If you want some latest home automation, then I suggest you to do with Iot, means use some online service like "ThingSpeak(thingspeak)":https://thingspeak.com/ . Using ThingSpeak services you can control and monitor your appliances from anywhere in the world through Internet, Check this Video, this serves exactly what you want
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOYTTXMgcJIFurther you can add Monitoring Temperature and humidity of your home, in your project using thingspeak. I have build it using this article "Live Temperature and Humidity Monitoring(Live Temperature and Humidity Monitoring)":http://circuitdigest.com/microcontroller-projects/iot-temperature-humidity-monitoring-using-arduino and since then I have used thingspeak in many of my project, currently I am trying to build a Robo over thingspeak.
Further if you want regular Home automation projects using, DTMF, IR, Bluetooth etc then check this link from same website
http://circuitdigest.com/tags/home-automation , they have pictures and videos, and build them without using any Microcontroller kit etc.