April 1949

Take-home ideas from historic Williamsburg gardens

Colonial Williamsburg, as restored, is a flash back in good American living. Far better than the movies could do it for us in technicolor and sound, it revises all our thinking about what living was like for families of those days.

Aureomycin it fights germs penicillin won't

You can take this newest miracle drug by mouth-- without shots and without bad reactions. It may speed your recovery and get you out of the hospital sooner. And it may open prospects for all-out war on viruses like colds and polio

What's the home-financing picture today?

The answer, briefly, is that there is no shortage of money for home-financing. But you can expect interest rates to rise this year, perhaps ½ of 1 percent, and your application for a loan will be inspected more critically than similar requests made a year ago, or two years ago.

When baby switches to a cup

Even if you're ready to throw away his bottles or call it a day with breast-feeding, maybe your baby isn't. Here's how you can help him like it

Spark up your dressing table

Spring hints for the handy man

New product deadlier than DDT

Squash resists

Pelleted seeds suffer in dry soil

Like a florist's spray

I hated housework till...

I found the hidden me that wasn't fulfilled by running a home. As a child, I had fun because I hadn't yet become a specialist. I wrote stories, painted, played baseball, did whatever I had an urge to do. When I became a homemaker, I let housework take up most all my time and soon began to hate it. The many-sided child in me, the hidden me, gasped with boredom.

It's NEWS to Me!

Steam iron and dry iron all in one, the new Steam-O-Matic has a built-in funnel for easy filling. The same thermostat sets the heat for steam and dry ironing; the amount of heat regulates the amount of steam. The iron furnishes a steady flow of steam, even when standing on the heel rest for steaming velvet.

THAT $300,000,000 GIFT TO OUR SCHOOLS...

In April 1948 the United States Senate passed the Federal Aid to Education Bill. That bill-- if it had passed the House-- would have granted $300,000,000 a year to the states to help grade and high schools. Each state was to receive $5 a year for each child between 5 and 17; and the rest-- about $250,000,000-- was to go largely to the below-standard schools of the poorer states.

The man next door will envy you

Prove you're a showman. The secret of smash color effects is not in what your flowers cost, but in which stands next to what

Plant flowering shrubs for Most bloom--least work

Either way you look at it, flowering shrubs give you a plus. The flowers are a bonus if your first need is for a hedge or greenery about the house to soften hard lines. Their foliage and good outlines are a big extra if your main aim is to have a display of flowers held up where they show best.

When you plan your house, Build into your setting

The best looking house you can build is one that seems to have been designed specifically for its lot. The setting can be a background against which your house will stand out. Or the house can be designed to blend into its setting.

How to see the Rockies in 2 weeks

Horace Greeley wasn't necessarily thinking of your family when he said, "Go west." But few suggestions offered since will be more helpful when you ask yourselves, "Where shall we spend our vacation this year?" If you have ever visited any part of the vast scenic wonderland of which the Rockies are the backbone, you will want to see more of it. And if the Rockies are new to you, any one of the three trips I'm suggesting will prove as memorable a vacation as your family's ever had.

Here's the house you asked for--a Five Star home that is Low cost and livable

The home you see on these pages was chosen as Better Homes & Gardens Five Star Home No. 1904 not because it's the cheapest house you can build. It isn't. But it gives you as much livability for the price as any you will find.

Heated by the sun

There's a forecast of the future in the way this unusually designed home controls solar heat

Color Schemes from your carpet

Gone is the false idea that your rug or carpet binds you to one color scheme. We prove to you here that there's new life for that rug or carpet of yours, and a brilliant future for any rug or carpeting you plan to buy.

Ways to use odds and ends of dishes

Do you have odds and ends of old family dishes you would like to use? Is your best set of china incomplete? Have you broken some cups, can't replace them? Pictures show you what to do.

More Beautiful America Competition

The fourth More Beautiful America Competition of Better Homes & Gardens has been judged and the winners selected. Although this is the fourth such competition, judging each one has always been a deep and revealing look into the heart of America.

Your kitchen isn't any older than what's in it

New in the kitchen are the cabinets, equipment, bar, tile, paper. No doors or windows were moved, no structural changes made

Smart cook!

Cash in on your best recipes

Pies and vegetables are the money-making recipes in this month's contest. There are 21 prizes to try for: first prize of $10, and 20 prizes of $3 each.

How to wash and iron curtains

Now is the time for spanking-clean curtains at your windows to match the sparkle of the house you've cleaned. Here are some tips which will help you do a professional curtain washing and ironing job, so your curtains will hang straight, and look crisp and bright.

Partitions organize dresser-drawer space

Electric night stand

Pickle liquor left

Onion odor on your hands?

You can improve your home with picture windows

Like any other innovation, picture window often are misused. Many houses have picture windows, but nothing to see outside; others have picture windows out of proportion to the rest of the house.

Discipline without dithers

How do schoolteachers keep large classes of youngsters under control when it's hard enough to manage a single boy or girl at home?

Include your garage in your garden plans

Don't let your gardening stop this side of the garage. Too many people treat their garages as they once did their woodsheds-- places necessary for hiding things but to be otherwise ignored.

Your paintbrushes

When you buy good paintbrushes, you are making a sound investment. Bargain brushes are the most expensive, for they cause painting failures.

We put our wood lot in our house

Eight years ago we bought a run-down farmhouse in the foothills of the Berkshire mountains near .Albany, New York, for $2,000. With it went 45 acres of tillable land, and 15 acres of wood lot.

How to set your table

You can have a smart table with either elaborate settings or the most inexpensive accessories. The trick is neatness: knives and forks, plates and glasses lined evenly with each other and with the edge of the table.

Room for improvement

It's better to have too much room than not enough

How to cover a counter with linoleum

Following this step-by-step guide, you can give your kitchen counters, new or old, a long-lasting surface at low cost

Flowering hormone found

Draintile for celery works two ways

The secret of 2,4-D has been cracked

Plant Logan beans thickly

Bring your storage space up to date

How good an amateur architect are you?

You're pretty good, you amateur architects. From the number of errors you've found in plans the past months, you've proved yourselves adept at planning houses. But how good are you at remodeling?

PRESS for sewing perfection

Your sewing can look professional if you press carefully and often. Here is the simple equipment you will need and how to use it

A 12 by 12 room does four jobs

HERE'S a room 12 feet by 12 feet that gives a four-star performance. It's in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry L. McIntyre, Palo Alto, California.

Bowls you'll need for flower arranging

ARE YOU training YOUR DAUGHTER TO BE A wife?

In the small town where I grew up, a lumber company issued a series of calendars called "Courtship and the Joys of Marriage." One of the courtship sequence showed a young couple seated at safely distant ends of a canoe. The young man, in white flannels, gazed dreamily toward the young lady, in white organdy, who was trailing her fingers through the water. Throughout the year we watched this same handsome couple exchanging a chaste kiss beneath a wedding bell of roses, being gondolaed through Venetian canals (the honeymoon), clasping hands as they gazed into the fire (baby coming), and ultimately romping with their cherubs through a storybook cottage.

Problem children are passe

If you're saying, "I just don't know what to do with Johnny!" you'll find help here in the advice of Dr. Daniel A. Prescott, who refuses to believe that kids are naturally mean and uncooperative. Because of his crusade, your boy or girl has a better chance of being understood at school and, if you'll read this, at home

Budget furniture you can buy now

How to make a backache go away

Four thousand backs aching in unison! Quite an array of twinges and pains, to be sure. But that's just about the typical backache score on the average day in the average community of 100,000 people. And all because prehistoric man insisted on walking on two legs instead of all four.

The electric drill

With it you can draft electricity for almost every handy-man job, from drilling a hole to shining a car

What you should know about Rugs and carpets

Your rug can set the color scheme and the atmosphere of your room (page 50) so choose the rug with care. You can change the colors in your upholstery, slipcovers, and walls easily, but you'll want to use the same rug for years. A good quality rug is never overspending if you get what you want. If you're in the market for a rug, stop, look, and consider these pointers before you go shopping.

The story of a house

We made our dream house from a 47-year-old bargain

John and I were married in depression years, and when the chance came to buy a 47-year-old house on a lot 50 by 150 feet for $1,500, we took it. It was a square house with a high hipped roof, an outside basement entrance, and a basement that was not cemented. Siding and windows were beyond repair; even the glass panes were not square. Roofing and downspouts needed to be replaced.

How to stop ROT

You can apply new wood preservatives by brush, spray, or dip. You can paint over them. They curb fungi and boring insects

How good is panel heating?

Not very, say skeptics. We like it, say those who have lived with it

Your dog and mine

The cloak of vanity

APRIL GARDEN GUIDE

Move house plants to a shady spot outdoors when frost danger is past Repair garden walks

Diary of a Plain dirt gardener

April 1 No foolin', I surely put in a busy afternoon. My routine affairs having arranged themselves, I took part of the afternoon off and went for a visit to the marts of trade-- garden trade, that is. And the results of my wandering will disclose what is on the mind of this old-fogey gardener.

See these before you plant

Never think that the rules for putting in a good foundation planting are rigid

Make the most of your spring bulbs

One of the charms of spring bulbs is that they are all set to greet you when the first warm sun returns. If you planted well last fall you can neglect them in the spring and still have bloom. Nevertheless, your crocus, tulips, narcissus, and other spring bulbs will give you a much better show if you give them a little extra help.

Evergreens

How to choose them How to plant them How to care for them

Your vegetable Garden step by step

There's no magic to vegetable growing-- here's how you can do it, too

Through the Shops

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

This is the twentieth April in a row when I've vowed to remember to buy a foot scraper shaped like a dachshund for the side door. What's held me back is probably the fear that after I had it I wouldn't like it.