This is the time of the year when you take a look at your patio or backyard and suddenly find it clamoring for attention.

Summer is almost here, it starts unofficially with the Memorial Day weekend, and then it is time to enjoy the weather outdoors. If you are feeling lucky, you may want to enter the "Restore Your Outdoors" Sweepstakes to win $15,000 in Ace Gift Cards for an outdoor makeover.

Ace Hardware and The Weather Channel paired together for the "Restore Your Outdoors" initiative to provide tips and tools to help homeowners tackle outdoor home maintenance tasks. Ace's Home Expert, Lou Manfredini and Ace's Design Expert, Julie Richard, provide easy to carry out suggestions. They tell you how to update and maintain your outdoor living areas to make your home more inviting, which brands to use, and how to use inspiration from the outdoors when choosing paint colors.

Makeovers are being hosted by Manfredini and Richard on The Weather Channel through the month of May. You can find more information on a "Restore Your Outdoors" tab on Ace and The Weather Channel Facebook pages. For more details and official rules on "Restore Your Outdoors," visit www.facebook.com/acehardware.

The chance to win $15000 in gift cards is part of it. ends at 11:59:59 p.m. EDT on 5/31/13. The use of the prize gift cards is not restricted to outdoor materials, but can be applied to almost any product at Ace Hardware.

Safe Kids Day is an initiative about preventing childhood injuries, and raising awareness.

Injuries kill more children than any illness. And while we don't think of our homes as dangerous places, many accidents happen at home. These can involve falling from bunk beds, getting trapped in moving mechanisms of motion furniture, and the biggest one of them all, furniture and TV tip-overs.

In the interest of preventing TV tip-overs, Hazz Design Consulting has come up with reVue, a TV mount design that would be easy to install. Not only that, it will also allow users to safely move the TV up and down, to optimally position it for interactive gaming, seated viewing, exercise, or videoconferencing. You can watch a demonstration video on their site.

To be able to get the design to production, Hazz Design Consulting has launched a crowdsourcing campaign on Kickstarter where you have to reach your full funding goal to receive the money. The campaign runs until June 16, 2013. If they reach their funding goal, the product can go into production by July.<.p>

Yes, we've been hearing about Emerald, and seeing it everywhere too. But what is the number one go to color in home furnishings?

The Furniture/Today and Apartment Therapy Consumer Survey, 2013 found that blue was the overwhelming favorite with 29% choosing it over other colors. Grays came in second, and greens third. Brights such as oranges, yellows and reds placed higher than neutrals such as brown.

The Pinterest pin that got the most votes for this High Point Market was a chair from C.R. Laine.

The Bradstreet Spool Chair from C.R. Laine, was upholstered in Zig Zag Onyx Linen fabric paying homage to ikat. The frame wore a finish that can be customized in any Benjamin Moore paint color. It can be seen here in a screenshot from Style Spotter Kelly Kole's Pinterest Board.

Trend setters and home fashion experts participate in the Style Spotters program to showcase products and trends at the High Point Market. The carefully curated Pinterest boards give a glimpse of new introductions.

The top Style Spotter for this market was Michelle Jennings Wiebe of Studio}M in Tampa, Florida, but the product that received the most votes on any of the Style Spotters' boards came from Kelly Kole of Kandrac & Kole.