October 1998

Between friends

Ceiling Treatments

Look upward to "the fifth wall" when adding finishing touches to a room. These creative overhead treatments serve up interest and character while covering flaws or rough-textured ceilings.

Supermarket Centerpieces

As garden flowers start to fade, check out your grocery store's produce aisle for table-topping ideas that are, literally, good enough to eat.

Charge Ahead

Little Miss Tuffets To Make

Even a spider can't scare you from making tuffets as charming as these. If you have some basic sewing skills and can staple, cut, and glue, you can make these little footstools in just a few hours. They're all based on purchased wooden stools, a bit of foam, some fabric, and coordinating trims.

The Vines That Bind

Pulling off a compelling arrangement of objects demands more than interesting subject matter. It requires what designers call "transition," something to draw the pieces into a unified whole. The solution can be as easy as adding houseplants.

Welcoming entries

Hospitality, with a hug or a handshake, begins at the front door. Here are four ways to put your entries front and center.

Super-Storing Kitchen

It's not often that you see a dishwasher exchanged for an extra sink and a three-tier dish drainer. But the swap works for avid cooks Wanda Toy and Zoltan Szabo. Unconventional ideas like this one help pack their 9x10-foot kitchen with maximum storage and style.

Closet storage

Sick of skimpy master-suite storage that has you rummaging through cramped closets? Here are a couple of elegant solutions, each loaded with top-drawer ideas you can borrow.

Bright-Idea Tools

Take a look at these innovative products that solve common problems and make tough jobs easier.

A Nook for The Cook

Planning and preparing meals for a family sometimes seems like a part-rime job. So it makes sense that the kitchen-- like most workplaces-- has a desk. Dedicate this space to organizing recipes, making up grocery lists, referring to cookbooks, sorting coupons, even paying bills and taking phone messages.

After-School Central

That slice of the evening between school activities and bedtime is one of the day's only opportunities to gather together. With everyone cooking dinner, doing homework, and watching television, the time may be lost. But thoughtful home planning can help you accommodate all of these activities in the same space.

Details With a Difference

Halloween Sampler

Face Painting Made Easy

Divided Lights

Divided lights-- windows that are divided by muntins into smaller sections-- are usually the most appropriate-looking windows for older, traditionally styled homes. If appearance is important to you when it comes time to replace your home's windows, you have four choices in varying prices and degrees of architectural authenticity.

Designer Pockets

Pocket doors have typically been mass-produced cheapies or attractive-- and pricey-- custom-made products. But now you can choose pocket doors that combine aesthetics, affordability, and reliability all in one door.

Poison-Free Pest Prevention

USE LESS STUFF: This Electronic Newsletter Shows You How

Don't Tape That Duct

Earning Minivan Stars

Will buyers give high fives for the Windstar, which finally has a fifth door to go with its five-star safety rating?

Turn School Lessons into Life Lessons

Think of the level of excitement a kid has opening birthday presents. Adding to the fun are pizza, birthday cake, noisemakers, and games-- quite a contrast to most days spent in a classroom. "Kids just don't get the same adrenaline rush memorizing a poem in school that they get from going to a party," says Russ Quaglia, director of the National Center for Student Aspirations at the University of Maine in Orono and author of Believing in Achieving.

6 secrets to raising a successful teen

We asked "good" kids across the country what their parents did to help them succeed.

Where Bulbs Shine

You plant bulbs in fall for spring blossoms. You knew that. But do you know just where spring bulbs can best brighten your home?

Bulbs to Go

A Trillium Trio

Prized Peeling Paper

Inner-Garden Housing

Hidden Legs

That tropical feeling

Linda Cochran gardens on an island-- not a tropical one, but a cloudy, rainy patch on Puget Sound. Despite the gunmetal-gray skies, Linda transformed this sodden land into a bright tropical refuge with a bold cannas-and-bananas plant palette. Now when the sky blows harsh and cold, she can think of gentle trade winds.

Cool, calm, & collected

"Style is a matter of positive attitude," says Barbara Smith. This restaurateur, television home-show host, and former fashion model ought to know. She's been working on her style and spirit since age 18, when she "gobbled up self-help books" for feel-good fuel to keep her knocking on the fashion world's notoriously sealed doors. Her spunk (not to mention beauty, poise, and height), paid off with a 1976 cover on Mademoiselle magazine, a role never before filled by an African-American. Today, Barbara widely swings open the doors to the home she shares with her husband, television producer Dan Gasby, and stepdaughter Dana (above receiving a secret from friend Kaimya).

Attic retreats

Nestled right beneath your roof is a spot that may well be the sunniest, breeziest, and comfiest in the entire house. Your attic is probably just waiting for a little attention. The playroom (above) is part of one clever attic conversion that may shed new light on your own under-eaves space. Don't worry-- the storage boxes and spiderwebs can find another place to hide.

Lived in Kitchens

Kitchens are leading full lives again, just like they did before family rooms were invented. No longer mere workhorse spaces for cooking meals and washing dishes, kitchens are practically members of the family, keeping us company as we savor the simple pleasures that give shape and meaning to life. How can your kitchen gain a more active role in day-to-day family life? Give it a flexible, people-friendly layout, then add lots of natural light, a palette of warm finishes, and comfy spots to perch on a stool or pull up a chair.

Wood Floors In the Kitchen

More than any other surface in your home, the kitchen floor takes it all-- spilled juice at the breakfast table, muddy paw prints from the pooch, even your children's spontaneous games of indoor hockey. That's why this high-traffic room needs a floor that can withstand extraordinary wear.

Island Planner

A well-planned island packs in more function per square inch than any other part of your kitchen. Many of today's kitchen designs include these clever hubs-- merging storage, food preparation, and eating space into one center of convenience. Customize an island to fit your family's needs, and mealtimes will take on a whole new sense of efficiency.

Grrreat Costumes

Every year as the harvest moon looms large, you probably join other wildly dressed kids in a house-to-house search for goodies. If you want to be a leader of your pack, try on one of our costume ideas-- prowling animals to express your beastly side, or carrots and pea pods for your mild side. And complete your trick-or-treating with scary snacks and door decorations that glow in the dark.

Spook-tacular Crafts For Kids

Holiday Yard and Table Ornaments

The Man Next Door