July 1996

Between friends

Personality Pieces

Unfinished furniture offers a clean slate where you can explore your artistic side. Let our easy ideas guide your brush. Your rooms will thank you for the added personality.

Recipes for Flower Arranging

Summer is no time for fussing over formal flower arrangements. A snip-and-stash approach makes imaginative use of ingredients on hand-- whatever is blooming in the yard displayed in creative containers found in the kitchen.

Quick-to-Stitch Quilt

Quilts make charming and artful focal points in a room-- which is why these stitched masterpieces are often loved for generations. You can try your hand at quilt-making using mail-order kits for the pinwheel quilt and matching pillow (right). From Designer's Ltd. and specially selected for the readers of Better Homes and Gardens magazine, each kit features pre-cut fabric triangles to make the projects quick and easy.

Editor's Note

College Search, '90s Style

Computer technology makes it easy and fun to check out schools, practice for the SAT, look into scholarships and financial aid, and even apply to colleges.

Women's Health Books

Health Food House of Mirrors

Buying health foods once meant shunning your local supermarket in favor of quaint "natural" food stores or cooperatives. That's all changed: Now, health foods are coming to us.

Shade-Grown Gardens

Sun worshipers, including the basic gardening variety, can be a fickle lot. We while away winter anticipating the luxuriously long, sun-drenched days of summer. Yet in July-- when the mercury rises so relentlessly that daisies beg for a break-- we naturally pine for shade. Sheltered from the sun's glare and heat, shaded gardens offer plant lovers and garden guests invitingly cool refuge for relaxation and reflection. And, happily, shade-grown gardens needn't be botanically boring, monochromatic expanses of ivy. Plants adapted to thrive in shade abound.

Hosta Magic

Our gardening feature (pages 91-96) includes hosta varieties that feature brightly colored or marked leaves to lend a sunny glow to shady corners. The two collections below, created especially for the readers of Better Homes and Gardens magazine and offered by special arrangement with Carroll Gardens, can help you duplicate that look in your own landscape.

BOTTOM OF THE BUCKET

IN THE SWIM

DO YOU KNOW?

Two-way Throughway

EDITOR'S CHOICE

Making a small garden think big

a shady courtyard's bright ideas

Decorating just for fun

As delightful and pint-sized as a playhouse for adults, this 620-square-foot cottage brims with the comfort and personality found in sandy wood and gleaming headboard, lacy wicker and a parade of quirky collectibles. It's a reflection of David and Anita Lempesis, a marketing specialist and an interior designer who eight years ago saw the disheveled fishing cabin for what it could become, then invested the heart and hard work to make it so. Their creative decorating can inspire anyone trying to shoehorn style and livability into a too-tight space.

Red white and blue

From the outside, this cottage sits as quietly as it has for 100 years, perked only by one seamless add-on-- a screened porch topped with a second-story deck. But inside, the home's former Early American decorating scheme has given way to a spirited new American style, one that "snaps-to" with energy and personality, and still puts all who enter instantly at ease.

Rise and Shine Baths

One sure way to get your day rolling is to soak up a cheery dose of morning sun along with your steamy bath or bracing shower. But letting Mother Nature brighten your bath takes savvy planning. How do you lure the light without losing precious wall space to windows? How do you coax it into the far corners without exposing the entire room to the world? And how do you contain all those glorious rays in tight quarters without blasting the room with glare? To settle these and other key design questions, steal a few bright ideas from our trio of sun-loving baths.

SMART STRATEGY additions

The alternative to buying a newly constructed house is right in front of you: Put an addition on your present home. With careful planning, you can avoid saying good-bye to your favorite oak tree or saying hello to a new-home mortgage.

Additions: Hot & Cold

You may be hot to build, but you could get left out in the cold if you don't put the right heating and cooling equipment into your new addition. Here are some important issues to consider before you begin remodeling.

Gazebo Retreat

It's Christmas in July!

The temperature outside says it's time for lemonade, but crafters know it's the time to get a head start on gifts to make for Christmas. Look over this collection of stunning designs, and order our kits, patterns, and project plans to whittle away at that gift list.

GRILLING GADGETS YOU CAN BUY

Outdoor Grilling Guide

When you're craving a perfectly cooked steak, a juicy burger, flaky fish, or crisp grilled vegetables, look to these handy charts for grilling times and temps. Summer never tasted so good!

nutrition information

With each recipe, we give important nutrition facts. You'll find the calorie count of each serving and the amount, in grams, of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, fiber, and protein. You can also check the levels of vitamins A and C, calcium, and iron in each recipe serving. ...

your family car

The family's favorite vehicle these days is increasingly likely to be a truck. Touches of white-glove civilizing have elevated pickups from rough-and-tumble workhorses to well-mannered thoroughbreds, some of which outsell even the most popular passenger cars.

Summer Games

The world's fastest runners and swimmers, the most agile gymnasts, the strongest weight lifters, and the bravest divers will all be in one place this summer-- the Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. You can be a medalist, too. Turn the pages for fun contests you can do in your own backyard.

Summer Celebration

The Shopper's Mart

Discover the ease and pleasure of shopping by mail. Order from the convenience of your own home with complete confidence.

the man next door

One of the advantages of carrying a cellular phone in her purse, confides Elaine Cowan, is that she can call the restaurant where she's eating and have them send a waiter over to her table.