the cheapest form of decorating advice. Pick up armloads of books at the library, buy stacks of decorating magazines, and find a book at your local bookstore that is about the design style you're after.

Read them. It is fun to flip through the pages and look at the pictures, and if you actually read the text, you'll learn volumes about interior design.

Copy them. Find the style you like, identify it, create a notebook or scrapbook with the photos and refer to it as you continue your design project. The more you know, the more confidence you will have when you need to adjust the look mid-project.

Pick your fabrics

It's important to do this before you go further. Choosing fabrics up front helps the design process because it is much easier to match permanent elements like paint and carpet to fabrics than the other way around.

Choose eight to 10 fabrics for a room. Sound like a lot? It's not really. Solids and neutrals go on the large furniture pieces, but you'll want to use lots of brights and patterns for throw pillows and accents.

You can rely on coordinated lines of fabrics if you're decision-impaired, but you'll get a much more sophisticated look if you match fabrics yourself.

Remember, whites don't have to match exactly; colors can be a tone or two off.

Pick your floors

Refer to your theme. Take your fabric samples with you. Brick and wood are perfect for country styles, bamboo and sisal for contemporary and tropical.

Carpet is best for cozy spaces, such as bedrooms and family rooms. Flagstone and slate go with any style.

Pick your paint colors

Pack the fabric and carpet samples again and don't be in a hurry here. It is very hard to determine what colors will look like on your walls from the tiny paint chip in the store.

Try a quart or two at home before you commit to the gallon sizes.

Accessorize with color

Now you are going to layer on the color with throw pillows, artwork and tabletop accessories. What bold color do you really love? Throw it on now.

Fitness fair a prelude to Great Aloha Run

Among the attractions will be more than 300 booths offering health, fitness, sports and even financial products and services; demonstrations; a Strongest Man Contest; cooking demonstrations; and, as they say, so much more.

Hours are 10 a.m.-8 p.m. today and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. tomorrow at the Blaisdell Exhibition Hall. Admission is $1.50 general, free for kids 12 and younger, seniors 65 and older and registered Great Aloha Runners.

If you want to join the throngs at the Great Aloha Run (and more power to you!), you can still sign up at the expo's packet pick-up booth: $32 general, $15 age 12 and younger and 65 and older, cash only.

'Secrets' on DVD just might get your own kids talking

Looking for a DVD for the whole family?

"Little Secrets" (PG; 107 minutes) is one of those sweet little films where kids live in lovely, well-cared-for homes, the adults are all patient and understanding and the kids themselves are talented and attractive. Many of the problems posed and solved at the beginning of the film seem a little, well, cute: the boy who breaks a chess piece and wants to hide it, a girl who hides kittens in her room and a girl who has broken her sister's necklace.

And yet, this film can be a good one to watch with your kids because it can get you talking about the secrets kids keep from each other and from their parents — and how much it can hurt when you don't talk things out.

Emily (Evan Rachel Wood) is a talented violinist who does a brisk side-business as a "secret-keeper." For 50 cents, the neighborhood kids line up to tell her their secrets — which she keeps — and puts their evidence in bags with their names on it in a big chest.

But Emily has a secret of her own that's becoming harder to keep with the impending arrival of a new sibling. And it's getting in the way of her friendship with new neighbor, Philip (Michael Angarano) and his brother, David (David Gallagher).

Wood, so good in "Once and Again," makes you care about Emily even when you're ready to tell her to get on with it and spill the beans, already. More pluses: The other young actors — also TV veterans — add to the appeal. And above all, this could be a sweet prelude to getting your own kids to talk.

Big, fat and growing: 'Greek Wedding' set to screen at sunset

John Corbett and Nia Varadalos share a laugh in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," the most successful independent film ever made, which has grossed $240 million.

It's the attack of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"!

"Wedding" is the most successful indie film of all time, having grossed $240 million. It has been nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay.

And why not? The quirky, feel-good comedy about a Greek woman who falls in love with a WASPy fellow has been an audience pleaser from the very beginning.

Haven't seen it yet or eager to see it again? Drag your gal pals and guy pals to tonight's "Sunset on the Beach" at Queen's Surf in Waikiki for the free screening at 7 p.m.

Fans of action thrillers are in luck, too: "The Bourne Identity," starring Matt Damon, is tomorrow night's "Sunset" feature.

Accessorize your face with several pairs of eyeglasses

Eyeglasses have become a hip accessory, thanks to Hollywood and members of Generation X, who seem to prefer looking intellectual and bookish, especially in cool little rimless styles.

Now there's a new player in the prescription-eyewear game at Ward Warehouse — called InSpecs — that allows for a whole wardrobe of eyeglasses without busting the wallet.

Fashionable frames come in metal, plastic and rimless styles.

Prices include choice of frame, lenses, a hard case and cleaning cloth. Single-vision eyeglasses are $39.99, bifocals are $69.99 and Progressive, no-line bifocals are $129.99. Tinting and/or coating is an additional $9.99. They offer five colors in various shades.

InSpecs eyeglasses are made while you wait. Bringing in a prescription is helpful, but there's an optometrist available for eye exams and other optometric services.

InSpecs is based on a chain of 28 retail stores in Japan called Megane Busters (Eyeglass Busters). This is the first store in the United States.

For information, call Hayley Matson Mathes at 941-9088.

Keali'i Reichel tix disappearing fast

Singer/songwriter/chanter Keali'i Reichel is sooo popular ... you can only get standing-room tickets to his Maui shows this weekend, and even those cost $32 each.

Cross your fingers that those slots are left when you phone: (808) 242-7469. Show times are 7:30 p.m. today and tomorrow at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center's Castle Theater. Pre-show festivities begin at 5:30 p.m. with sales of fresh lei, arts and crafts, food and entertainment.

'Brunch on the Beach' tomorrow will feature crab hash, Na Leo Pilimehana

Another Waikiki note: The monthly "Brunch on the Beach" block party takes place 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. tomorrow along Kalakaua Avenue. Look for the traffic jam, the big blue umbrellas, artificial turf, tables and — of course — masses of people.

Admission is free, but you need to purchase scrip for food and drink. Here's a sample of the food to whet your appetite: crab hash Benedict on brioche with poached egg and lobster sauce; corned beef hash and eggs with home-fried potatoes; Thai chicken with peanut sauce, coconut rice and Asian slaw ... it's enough to make you ditch that dieting resolution of the new year, not that we're suggesting anything of the sort. (Oink!)

Harmonizing trio Na Leo Pilimehana — Lehua Kalima Heine, Angela Morales and Nalani Choy — headlines the entertainment.

The weather looks fine so far, but to check events, call 523-CITY.