April 1948

YOU, chairman of the board

A WRITER named Dorothy Forbes sent us an article the other day. The gist of the article was that in your home you are the boss. You are the chairman of the board, the captain of the ship, the head man.

You make three cushions, you get new furniture

Grease job makes your home run easier

9 ways to get the most from outdoor living

Cover lamp shades to match your draperies

GIVE your home a decorator's touch with lamp shades that match your drapery material. Any sun-fast drapery remnant or sturdy curtaining is perfect for a trimly tailored shade like this one by Decorator Peggy Sloan. Stitch your shade to the frame, so it can be washed by simply dunking it into suds.

A new wall can give yon a new room

Garden clinic

Built-ins

FRANKLY, we're sold on built-ins. The families who own them-- we've talked with hundreds-- are nearly all enthusiastic. But this is no guarantee that they'll work miracles for you. Before you give your movable furniture to the junkman, take a good look at your own home, your family, and your way of living.

How to keep your borders in Continuous bloom

How to bring the old back yard to life

Less time for housework--More time for living

Who told YOU you could drive?

BUT for the grace of God-- and perhaps in spite of it-- you might be Royce Smith. (Anyway, the name is a disguise.) You're 30 (or 35 or 40), personable, energetic, outrageously healthy, the owner of a flourishing new business, it so happens, in a small California city. Married, you have one young son. are buying a home and a '48 sedan.

20 ways to be a better driver

Color schemes for your north, south, east, west rooms

HAVE you ever noticed how brilliant your blue suit looks in the sunlight? Yet on a cloudy day it turns to a dull gray-blue, and under artificial light it nearly loses its color completely.

Not much ground--But every inch a garden

House with an extra room

NEARLY everyone who builds a home would like to have a "family room"-- a room planned to stand up under the hard knocks of youngsters or oldsters at play, a room that demands as little housekeeping attention as possible.

Give your living-room furniture a shove

When you remodel--You don't have to tear up your house

IF YOUR house needs remodeling, think before you act. Extensive alterations call for a lot of tearing down before the building up begins. You can spend a lot of dollars before you have anything to show for them.

Perfect scrambled eggs

Help yourself--good food!

Ways to cook and serve asparagus

Smoked picnic shoulder

SMOKED picnic shoulder gives you ham flavor at less cost. Have the meatman saw off the hock end. Then bake the rest according to your favorite baked ham recipe. Glazed and clove -studded, it looks like a miniature whole ham (see below).

A picture dictionary of Words you use in recipes

Do you make the most of your toaster?

Cook's contest

CALLING all cooks! Our November recipe contest opens now. We've $70 waiting for your Stuffed Meats and Cranberry Surprises-- $10 for the best one and $3 each for the 20 close contenders.

How to use those Great big cups

JUMBO cups-- you're seeing them in so many stores these days. What fascinating pieces they are! But how to use them? For a special cup for the man of the house, of course-- for a man-sized cup of coffee at breakfast or any meal. At parties for hot chocolate or for popcorn bowls. You fill 'em up and they stay filled awhile, to save hostess-trotting.

Bring spring into your home

Quickest food crops you can grow

IN ANY year, the early gardener pulls the first radish, but in this inflated food-cost year of 1948, you have a bigger incentive than ever to get going-- dollars and cents. The earlier you get started, the sooner you'll be eating green peas, tender beet tops, and succulent leaf lettuce and the like and telling the vegetable man that you'll see him next November

Four bags you can sew

Purse is envelope made of two contrasting-color felt strips, each 6 inches wide and 12 inches long. One strip makes the lining. Handle is 22 inches long and 1 inch wide. It's two strips-- one of each color-- stitched together. Fasten handle to purse by stitching ends into side seams as you make envelope. A snap fastener holds purse closed.

Icelandic recipe

One-dish meals can bowl them over

DO YOU have a tureen? Or a large covered bowl, or a pretty casserole with a cover and matching platter? Then use it the way Fay Miller uses her tureen-- for serving almost everything!

Party food for teen-agers

TEEN-AGERS are the most satisfactory folks I know to invite to our house. Entertainment? You don't need any. Everybody knows everybody else. Teen-agers entertain themselves.

How to make a lantern

DECORATIVE lanterns aren't hard to make. They take little material, and can be as simple or elaborate as your patience will allow.

Inside windows double as walls

You can cover it with FELT

How to wallpaper

IF YOU'VE never done any wallpapering, you've missed a lot of fun. It's less tiring than painting, goes faster, and is as easy to do. You can do it alone, but it goes three times as fast if you put your wife to work.

Are you doing as much for peace as you did for war?

ONLY two weeks before the great, shy John G. Winant shot himself, he asked us all a question. "Are you," he said, "doing as much today for peace as you did for this country and civilization in the days of war? I'm not."

Try this with your hard-to hang pictures

That ensemble look

Three-in-one room

To get that comfortable look

Sleep one in your living room

NOTES FROM A PSYCHOLOGIST'S SCRAPBOOK

Just wipe it clean

YOU don't have to worry about muddy feet on your easy chair if it's covered with one of two coated fabrics now in stores.

Garage porch can mean years of fun

I'VE heard that porches are going out of style. Not with me. In my part of the country-- Melrose, Massachusetts-- a porch is almost a necessity. And if that porch isn't screened, it's no good at all.

What's in your doorway?

Don't curtain a picture window

Scrapbook of well-dressed windows

Prescription for baby--love, and more love

ONE of the nicest and wisest things the baby doctors have done in recent years was to tell parents that their babies needed to be loved.

We cultivate the neighbors' kids!

WE WERE sitting in the car waiting for the moving van to get started, when up the street came old Mr. Brown, caning his way around puddles left by a cold winter rain. He stopped by our car, glowering at the huge van.

These repairs are on the house

The handy man

To lubricate hard-to-get-at oil holes on machinery, bend a short length of wire to fit around obstructions. Place wire end in hole and let the oil run down the wire. Jack Zammikiel, Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.

Growth-regulator Chemicals

Oyster derby

A workroom of his own

I AM convinced that no boy (or man either, for that matter) should be without a room of his own.

Having trouble with your dog?

I want to clean my dogs teeth, to remove deposits and particles of food, so will you please tell me how and when it should he done? My friends make fun of me for wanting to do this. Am I wrong?-- E. H. B., Minnesota.

Cure your ailing window shades

HAVE you ever pulled down a window shade and had the roller land in your arms? Or have you yanked the cord only to have the shade hang limp and lifeless?

Imperial snow shoveler

How to build a shoe rack

APRIL GARDEN GUIDE

APRIL is the month in which to finish work with your dormant plants and start on growing things. Hardy annuals and vegetables can be planted as soon as your soil can be worked. Northern gardeners can harden their plants during the last 10 days in the coldframe. Plants then can stand some frost without injury. But don't harden your plants too much. Plants can become so toughened that they don't start growing for weeks after they are set out.

The diary of a Plain dirt gardener

April 3 Business matters brought be to Muncie, Indiana, this bright April morning. I stopped at the courthhouse to howdy with my old ... M. E. Cromer, the county agricultural extension agent. He avited me to attend the annual extension garden school being held. So I just up and went.

How to build a picnic table

The Bride's Groom

This city dump sprouted wings!

EACH year more than 100,000 people make a pilgrimage to Sumter, South Carolina, to a wonderland of beauty that, just a generation ago, was a community dump.

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Egad, it seems only three or four months ago that I was teaching my red-haired daughter of 16 how to drive the family car.