April 1952

I'll take my Modern in moderation

I had come into the furniture store merely to buy a coffee table, and here I stood, beset lay conflicting periods of design. On my left were acres of stuffy-looking brunette pieces all labeled Duncan Phyfe, who never made a coffee table in his life. On my right was a jetsam of blonde orange crates called sideboards; canvas slings on iron frames called chairs; and pale, polished slabs on stilts called tables.

WHAT'S NEW IN Home furnishings?

You're going to feel right at home with the new furniture you'll soon be seeing in the stores in your town. Why? Because furniture designers have been carefully studying the way we live and the way we like to live. The new furniture is designed for a home, not a showroom.

How you grow mums and delphiniums

Hydrocortisone

The chances are ten thousand to one you haven't heard of hydrocortisone (or "Compound F"), but the odds are the same that you are affected by it right now. Better still, let's raise the odds to more than two billion to one, for that's the estimated number of human beings on earth, and that's exactly the number of persons who are directly affected by hydrocortisone, whether they know it or not.

Gates von tan make

Wake up your Breakfast corner

How to get a home that lets yon take it easy

Be comfortable and relax. That's the trend today. There are fewer unlived-in living rooms, and more family rooms. There are more places where a man can put his feet on the furniture and the kids can eat a hamburger. But most important is a new attitude about choice of furnishings. This month we've furnished three rooms using some of the newest developments. Here's a summary of ideas you can use to make jour home an easier place to live:

They live among the treetops

Would you build a house that clings to the side of a hill? More people are doing it every day for dramatic beauty, for privacy, for a closer relationship with natural surroundings often brought right into the house with big windows.

There's beauty in sincere economy

Flowers the first year

YOU don't want to wait, nobody does, once you've finished with the digging and the building. The moves you make to get quick bloom are the same whether it's a border, a wall, or a whole new garden you want to plant.

The secret behind smart windows

Ten memorable days in Pennsylvania

The toll collector on the towering suspension bridge from Philadelphia to Camden, New Jersey, took a look at the Connecticut license plates on the car, and at the suntanned family inside-- father, mother, and two children.

Vegetables-the six best for you to grow

Luscious tomatoes are No. 1 for growing at home. Ripened on the vine, they're something you cannot buy. They challenge oranges with their vitamin C content. They provide the meal-planner with suchvari- ety-- juice; appetizer; salad; stuffed, fried, or baked as a main dish; soup, preserves; paste; catsup; and end-of-the-season chili sauce

Are yon looking for a home like this?

In the planning of any home, certain features which every home must have are regularly included. But the quality of the house is told in the special features the designer has included, features that give the owner something extra in better living.

Background color pulls your home together

Quick ways to clean your house for spring

A glamour finish for your Easter ham

Silver chest storage idea

Dollar-saving ideas

With good care most appliances will give you years and years of trouble-free service. But good care is important. It can eliminate one call to the serviceman out of every four and one repair bill out of every four. Here are tips for you to check:

We're ready to help you...

Decorating with a hobby

Stories of beloved dish patterns

Lovely dinnerware patterns tell fascinating stories. History, tradition, customs, artistic craftsmanship are interwoven in each. The patterns shown here are open stock, will always be available.

You can protect your

If you knew the Murrays-- Ethel and Tom-- you'd probably feel that they're pretty good parents. Eight-year-old Donald Murray thinks so. His folks never lose their tempers when he's slow or makes a mistake. They never punish him, even when he does something that displeases them. Donald knows his parents will stand up for him always, whether he's right or wrong. And they're never too busy to help him with his homework or to spare him from unpleasant tasks.

This holds your painting supplies

Do you have paint cans, brushes, solvents, and other painting equipment scattered through your garage and basement? Here is a handy paint cabinet you can build to bring all the paraphernalia together.

Your house needs a spring checkup

Three ways to help your baby burp

Try this picture-hanging idea

What's happening to fathers?

Watch Joe Bates coming home from work. His shoulders are back, his hat is at a jaunty angle, and his eyes are bright as he reviews the day's accomplishments. He has just landed a fine contract-- $100,000 of advertising space, signed on the dotted line. Joe's a crack salesman and takes off his hat to nobody else in his field.

Here's an entertaining built-in

You can check your own brakes

New helpers around the house

Repackage that king-size living space

Life in a garage

If this period of emergency housing and high building costs lasts much longer, we are going to need a new definition for "garage."

From garage into permanent home

Wallpaper adds individuality

Garage into living-bedroom

Three ways to use space you don't have

Chores won't make a man of him

In Grandmother's day, chances are, the family lived on a farm or in a small town and everyone had to help if all of the tasks necessary for daily living were to be performed.

Yon can make your corners count

Choose Royally

It won't cost a fortune

Furnishing a small house attractively and comfortably on a tight budget calls for an over-all plan, a sharp shopping eye, and the ability to say "no" to everything outside your plan and your budget. If you are uncertain, you may be money ahead to take your problems to a decorator, who is a professional home-furnishings planner and shopper.

Your pet and mine

Garage, into home, into garage

If you plan to build your home yourself, a wonderfully practical first step can be to build a garage, then live in it while you're building the house. That's what we did. In building such a garage-home, you will have an opportunity to test your building ideas. You will learn by practice the techniques of building. Best of all, living on the site, you can take advantage of every spare minute to work on your permanent house without wasting time in travel to and from the project.

Do you have your Five Star home plan book?

Garage into home at rock-bottom cost

Make-it-yourself ideas

New way to wash wool blankets

These balmy spring nights, heavy blankets stay folded at the foot of the bed. Looks like it's time to put them away. Moths like nothing better than munching on soiled wool, so the first step is to get your blankets clean. If the label says "dry-clean only," follow that good advice.

Give your back door new appeal

Time was when only the milkman, the man who read the meter, and the next-door neighbors saw the back of your house. They were the only ones who knew about the mop, the stack of old flowerpots, the battered garbage can, and often the litter of cans and trash.

Sharpen your lawn

Crisp, clean edges around any home make it easier to care for, make it look better. Good edges between paths, lawn, flower beds, and areas with definite division lines add distinction to your whole plan.

APRIL GARDEN REMINDERS

Pick off dead leaves from your iris plants before the new leaves get too big. Root slips from coleus, iresine, and other house plants now. Plant in border next month.

Latest Garden News?

Except for its name, the new Peron tomato from the Argentine has much to commend it. It is being recommended as the "sprayless tomato" because of its relatively high degree of resistance to disease.

Garden clinic

How-to Helps

Home Furnishings Ideas-- big new edition of exciting ideas for your home-- straight from the home-decorating experts of America's Number One home magazine. Still just $1. (Canada, $1.25.)

Protect your investment in new trees

It takes about two years to establish a newly planted tree. You've only lost valuable time, and a sizable amount of money, if you fail to support the ones you transplant until they are thriving, and their root systems are anchored firmly enough to withstand wind.

The diary of a Plain dirt gardener

April I It is trying to rain at this precise minute when I should be sallying forth. So with my old corncob pipe lit, maybe I should just cogitate.

Famous TYLER ROSES

How to get a low-cost fence

Books for your home

It's NEWS to me!

KRILIUM--a promising chemical that may banish soil problems

By this time next year-- when it will be widely available to the home gardener-- it's a good bet you'll be considering Krilium as the answer to one or more of your soil problems.

Garden Clinic

Q Can you suggest a way I can interest my children in growing plants and flowers indoors or out?

Just for fun--A living-kitchen

How to "TAKE IT EASY"

These leading department stores in your area will be featuring ideas galore from Better Homes & Gardens on how to "Take it easy" ...there will be demonstrations, displays, lectures, and literature, with literally hundreds of easy-living ideas and hints. All with one purpose in mind-- to help you save time, labor, and money.

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

The seed catalogs this year are more alluring than ever. Hut they don't fool me; much experience teaches that you simply can't have tomatoes that large, strawberries that luscious, or roses that spectacular --without a certain amount of work.