It is the place where our families meet and mingle, where we share our meals and share our dreams. So much more than just a space to live, our homes offer us a place of comfort, nourishment, and love for us and for our children. In Handmade Home, Amanda Blake Soule, author of The Creative Family and the blog SouleMama.com, offers simple sewing and craft projects for the home that reflect the needs, activities, and personalities of today’s families. As Amanda writes in the introduction, “As a crafter, I’m always looking for the next thing I want to make. As a mama, I’m always looking for the next thing we need—to do, to have, to use—as a family. The coming together of these parts is where the heart of Handmade Home lies.” Filled with thirty-three projects made by reusing and repurposing materials, all of the items here offer a practical use in the home. From picnic blankets made out of repurposed bed sheets to curtains made out of vintage handkerchiefs, these projects express the sense of making something new out of something old as a way to live a more financially pared-down and simple life; lessen our impact on the earth; connect to the past and preserve a more traditional way of life; and place value on the work of the hands. Also included are projects that children can help with, allowing them to make their own special contribution to the family home. More than just a collection of projects for handmade items, this book offers the tools to create a life—and home—full of beauty, integrity, and joy. Projects include:    • Papa’s Healing Cozy: This hot water bottle cover becomes a simple way to offer comfort to a sick child    • Baby Sling: A simple pattern for an object that offers so much to a small child—refuge from the world and a place to lay their head next to a parent’s heart    • Beach Blanket To-Go: Repurpose old sheets to create the perfect picnic blanket for special outdoor meals    • Cozy Wall Pockets: A creative solution for storing a child’s small treasures

    Now she shares her recipe for a stylish home: take a whole lot of Scandinavian influence, mix in a dash of flea-market finds, and then top it all off with expressive handmade touches. The result? An entirely fresh approach to home dcor and contemporary living. In this lavishly illustrated book, Lotta shares her decorating secrets, design resources, entertaining tips, and family traditions. Tucked away at the back shes included stencil pages and perforated recipe cards featuring classic Swedish dishes. Equal parts inspiration and how-to, this charming book shows readers how to create a warm home with elements of simple Scandinavian-influenced style.

    

    They embrace free-spirited, no-rules lifestyles and apply that attitude to all areas of their existence, including their homes. With little distinction between work and play, the new boho home often includes an office, art gallery, showroom, photography studio, restaurant, or even a pop-up shop. The New Bohemians explores 20 homes located primarily on the East and West coasts. Exclusive interviews with the owners, 12 DIY projects created by Blakeney and inspired by objects found in the homes, and a "Plant-O-Pedia" offer insight into achieving this aesthetic. In addition, each home is accompanied by an Adopt-an-Idea section that offers general decor, styling, and shopping tips for easy duplication in your own home.

    She wants nothing less than to reconnect us all with the food we eat and the heritage of farming that belongs to all of us, and nothing more than to empower and encourage rural women everywhere ... she is cultivating not just a farm but a philosophy of living. " -- Body & Soul "Carpenter, waitress, janitor, upholsterer, secretary, milkmaid, wilderness ranger, environmental activist, entrepreneur-the founder of "MaryJanesFarm" has worn many hats in her day, but none more proudly than that of modern-day farmgirl. Speaking to the farmgirl in all of us, MaryJane Butters offers a captivating introduction to the organic lifestyle, resurrects forgotten domestic arts, and shares lessons gleaned from her diverse background and two decades of life as an Idaho farmer. Whether you simply need encouragement to embrace a more authentic, wholesome lifestyle or you're looking for guidance on building a greenhouse, chopping firewood, hosting a town event, caring for a flock of chickens, making your own butter, growing a winter salad, or choosing a water filter, "MaryJane's Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook" is both an inspiration and a practical road map for farmgirls of all stripes." "Dreams are MaryJane Butters' business, and she has always pursued them without pausing to consult conventional wisdom. "-- House & Garden "MaryJane Butters, a natural teacher, has a gift for simplification, and makes it seem that everything she does is easy and attainable. "-- The New Yorker"

    Featuring the website's signature Puking Pumpkin, and spanning everything from Drowning Pumpkin, Crime Scene Pumpkin, and Cannibal Pumpkin to Electrocuted Pumpkin and other never-before-seen designs, this gleefully gory guide is nothing short of a manifesto to take back Halloween from the cheerful, the cutesy, and the parent-sanctioned. For the egg-throwing, toilet tissue- streaming, window-soaping teenager in all of us, finally- a whole new way to celebrate October 31.

    The decorating magazines and TV shows never seem to talk to you. So what? With some attitude, know-how, and a lot of your own style, your place can be transformed into a fabulous Shangri-La, a swanky venue fit for living and entertaining well. Pad: The Guide to Ultra-Living is filled to bursting with hip, affordable projects for every room in the house and shows how to use basics like lighting, plants, mirrors, and paint to enhance even problem areas. Numerous testimonials from real people with real living spaces demonstrate how a little spaces demonstrate how a little spunk and individuality can overcome the limitations of the average urban dwelling. Offering a complete lifestyle package, Pad has instructions for building your own home bar, ideas for party themes and recipes--and even collateral hangover cures! This total living guide will have your place all spruced up--and the envy of guests--in no time.

    Learn to determine your cost of goods, set prices, identify the competition, and understand the ins and outs of wholesale and retail sales. Explore the various sales venues available, including independent craft fairs, Web sites such as Etsy, and traditional stores, and learn to maximize your visibility and sales in each one. Want to start your own website? Chapin shows you how to style and prop your crafts for photography and explains how the most popular Web marketplaces operate. You’ll find everything you need to turn your talent into profits.

    Impressive occasion cakes and stunning bakes for gatherings are not forgotten - from a novelty frog birthday cake for a children's party, through a towering croquembouche to wow your guests at the end of dinner, to a gorgeous, but easy-to-make wedding cake that's worthy of any once-in-a-lifetime celebration.Throughout the book, judges'' recipes from Paul and Prue will hone your skills, while lifelong favourites from the 2020 bakers offer insight into the journeys that brought the contestants to the tent and the reasons why they - like you - love to bake.

    Whether you’re looking for a craft to do with your children, a new cookie recipe to share with your friends and neighbors, or a simple handmade gift to make for someone you love, this ebook includes 101 simple ideas and tutorials!You'll also find bonus sections with even more ways to make Christmas meaningful for your family, links to dozens of printables to help you get organized for the holidays, and suggestions for sharing these goodies.

    It does, however, provide priceless tips for removing an ink stain, slicing a grapefruit, or painting a room. Inspired by a perennially popular Real Simple magazine feature, the book organizes its jiffy-fix tricks by activity that cover cooking, cleaning, decorating, entertaining, dressing, grooming, working, and more.

    Kristin Nicholas, color expert and all-around master crafter, shares her secrets to selecting colors and patterns and explores the variety of crafts and decorating touches that have made her home so unique. Going room by room, Kristin uses her own 1751 farmhouse as a leaping-off point for craft projects perfect for every space. You'll find a range of step-by-step projects to make your home cozy and bright, including knit pillows, embroidered curtains, crocheted blankets, and painted lampshades. Along the way, Kristin also shares DIY techniques on refinishing furniture, faux finishing walls, mural painting, and recycling wool clothes. Full of inspiration, and with vibrant photographs throughout, this is a complete guide to creating a home that reflects your own handmade style.

    With simple step-by-step instructions that are accompanied by templates and pattern pieces, each project is designed to be completed in just a few hours. Get inspired and turn a yard of your favorite fabric into a quilted lunch bag, bright sundress, or a cuddly plush turtle.

    We are in the midst of a massive cultural shift away from consumerism and toward a vibrant and very active counter-movement that has been thriving on the outskirts for quite some time — do-it-yourself-ers who make frugal, homemade living hip are challenging the notion that true wealth has anything to do with money. In Making It, Coyne and Knutzen, who are at the forefront of this movement, provide readers with all the tools they need for this radical shift in home economics.The projects range from simple to ambitious and include activities done in the home, in the garden, and out in the streets. With step-by-step instructions for a wide range of projects—from growing food in an apartment and building a ninety-nine-cent solar oven to creating safe, effective laundry soap for pennies a gallon and fishing in urban waterways Making It will be the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive, and eminently doable. Within hours of buying this book, readers will be able to start transitioning into a creative, sustainable mode of living that is not just a temporary fad but a cultural revolution.

    As co-host of TLC's popular What Not to Wear, he regularly transforms dumpy fashion disasters into traffic-stopping, get-an-instant-promotion, reignite-the-passion-in-that- relationship makeovers. But fabulousness doesn't stop with style. Let's face it: you might look good, but if you're chomping on that crudité with your mouth wide open, nobody at the party will talk to you -- even if you can explain to them what crudité actually is. Of course, the keys to being better than everyone else aren't always so obvious. Don't worry; Clinton's here to help. How do you make a flat butt look big and a big butt look flat? What's the one trick that will slim down your entire silhouette and make your ta-tas look va-va-voom? How do you eat an oyster without getting kicked out of the best restaurant in town? What's the grammatically correct form of "lay" to use when propositioning a Baldwin brother? He'll teach you how to look your best, sound your smartest, use the manners your momma taught you, poach an egg, fix a perfect gin and tonic, throw the most popular parties (and top the guest list at other soirees), make your home the envy of your neighbors, and generally be the fabulous person you always knew you could be. From the three style criteria he uses to dress any shape for any occasion, to his eloquent approach to appreciation, to his four must-memorize recipes for whipping up a last-minute meal, Clinton Kelly shares it all in Freakin' Fabulous.