December 1950

Wrap it right for safer mailing

NEW--for your home

Antiques yon can use every day

These pretty up your kitchen

Have you heard the Latest Garden News?

Believe it or not, the aspidistra of Gracie Fields renown is making a comeback. Time was when this "Iron plant" graced the parlor of every home with any pretense to elegance. Today, however, it has a new use. It is being planted out of doors in the Gulf States and up into Arkansas as an ornamental. It forms thick mats of vigorous, dark green foliage, surviving in shade or full sun. Because of thick storage roots, it can stand drouth for weeks on end without wilting.

How to bettor a built-in

Christmas all through the house

What kind of memories are yon building?

Tomorrow it will be Christmas, and last night by the tree on the green, the carolers sang, "God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen." For a minute, under the Christmas lights, the traffic slowed, and there must have been many among the hurrying adults who thought as I did of another kind of Christmas long ago-- of truly silent nights when the stars stood calm and high in the planeless heavens; of Christmas Eve when you brought your own tree home from the forest; of sleigh bells ringing merrily in the frosted night.

NEW TOYS

Your house plants on parade

Mobile units are the answer if your window space is too limited for growing all the house plants you'd like. They're the solution if your sunny windows are too few. To make your window garden portable is a wonderful way of managing fresh arrangements of flowering plants from week to week through the winter.

1950 Cape Cod

No matter what the present public taste, the story-and-a-half traditional house will always be popular. And rightly so. It is more economical to build than a one-story house, you can get more floor space on a small lot, and you get the benefit of better air and more privacy in upstairs bed rooms.

Put your bedroom to better use!

By night, it's your bedroom. But by day it can be a sewing room, a study, a sitting room to call your own. Yes, even a 10x10-foot bedroom can be made more livable! The secret is to plan ahead.

Lamps make Christmas brighter0

Gifts your family can enjoy year round are the best gifts of all. So why not add lamps to your Christmas shopping list?

Achievement in simplicity

you can make your Dream kitchen come true

Give yourself a power workshop

Yon can entertain by push button

Candied orange peel--old-fashioned holiday treat

Slick tricks for Christmas

Add chopped parsley to the stew last minute. Sprinkle with paprika. It's a real Yuletide color combination. --Mrs. F. B. MacVicar, Kansas City, Missouri.

Fit furniture to the space

Your garage may offer room for good living

Storage where yon need it

Space is the most expensive ingredient in home building today. Our grandmothers could waste space by the roomful, but we treasure space as a good cook treasures a quart of beef stock.

Sheer curtains

If you haven't shopped for sheer curtains lately, you've a big surprise coming. Chances are you'll hardly recognize your store's curtain department. The shelves now are alive with color. You'll even see sheers in printed designs. And you'll find good news on the labels: "pre-shrunk," "fire-resistant," "no ironing necessary."

What to do with your roses now

Break up your utility room

It took a long while, but the basementless house has now been generally accepted as a practical idea. At any rate, 40 percent of you who built homes last year decided you didn't want below-ground space.

Are you homeless in a model house?

Does your house rule you and your family? Are you more interested in keeping the building you live in and the grounds around it shined and polished and trimmed than you are in having your children really enjoy their home? Do you find yourself saying "Stop!" all the time because you don't want things mussed up?

GIFT-TIME all through the house

Creak no more, my floor

Are we staking our future on a crop of sissies?

A few months ago Randolph B. Smith, noted educator and director of New York's Little Red Schoolhouse, was in Pennsylvania station seeing his sister, her husband, and their two children, 4 and 8, off to Boston. While they were waiting for the gates to be opened, the 8-year-old spotted, an escalator and raced off to take a ride. The 4-year-old ran after him.

Blueprint for a cozy kitchen

Kitchens are for living

Your dog and mine

Santa promised my 4-year-old son a dog. But I understand it's a little hazardous to take on a so-called winter puppy. Is that right?-- W. W. K., Virginia.

Article

December Garden Guide

Sow hardy flowering annuals in the Middle and Upper South; you may take a chance with half-hardy ones, but it's worth the risk because of good success from early plants. This is the best time to plant sweet peas.

Doors that say Merry Christmas

The diary of a plain dirt gardener

Dec. 1 Bright, shiny, chilly, and here I be, with a touch of flu or something as hangover from the trip that Maggie and I made just recently up to Chicago. Took medicine regular like, and mebbe I've licked my trouble.

Give your home a holiday gift

The MAN NEXT DOOR

A wise government counsels us against waste. At this gift season, be it known to my relatives and friends that my shirt size is 14½, pajamas B, socks 10, and I am five years overstocked on ash trays and loud geometric neckties.