Every idea is amazingly clever: who would ever have imagined that plastic six-pack can holders could become a chic Moorish-inspired filigree tri-fold screen? Or that glass baby food jars would make a charming candle chandelier? Every project features at least one beauty shot in a modern home setting, easy-to-follow instructions, and step-by-step color photos, while handy icons spotlight the key techniques, materials, and the estimated time to complete each project.

    Stephanie Tourles shows you how to use fruit, flowers, herbs, and minerals to craft healthy products that promote radiant skin, strong nails, shiny hair, and an elevated mood. Pamper yourself from head to toe with products like Strawberry Cleanser, Pineapple Sunflower Scrub, and Almond Rose Body Lotion. Gentle on your skin and free of harsh chemicals found in commercial products, you’ll want to indulge yourself over and over with these luxuriously aromatic bath blends, face masks, and body scrubs.

    Did you know commercial yeast is so foreign to our bodies that many people are allergic to it? But natural yeast converts dough into a digestible, vitamin-rich food that's free from harmful enzymes and won't spike your body's defenses. Improve your health and happiness with the delicious recipes in this groundbreaking book that will teach you to prepare and bake with natural yeast!

    Home canning puts the pleasures of eating natural, delicious produce at your fingertips year round. Preserving food is as modern and practical as the latest food trend, and its really quite simple. Easy-to-understand detailed instructions provide all the information you need before you begin a project. Enjoy the rewards of numerous homemade meals and snacks, created from just one preserving session.

    Jennifer Worick teaches readers how to sew a quilt, master the art of bread-and-butter pickles, speak old-time slang, and much much more. This is for the legions of Laura Ingalls Wilder fans who have dreamed of what a pioneer life out on the prairie would be like.Combining step-by-step how-to on crafts, with tongue-in-cheek instructions on prairie slang, winning a spelling bee, and singing a lullaby, The Prairie Girl's Guide to Life allows fans to finally act out their childhood dreams or to simply enjoy the vicarious thrill of reading about it one more time. This is a book that will pull at the heart strings of every childhood Laura and also teach us a few prairie-time crafts along the way.

    In Crafting a Meaningful Home, Meg Mateo Ilasco shares 27 projects that tell personal stories and celebrate heritage, all easily created on a budget. Learn how to decoupage a plate with photos of a best friend; silkscreen upholstery with folk motifs; artfully display love notes; sew a teepee from a vintage quilt top; or create family silhouettes for a festive banner. Contributed by a hip cast of well known designers from across the country, the projects are, at once, nostalgic, sentimental, and modern. Clear instruc­tions are easy to follow, even for beginning crafters.Praise for Crafting a Meaningful Home:"[Crafting a Meaningful Home] can serve two purposes on your gift giving list. If you have time, make one of the projects from the book. If not, give the book itself. It's beautifully photographed and written, and the projects are incredible." --PopSugar Rush TV

    Practical projects as useful today as when first published 75 years ago.

    Topics include getting active, direct action, gardening, how to make wine, homeschooling, fixing a toilet, audio phone patch, how to make envelopes, shoe repair, making rubber stamps, how to juggle, composting, DIY toothpaste, getting rid of fruit flies, greywater systems, composting toliets, making hanging and floating tents, saving money at the post office, making posters and stencils, fixing a harmonica, DIY flowerpots, avoiding dangerous household chemicals, preventing ear infections, how women can pee standing up, menstrual massages, and a few pieces for inspiration. I'm sure you can see by now why this is essential.

      Let the experts at Good Housekeeping help you get organized with this inspirational room-by-room guide to tidying up! Hundreds of tips and tricks include how to keep a well-ordered fridge, gain extra counter space, conquer cookware clutter, choose the best shelving, clear up your desk and digital spaces, and streamline your closet and garage. You’ll find pro organizer ideas for every area in your home, must-have Good Housekeeping Institute-approved products, and advice on finding a place for everything and putting everything in its place. Keep this book handy, refer to it often, and say goodbye to the mess!Chapters: Organizing Must-Haves, Kitchen & Pantry, Living & Family Rooms, Work & Craft Spaces, Bedrooms, Bath & Laundry Rooms, Entryways, and Garages.

    With Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide, Gladstar offers a fresh introduction for a new generation of gardeners and natural health and self-sufficiency enthusiasts.Thirty-three of the most common and versatile healing plants are profiled in depth to get the budding herbalist off on the right foot. Readers will learn how to grow, harvest, prepare, and use each herb. Step-by-step instructions explain how to prepare herbal teas, salves, syrups, tinctures, oils, and liniments to stock the home medicine chest. Simple recipes explore each plant's healing qualities - aloe lotion for poison ivy, dandelion-burdock tincture for sluggish digestion, and lavender-lemon balm tea for stress relief. Gladstar shows how easy it is to make safe, all-natural, low-cost healing remedies for common ailments.

    From the whimsical mind of Beastly Crochet author Brenda K. B. Anderson comes a funtastic collection of 18 fairy-tale inspired crochet projects. Shows and movies based on fairy tales are incredibly popular, and crafty crocheters now have a book of fabulous projects that pay homage to their favorite stories. Little Red's hood with integrated infinity scarf will stay put when she's being chased by the Big Bad Wolf. Sleeping Beauty now has just the right nightie to wear while waiting for Prince Charming to wake her up. Gretel can take her snacks to go with her cupcake purse. Plus the Evil Queen will know exactly who the hottest in the land is when she gazes into her Mirror, Mirror on the Go makeup case. Heroines, fairy princesses, witches, and big bad wolves are all accounted for in this fanciful collection of crochet accessories, toys, bags, kids' clothes, and more.

    The trick is figuring out what among these objects is treasure and what's trash. That's where Earl Proulx and the editors of Yankee magazine can help.Drawing on their own creative ideas--and those of ingenious Yankees all over New England--they've come up with more than 1,000 clever ways to put common household objects to uncommon and valuable uses. The result is a book that will benefit you in five clear ways.1. This book will empower you.Other people might be stymied when, say, Spot knocks a glass of grape juice on that elegant white rug. Not you. You'll be able to lift that stain yourself--without buying some expensive remover--just by applying a dab of shaving cream. Vinegar, Duct Tape, Milk Jugs, and More contains dozens of clever do-it-yourself ideas like this.2. This book will save you money.Need an attractive gift for a friend, a game to entertain the grandkids, a desk organizer for your home office? Forget the catalogs and stay away from the stores. As you'll see, you can make these items and dozens more in minutes from the leftover things around your house.3. This book will make your life easier.There's no need to stock a cabinetful of specialty cleansers. Vinegar, Duct Tape, Milk Jugs, and More will show you how to use common ingredients like salt, ketchup, baking soda, flour, yogurt, and, of course, vinegar to handle many of the cleaning tasks you encounter every day.4. This book will reduce the waste in your home.If you've ever regretted the amount of trash you throw out each week, here's the solution. This book will show you how to give a second life to everything from plastic containers to bubble wrap to panty house and more.5. This book will entertain you.Whether you settle on one of Earl's yarns, the story behind common objects like Post-It Notes and condensed milk, or the "My Way" tips from actual readers, you're bound to enjoy the fun side of this book.Vinegar, Duct Tape, Milk Jugs, and More provides no-fail ideas for every area of your home, and for many actitivites, from gardening to cooking, from travel to sports, and from crafts to games. Consider it your no-cost tool kit for all your needs around the home.Throw out a candle stub, some sour milk, that leftover bag of cat litter? Not on your life!You might think of these things as waste that's headed for the trash can, but there are hundreds of practical ways you can save money, time, and natural resources by reusing these and other common objects around your house. Follow Earl Proulx and the editors of Yankee magazine as they show you how to:Make a soothing facial mask from cat litterCover up furniture scratches with a dab of iodineTun an old teacup, a sandwich bag, and some sugar into an elegant pin cushionClean car grease off your hands with olive oilUnstick a window with the stub of an old candlestickClear a clogged showerhead with vinegarAnt-proof your home with lemon juiceMake an attractive country picture frame from an old six-pane windowEnd static cling with hair sprayStop foot blisters with duct tapeKeep bait worms fresh with coffee groundsMake an earring holder out of window screeningMore than 1,000 creative, fun, and ingenious tips

    White. “But that’s not how my brain works. I’m lost on page three.” Dana blogs at A Slob Comes Clean, chronicling her successes and failures with her self-described “deslobification process.” In the beginning she used the name “Nony” (short for aNONYmous), because she was sharing her deep, dark, slob secret. Now she has truly come clean—with not only her real name but the strategies she has developed, tested, and proved in her own home. She has learned what it takes to bring a home out of Disaster Status, which habits make the biggest and most lasting impact, and how to keep clutter under control.In How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, Dana explains that cleaning your house is not a onetime project but a series of ongoing premade decisions. Her reality-based cleaning and organizing techniques debunk the biggest housekeeping fantasies and help readers learn what really works. Chapter titles includeMy First Step: Giving Up on the FantasyThe Worst Thing About the Best WayJust Tell Me What to DoConquering LaundryGet Dinner on the TablePutting an End to the Never-Ending Weekly Cleaning TasksDon’t Get OrganizedHow to Declutter Without Making a Bigger MessFighting the Perceived Value BattleBut Will It Last?With a huge helping of empathy and humor, Dana provides a step-by-step process with strategies for getting rid of enormous amounts of stuff in as little time (and with as little emotional drama) as possible.

    Twenty Instructables illustrate just how simple it can be to make your own backyard chicken coop, or turn a wine barrel into a rainwater collector.Illustrated with dozens of full-color photographs per project accompanying easy-to-follow instructions, this Instructables collection utilizes the best that the online community has to offer, turning a far-reaching group of people into a mammoth database churning out ideas to make life better, easier, and in this case, greener, as this volume exemplifies.

    Even if you have never been a farmer or a gardener, this book covers everything you need to know to get started: buying and saving seeds, starting seedlings, establishing raised beds, soil fertility practices, composting, dealing with pest and disease problems, crop rotation, farm planning, and much more. Because self-suf?ciency is the objective, subjects such as raising backyard chickens and home canning are also covered along with numerous methods for keeping costs down and production high. Materials, tools, and techniques are detailed with photographs, tables, diagrams, and illustrations.