October 1949

There's lots of storage in a small dining room

More mileage, less cost

Just as swabbing merthiolate on a skinned knee is sometimes the difference between healing and blood poisoning, squeezing a radiator hose in your fingers is sometimes the difference between a five-minute repair in the shop and a breakdown miles from nowhere.

What's new in home furnishings

Furniture Everything new seems to be a double-purpose space-saver! Many pieces have ingenious space for storage, sitting, or sleeping, or serve a double purpose. Low cocktail tables grow up to dining height; night stands have special places for your eyeglasses and the control box of your electric blanket; even that Gay Nineties favorite, the bed that folds into a bookcase, is back with a modern innerspring mattress.... In woods, cherry is coming back; knotty pine is sliced into veneers which seem like a miracle to anyone who's ever blunted his whittlin'. knife on a pine knot....

Do you get a quick, clean blaze?

School can wait!

"Our Jimmy had a perfect attendance record last year," Jimmy's mother smiled affably and went on with her knitting. "He never missed a single day of school!"

Cabinet bed

How-to for the handy man

Never say a kitchen is hopeless!

A small bay pays big dividends

It's NEWS to Me!

Every dollar works overtime in Better Homes & Gardens

In California's fertile San Fernando Valley there's a new crop-- a crop of small Ranch-type houses that grades A-1 for quality of design, good construction, and low cost. To make available to you the advantages built into these houses, Better Homes & Gardens has chosen one of them as Five Star Home No. 1910.

What every husband should know about sterility

Dr. X, a prominent New York surgeon, was 42 when they called him up for active duty with the army. Although he had been married 20 years, he was childless. He and his wife had decided it was "one of those things." Fifteen years before, they had given up hope of ever having children.

How to build Color Schemes

There's nothing deep, mysterious, or technical about creating and assembling color schemes. Successful color schemes are often based on the colors in a fabric, a wallpaper design, a good painting, or a carpet. Here's why-- and it's really no secret at all. The artist who created your favorite painting and the people who design good quality fabrics and wallpaper are color experts. They are masters in the art of combining colors. So if you use a multicolored fabric as the basis of your color scheme, all you have to do is to follow the designer's lead; study the colors he has used, and use them in your room.

Remodel your grounds when you remodel your house

You can do a lot with tulips

Remember your old "magic set" and the wonderfully colored brews you mixed? And the surprises, and the fun? Today you'll find there's greater magic in tulips and even more gorgeous and beautiful colors packed away in their sleek brown bulbs.

Rooms that say-"Come in and relax"

Twin windows seven ways

When you plan your house use a compass

You can buy most of the comfort that can be built into a house. But nature-- sun, wind, view-- you have to take as you find it.

ABCs of flower arrangement

Here's how to wash in an automatic

Just what does an automatic washer do? That's simple. It does the hard work of washday. And what do you do? That's simple, too. You set the dial, put in the clothes, and take them out later-- clean and damp-dry.

These Christmas gifts easy to make

You can make gifts exactly right for each person on your Christmas list. And for very little money, too. Create gifts like those at the right, without patterns, from simple materials around the house or in the stores. Or order partially made items, which come in kits including embroidery floss and all materials needed to finish them (except stuffing for dolls). The dolls and items below show some of the semimades available, and how they look when completed.

Your recipe may win a prize

This month's contest offers $70 for spring veal or lamb recipes and custards. First prize is $10; 20 other prizes are $3 each.

Quick snacks for unexpected guests

Banana Milk Shake

Hang dish towels where yen need them

As simple a thing as a towel can be a vexation. Either it's not right where you want it, or it's not dry enough to use. Hang a kitchen towel correctly and it adds an attractiveplus to the room, saves you steps.

Men's recipe winners

We didn't know you men were such good cooks until we invited you to enter a recipe contest! Your recipes were all so good we had a job singling out the top 22. For every winner, there were a half-dozen close contenders.

Quick main dishes with dried beef

Creamed dried beef is easy to fix. You can have it ready for the table in the time it takes you to make a simple white sauce. You can dress it up with different flavors and foods or just serve it plain.

Where do you put vegetables and fruit?

Bookshelves designed for men

When a man designs his own bookshelves, he has usefulness and practicality in mind. The shelves may fill a wall or a corner (if he has a lot of books) or they may take only a few feet of space. A man's design may include a desk for after- hours work or an easy chair for evening reading.

Quilt it yourself

You can achieve the custommade smartness of quilted slipcovers and bedspreads with your own sewing machine. It's fun to do, and you'll be surprised how fast the work goes.

Buy your roses this fall

Place your rose order for fall or early spring delivery-- preferably fall delivery, even though you plant in spring. You will get freshly dug plants and they will likely be the best plants.

How to butcher a good house

Every good house is built around one key architectural feature. You may think you know what was important to the architect in designing the house, but there's a good chance you'll fail to read his mind if you try to modify a house yourself to fit your family, leaving your house without character and just another house.

Smart place mats for your table

Place mats you make suit your table. That's because you choose colors and designs that enhance your dishes.

Know your abrasives

The next time you tackle a smoothing or finishing job around the house, don't just ask your dealer for sandpaper.

Rescue your worn rug with iron-on binding

How to reupholster your dining-room chairs

Don't kill your youngster's curiosity

Your boy or girl was born with the fresh and curious eye of an explorer. From the beginning he reached out to touch, to see, to hear, to smell, to taste his world!

Pretty, practical bedroom

How to use a circular saw

Usually the first power tool a serious amateur craftsman buys is the circular saw. It has a fast-moving circular blade, with teeth around the edge, and it is the one machine best suited for sawing a perfectly straight line.

If you really want them to be Leaders

As a parent with a normal ambition for your boy and girl, you no doubt would like to see him in the select company of those who run things. How is such a place achieved? What, if anything, can you do to help-- or hinder?

Find out what's under the surface

It may have been the name of the place: It certainly wasn't the looks of the house that sold us on Roast Meat Hill, Killingsworth, Connecticut.

Your basement holds more living room

More house for less money

How can you get more house for less money? That question, in one form or another, at this moment is on architects' drawing boards, engineers' slide rules, and businessmen's calculating machines.

Plant evergreens now

What a report card really means

Thinking back to your own school days, do you remember how you felt when you brought your report card home? If your marks were high, were you elated, expecting praise, and disappointed if your parents did not give it? If your marks were low, did you drag home from school slowly, afraid of a scolding or punishment?

Side chairs can be comfortable

Why put up with stiff, ungainly side chairs? You can make them more comfortable and more attractive with padded slipcovers. The kind of wadding you use for quilts provides the padding. A few yards of material will make the covers.

Are you a city sucker?

On the day the first robin came to town last spring, the United States Senate was tied up by a filibuster, the State Department was negotiating the Atlantic Pact, and there was a fresh crisis in Berlin. The editor of Ed Turner's local newspaper, though, had still bigger news. He spread it across eight columns: "Council Okays Sales Tax Starting March 15."

Dramatize your walls

Picture groupings are your answer for wall spaces which are too big or too bare. Space that might dwarf one picture will gain new drama when it holds a group of engravings or watercolors.

Are you style-wise?

See how to get a better home

Your dog and mine

Have a veterinarian give your dog an antidistemper inoculation when the dog is 3 months old, and another a year later. Also feed your dog good, nutritious food. Well-nourished dogs either escape distemper entirely or are able to survive even the worst onslaughts of the disease.

For a greener spring put your lawn to bed

How to get plans of Five Star homes

The stores listed below operate permanent Home Planning Centers, featuring the Better Homes & Gardens Five Star Plan Service. At each store you can obtain advice and assistance, without cost, in planning, building, furnishing, and equipping your new home, or remodeling your present home.

OCTOBER GARDEN GUIDE

Plant English ivy now; it's the best month of all for setting this plant out. Give ivy a good watering. Plant hardy annuals about the time of the first killing frost; this means early October in our mountains, late October in the Upper South, early November in the MiddleSouth.

Cleveland gets a rose garden

The Cleveland Rose Society has proved two things which will interest anyone who is eager to beautify his community. One is that even a small group in a large city can carry out a worthwhile civic improvement project. The other is that an elaborate project isn't necessary to win a first prize in the Better Homes & Gardens More Beautiful America competition.

The diary of a plain dirt gardener

Yesterday I sorta hated to see September go. But somehow, today it was good to see October come. Warm, dry, everything pleasant outside. Shrubs and trees beginning to don colorful coats. Mums blooming in the garden-- but not so good as I wish they might be.

How to plant your tulips step by step

Prepare your plants now for winter beauty

Buy a HOME not a LAWSUIT

The deed that comes with your lot can bring you either freedom to enjoy your home-- or lawsuits, trouble with neighbors, and insecurity.

Are you style-wise?

how-to helps

Cook Book Holder-- 101-- This sturdy metal holder comes in red- and-white plaid to match your Better Homes & Gardens Cook Book. Holds it at the right angle for reading while you prepare your recipes. Folds for easy storage. Only 80c.

Transplanting a house

There are houses in your city that you can buy for $2,000 or less. You can find them at the edge of commercial districts, along the proposed routes of new streets, or where new factories or public buildings will be built.

Through the Shops

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

The father down the street, who was quarterback at Princeton 20 years ago, has just found out why he can't pass a football so far as his high-school son can. "Since my day," he admits, "they have decreased the football's girth, and just the reverse has happened to me."