July 1952

What's it like to build a home?

Building a house is something like having a baby. Broadly speaking, it's the same experience for every family, but individually, each case is unique. Yet when you mention the disturbing variations and problems of your own experience, your doctor or a friend says in astonishment, "Why, I could have told you that if you had asked me."

What's wrong with this family?

Four problem spots, and four ways out

Summer shade no problem here

Pleasant and desirable as shade can be in hot weather, it can mean dissatisfaction for the home gardener. If your plants are where sunbeams filter through, or where they get direct sun at least part of the day, you may have nothing but praise. Where low-hanging branches of beeches, maples, or other trees with heavy foliage cast shade too dense for grass, you may complain.

HOW-TO for the handyman

More fun in your bark yard

How about your small fry-- do they live for the day when you find time to take them to the park? With a few pieces of homemade play equipment, you can bring the thrills of the park to your own back yard. Here, you'll find simplified designs for basic pieces of play equipment, plus some new ones.

Decorative ideas you'll want to use

"We found it in Colonial Williamsburg!"

This trim, tan-colored frame house lacks electric lights, plumbing, and a stepsaving kitchen. Not the usual thing we show in Better Homes & Gardens. More than that, it's 200 years old, one of the oldest in Virginia. But nevertheless, it houses a score of practical ideas you can use in your home, whether you lean toward Colonial decoration or not.

How, when, how much to water

This month and next is the time it pays to remember that your plants can't keep up steady growth without a ready supply of water.

Yon can't beat a summer porch

Want your summer living to be easier and a great deal breezier? If you are fond of the pleasures of outdoor living, but don't take to its discomforts, you need a porch.

Set your table out of doors

Comfort and economy do mix!

This Five Star home (from Burlington, Vermont) is the product of a good plan. It provides comfortable living for a family of three or four. Yet it has only 1,000 square feet!

Even prettier than you dreamed!

Balanced backgrounds work magic

Kitchen planned for family living

Comfortable, colorful pillows

Have a half-dozen around the house as color accents to give rooms a lift. Put them everywhere-- in corners of the sofa, easy chairs, porch chairs, the studio couch, and even on the floor. Then there'll always be a pillow within reach when you snooze on the sofa or stretch out for casual conversation.

Midsummer buffet Cool as a breeze

Your table is set where the air is garden-fresh on the porch or terrace. Your buffet supper is equally refreshing-- delightful to see, delicious to eat. The good recipes are from your Better Homes & Gardens Summer Cook Book with its many ideas for warm-weather meals. This is just the opener. Turn the pages to find new ways with ever-popular baked beans, cool salad plates, famous sandwiches to make a meal, dress-ups with ice.

Cooks' Round Table of Endorsed Recipes

Cooks' Round Table of Endorsed Recipes

What air conditioners can do for you

Do you linger in an air-cooled shop just a little longer on a hot summer day or take refuge in an air-conditioned theater? Why not have that same comfort in your own home? Your family can be cool during summer's soaring temperatures, live in a healthful atmosphere all year.

A-plus for practicality

Wash your car in 10 minutes

Seven bad weeds

The best way to keep your lawn weed-free is to grow grass so healthy that weeds are crowded out.

JULY GARDEN REMINDERS: Now's the time to . . .

Feed everblooming roses when main bloom is past. Check undersides of nasturtium leaves for colonies of black aphids. Spray with lindane as directed on container-- or use nicotine sulfate at rate of 1¼ teaspoonfuls per gallon of soapy water.

How to make pillows

Today's pillows are easy to sew. Make two or three in one afternoon! In putting together the simple shapes you see here, we found that each can be made in about an hour.

Have you heard the Latest Garden News?

A bush variety of Buttercup squash has been developed, making that vegetable practical for the home garden. The vining kind took so much space that only a man with half an acre could spare room to grow it.

The diary of a Plain dirt gardener

July 1 Tuesday-- and terrifically hot. The roses are all in beautiful bloom, and other flowers, too.

Your pet and mine

A cool preview of August

When the August sun is high, you'll want to head for the largest patch of shade in the yard, sit down, sip a lemonade, and forget all the work you should be doing.

CONTEST FOR COOKS

THIS MONTH'S contest pays $70 for baked-pudding recipes and variety-meat fix-ups. You have 21 chances to win a prize. Cook-of-the-month will be mailed $10. The 20 other winners will receive $3. Eight of the winning recipes will be pictured in Cooks' Round Table next February.

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

You want to know how to get along with a husband, ma'am? How to reform him, make him gentle and sweet, bend him to your will? Pamper him.