The Little Book of Living Small


Laura Fenton - 2020
    It features twelve case study homes in which style-savvy, small-space dwellers (from singles to families of four) open their doors and share their design secrets. Stylistically these homes range from urban to rural, minimalist to bohemian, with the unifying thread that they are all real homes of 1,200 square feet or less and offer clever solutions for you to use in your own home.Highly engaging with lists, tips, and actionable advice, The Little Book of Living Small shows readers how to make the most of limited square footage—with grace and style—and serves as the cheerleader readers need to help themselves feel satisfied and proud of their choice to live with less.Laura Fenton is the author of The Little Book of Living Small and the former lifestyle director at Parents magazine, where she oversaw all the home content for the publication. A writer with more than fifteen years of experience, her work has appeared in major publications including Better Homes & Gardens, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and on leading home websites including Remodelista, HGTV.com, ElleDecor.com, Curbed, and Refinery29. Through her writing she has explored the topic of living small for more than a decade. She lives small with her husband, a photographer, and their son in Jackson Heights, Queens, in New York.

Made for Living: Eclectic Interiors for All Sorts of Styles


Amber Lewis - 2020
    Delivering tips on refreshing a room with new paint (including finding the perfect white), mixing textiles and pillows, and blending neutrals, Amber's beautiful, California cool will help you transform your home into one that's elegant and timeless--a look you'll want to keep for the long run.

She Sheds: A Room of Your Own


Erika Kotite - 2017
    She Sheds provides the instruction and inspiration.They’ve got their man caves, and it’s time for you to have a space of your own. She Sheds shows you how to create cozy getaways with inspiration from across the country. You will start by defining the goal and purpose of your space. Will you use it for entertaining? Crafting? Alone time?Then, use the gallery of over 100 photos as inspiration for your decor, paint colors, and landscaping. Construction ideas, as well as ideas for upcycling, and other green resources are at your disposal throughout so you may truly personalize your she shed. Explore:She sheds in a variety of styles…rustic, colonial, Victorian, Spanish, modern, and moreShe sheds for a variety of purposes, including crafting and art, gardening, meditation, work, socializing, and simple alone timeStyle tips for decorating and organizing your she shedBuilder’s notes with tips on choosing and working with materialsPhoto-illustrated step-by-step instructions for building a kit shedGet inspired, and get started on your very own tricked-out retreat!

Lotta Jansdotter's Handmade Living: A Fresh Take on Scandinavian Style


Lotta Jansdotter - 2010
    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.

Creating a Beautiful Home


Alexandra Stoddard - 1992
    In Creating a Beautiful Home, Alexandra Stoddard generously shares her professional secrets as an interior designer as well as her personal experiences in renovating and decorating her own 1775 home in Connecticut. Once again, her original and imaginative ideas for every room in the house will inform and inspire you on your own exciting journey of discovery as you transform your living space into a warm and welcoming oasis of harmony, beauty, and joy.

Happy Starts at Home: Change Your Space, Transform Your Life


Rebecca West - 2020
    Through aligning your heart, home, and health, experience first-hand how small changes make a big difference. What does it take to be happy at home? It’s not about buying or not buying a new sofa. It’s about whether your home is working for you in the best way. Your home can directly improve your well-being and contentment with better health, sleep, and relationships, and ultimately decrease your stress levels to increase your all-round happiness. Design expert Rebecca West helps you to learn how to achieve a geographical cure without actually relocating and how to redecorate so you can feel best in your space. Along with beautiful photographs, there are a variety of self-assessment activities to connect your financial, emotional and physical health to your space to ensure it nurtures your vision – and while doing so, investing your time and money more effectively too. With the valuable advice in Happy Starts at Home, you can commit to a philosophy of buying fewer things and doing more to discover what’s holding you back, in order to find joy and create a home that makes you smile.

Handmade Home: Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials into New Family Treasures


Amanda Blake Soule - 2009
    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

Patina Farm


Brooke Giannetti - 2016
    When Brooke and Steve Giannetti decided to leave their suburban Santa Monica home to build a new life on a farm, they looked into themselves, and traveled to Belgium and France, for inspiration. Brooke’s inviting prose combines with 200 photographs and Steve’s architectural drawings to show their inspirations, their materials selections, and the enviable result of their team effort and creativity: an idyllic farm in California’s Ojai Valley. We see every corner of the family home, guesthouse, lush gardens, and delightful animal quarters. Steve Giannetti is a renowned architect, and Brooke is an interior decorator and writer of the design blog Velvet and Linen. They also own Giannetti Home, a store that sells furniture and products for the home in their signature Patina style. The couple’s work has been featured in the Veranda, Coastal Living, Good Housekeeping, the New York Times. They are the authors of Patina Style.

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management


Isabella Beeton - 1861
    Beeton's Book of Household Management is a volume of insight and common sense. Written by what one might now describe as a Victorian Martha Stewart, the book offers advice on fashion, child-care, animal husbandry, poisons, and the management of servants. To the modern reader expecting stuffy verbosity or heavy moralizing, Beeton's book is a revelation: it explores the foods of Europe and beyond, suggesting new food stuffs and techniques, mixing domestic advice with discussions of science, religion, class, industrialism and gender roles. Alternately frugal and fashionable, anxious and self confident, the book highlights the concerns of the growing Victorian middle-class at a key moment in its history. This abridged edition serves as a cookery book, while documenting a significant aspect of Victorian social and cultural history.

Clutter's Last Stand: It's Time to de-Junk Your Life!


Don Aslett - 1984
    An updated guide to organization offers good-natured, practical guidance in ridding homes, offices, and lives of clutter and, thereby, enhancing one's relationships, emotional well-being, and personal growth.

A Visual Dictionary of Architecture


Francis D.K. Ching - 1995
    It is the only dictionary that provides concise, accurate definitions illustrated with finely detailed, hand-rendered drawings, each executed in Mr. Ching's signature style.

Gaff Goddess: Simple Tips and Tricks to Help You Run Your Home


Laura de Barra - 2020
    Expanding on her popular online home hacks, Laura will teach you how to handle the problems we all encounter in our homes.Straight-talking and hilarious and packed with Laura’s stunning illustrations, her step-by-step guides will prepare you to handle the most common household emergencies with style. From dripping taps to hanging a frame, how best to look after your white goods, how to treat moths, mould and everything in between, and with invaluable design ideas to improve the living spaces in your home, this book is for everyone who has ever wanted to tackle a bit of She-IY without really knowing how.Ingenious and sure to be an instant household must-have, Gaff Goddess will empower you to make those repairs and rediscover your space saving you time, money and stress in the process.

Dare to Repair: A Do-it-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home


Julie Sussman - 2002
    Dare to Repair is a do-it-herself book for every woman who would rather be self-reliant than rely on a super or contractor.No matter the depth of your pockets or the size of your home, a toilet will get clogged, a circuit breaker will trip, and a smoke detector will stop working. It's up to you how you'll deal with them -- live in denial, pay the piper, or get real and do it yourself.Dare to Repair demystifies these home repairs by providing information that other books leave out.In Dare to Repair, you'll learn how to:Take the plunge -- from fixing a leaky faucet to cleaning the gutters.Lighten up -- from removing a broken light bulb to installing a dimmer switch.Keep your cool -- from maintaining a refrigerator's gasket to changing the rotation of a ceiling fan.Get a handle on it -- from replacing a doorknob to repairing a broken window.Play it safe -- from planning a fire escape route to installing a smoke detector.Filled with detailed illustrations, Dare to Repair provides even the most repair-challenged woman with the ability to successfully fix things around the home. Once you start, you won't want to stop.

The Backyard Homestead Book of Building Projects


Spike Carlsen - 2014
    From plant supports and clotheslines to a chicken coop, a greenhouse, and a root cellar with storage bins, most of the projects are suitable for complete novices, and all use just basic tools and easy-to-find materials. You’ll find techniques to build whatever your outdoor world is missing, with additional tips to live sustainably, happily, and independently.  Also available in this series: The Backyard Homestead, The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner, The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals, and The Backyard Homestead Book of Kitchen Know-How.

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia


Anthony M. Townsend - 2013
    A century ago, the telegraph and the mechanical tabulator were used to tame cities of millions. Today, cellular networks and cloud computing tie together the complex choreography of mega-regions of tens of millions of people.In response, cities worldwide are deploying technology to address both the timeless challenges of government and the mounting problems posed by human settlements of previously unimaginable size and complexity. In Chicago, GPS sensors on snow plows feed a real-time "plow tracker" map that everyone can access. In Zaragoza, Spain, a "citizen card" can get you on the free city-wide Wi-Fi network, unlock a bike share, check a book out of the library, and pay for your bus ride home. In New York, a guerrilla group of citizen-scientists installed sensors in local sewers to alert you when stormwater runoff overwhelms the system, dumping waste into local waterways.As technology barons, entrepreneurs, mayors, and an emerging vanguard of civic hackers are trying to shape this new frontier, Smart Cities considers the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of them all while offering a new civics to guide our efforts as we build the future together, one click at a time.