My husband, Howard, is a real estate development director at Barnes & Noble, and I'm a housewife, doing a full-time job as a taxi driver for the kids. I have three children, who are 6, 10 and 12.

We found a house that was a ranch, a three-bedroom, so we moved in knowing that we would either add on or tear it down and build a new house. We lived in the ranch for five years and tore it down.

We built a Georgian-style house, a red brick two-story home with white columns. My husband and I, first off, knew that we wanted this free-floating curved staircase in the two-story foyer to create drama. When people walked in we wanted that really beautiful focus. All the children's bedrooms are upstairs with a playroom and a guest bedroom.

If you walk in the front door and you're not looking at the staircase, right straight in front of you is the family room, and we have three big radius windows and French doors leading out to the backyard. It kind of gives the house more of an open feeling, bringing lots of light in because we're very colorful people. My kitchen is yellow, our dining room is a lime green, we have a hallway that's a light blue.

If it was one of those basic staircases, to me it just wouldn't have as much personality and it wouldn't have that warm feeling. You walk in and that staircase looks so elegant and it catches your eye; it pops out and you just go "Wow!" Like I said, we have columns on the outside of the house and then right past the curved staircase, we have two other columns before you enter the family room. It just gives the house a little more pizazz.