April 1935

Across the Editor's Desk

WELL! Who are these fine-looking people sitting across the desk from you this month? Meet them, in order, from left to right-- Royal Barry Wills, of Boston; Verna Cook Salomonsky, of New York; Russell Walcott, of Chicago, and John Normile, of Des Moines, all architects.

The Diary of a Plain Dirt Gardener

Easter morn. Church time came and off the family went. leaving me to read the papers. But Donald was going to sing in the children's choir. So I took the old car and surreptitiously followed into town. Ed Heil, one of the ushers, nearly fainted when he saw me coming up the church steps, it was such a strange sight.

IT'S News TO ME!

I'M PLANNING an April kitchen shower for a bride-to-be, one of those chattery affairs where gifts are passed for close inspection, and we all talk at once!

Here It Is!

TAKE another look at the cover. If you built this Georgian house and wanted to get this same perspective of it, we rather suspect you'd have to climb the tallest tree on the other side of the street from it and sit on the topmost branch.

Little Things in the House You Might Forget

THE HOUSE, as you have seen, is beautifully planned and arranged for the elementary, the essential, functions of living. The size, number, and shape of the rooms and their relation to each other are exactly as they should be for the ideal home.

Welcome to Our Open-House! Better Homes & Gardens Shows You Thru the Georgian Gardened Home

ITS WHITE door thrown open in welcome, its hospitable rooms glowing with light and color, the Georgian House eagerly awaits our room-to-room trip of inspection.

CO-OPERATING WITH BETTER HOMES & GARDEN

And Here's the Basement!

LONG a dingy and neglected stepchild, the basement comes at last into its own as a respectable and attractive member of the family! This happy state of affairs is due of course to the bright, clean, and noiseless equipment for heating the house and doing its laundry, doing away entirely with all the old dirt and messiness and making it possible for the family to double its actual recreation space without increasing the size of the house.

So You're Going to Build a Pool!

"SO YOU'RE going to build a pool!" These words broke into my thoughts, and I turned from under a large willow to see Uncle John coming down the path.

Prizewinners

We Can Conquer

HOW often we have entered a beautiful garden, fascinated by its design and the perfect splendor of its plants, only to find that the shady spots are either barren or that the plants growing there are unhappy.

DROUTH

"BUT I can't have a garden," says the little lady as she wistfully looks at the gay flowers pictured in the catalog. "Our water supply is limited and you know how it is."

More Prizewinners in the 1934 Better Homes Contest

Inside the Homes of Oberammergau

A GLIMPSE of Oberammergau, caught as we chugged into the valley by bus from Munich, was enough to set me to wondering how this toy hamlet, tucked in beside the winding, swiftly flowing Amer River among the Tyrolean Alps could possibly find accommodations for 6,000 additional souls.

Short-Cuts and Tips

THERE is a problem that is the same for the home Saturday-afternoon gardener and the one who wishes to have a garden at a shore, lake, or mountain resort.

Dine From Your Emergency Shelf

Bulbs

WITH the advent of spring, lengthening days, and the tangy smell of green things growing, tardy gardeners are invariably assailed with regrets. Nurserymen and seedhouses are besieged with letters and telephone calls-- "Have you any of those Heavenly Blue Grape-hyacinths?" "Can I plant tulips now?"

AMONG Ourselves

MRS. S. L. COLEMAN, Fountain Inn, South Carolina, wins the $10 in our Whims and Hobbies Contest. Here is her entry:

"We Create Beauty Ourselves"

RUPERT HUGHES lives on one of Hollywood's loveliest but busiest boulevards, so I was rather traffic-weary when I stepped up onto his cobblestone path. But there I forgot this hectic world instantly, for Silver Birch trees cast their playful shadows on the path, and as I came to the great carved door with an exquisite grille surrounding it, I sensed a mellowness in his home that comes to houses only after generations of humans have lived in them.

We Re-discover Ceilings

IN THE photograph below, take a good look at the ceiling. Notice it is darker than the sidewall-- nearly as dark as the floorcovering. Indeed, it is a very important decorative feature of the room. With the lush color scheme of rose to blue, the carpet pictured is dull rose, the ceiling a charming tone of robin's-egg blue, with touches of rose in the bedspread, white walls, and silver-with-blue wallpaper border.

Baby's Corner of the Room

IT ISN'T always possible for the new baby to have a room alone. What to do with his seemingly vast equipment then becomes a question.

Digging and Sowing

MARCH has awakened me with a call to garden arms. I fly to my trusty, and, I fear, rusty, rake. I fortify myself with sharpened spade.

An Ancient Partnership

THE above plant firm, known also as the Lichen (pronounced ly'ken) Company, existed ages before man appeared on the earth. For thousands of years-- perhaps for millions-- it has led a successful existence and has been responsible for the improvement of many a barren region.

New Lawns

Important News!

Parents' METHODS

WE HAVE done away with the wrangling so often incident to the appearance at mealtimes of improperly groomed children.

Light for the House on the Cover

ONE of the guiding principles of the country's leading illuminating engineers is that no source of light should be directly visible. Their aim in lighting a house is to simulate natural outdoor daylight, and, they point out, the best outdoor lighting prevails on a day when the sun is slightly obscured and we can see clearly and steadily without any feeling of eye strain such as is experienced in strong sunlight.

Flowers

A GOOD vegetable garden is something much to be admired, and it can be made beautiful; it can be landscaped, so to speak.

Let's Go to the Flower Show to Learn About Gardening

WHAT a place a flower show is to learn all about gardening-- the pleasures, the work, the gardeners themselves. No day is long enough, no physique sufficiently rugged, to take it all in in the time allotted. And this keeps up indefinitely. Even after nineteen years' contact and experience with flower shows, from the largest to the smallest, I still feel the same urge to see another.

No Substitute

SHOES! Kid Gloves! Purses! Traveling Bags and Suitcases! What would we do without leather?-- for here is something for which no substitute has ever been found.

He's an Artist with Cheese Fritters

TO RISE from a humble pastry shop in an obscure village in France, thru a gamut of apprenticeships in metropolitan hotels, and at last to land on one's feet in the exclusive and swanky Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-- truly, that's something!

April Smiles AND KITCHENS COME CLEAN

ALL confused and blusning are our kitchens-- and it's the candid April sun that has frolicked in and given them away. Those scowling pots and pans, small Son's smudges beside the door, the linoleum we've licked and promised for months-- there are simply dozens of sad-looking places just clamoring for brush, broom, and cleansing powder.

The Stories of the Prize Winners!

STARTING with a three-room house, we decided, after a little study, that we saw possibilities of converting our little house into an artistic small home; so we built on two rooms 16 by 18 feet and one 11 by 13 feet across the front of our old house, also a porch 7 by 13 feet.

"A Ring on That Certain Finger!"

Confessions of a Good Cook

Here's a bright thought for April cooks! Grated pineapple with plenty of juice is a big addition to plain white or yellow butter cake. Use it in place of the liquid called for and you have a brand new variation of an old stand-by.

Two Good Genii

EVERY reader of "The Arabian Nights" remembers the Genii, those powerful spirits who so miraculously influenced and directed the affairs of men. Today we also have good Genii whose achievements have been no less marvelous, the Genii of Science and Advertising.

Appliqué for Your Home

CHILDREN'S clothing, luncheon linens, quilts, and 'kerchiefs-- they've all sported homemade appliqué for years. Now something new turns up on the artcraft horizon --gay appliqué designs especially suited for wall-hangings, pillow tops, and table mats.

The Question Before the House

If end-matched flooring is purchased, whether inch or the thin three-eighth inch, and a quilt of good paper is laid atop the old floor, the new floor can be laid in the same direction with reasonable safety. Care should be taken that no peaks and valleys exist in the old floor, else the same peaks and valleys will be in the newly laid one.

Garden Toggery

WITH the out-of-doors season almost here, we realize a need for extra porch pillows of gay awning stripe that can be run up on the machine. The becoming gardening ensemble of sunbonnet and matching gauntlet-tops procurable for gloves is machine-made likewise-- so you see these all may be the work of one rainy afternoon.

ALONG THE Garden Path

WHY does everyone wish he could write a poem in springtime? We seem to be so full of joy --the ice gone, the trees bursting into leaf, the lawn has become a sheet of emerald tufts.