November 2000

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Between friends

Creative Canopies

Aim high with a decorating scheme that imitates the look of a canopy. Wrapping a design around the bed creates an instant focal point and a bit of romance.

READER SHOPPING

Personality Mantels

Make the most of your mantel with artful arrangements of cherished treasures and like-minded collections that reflect your personal decorating style.

One piece at a time

Trends travel at the speed of light. But when it comes to our homes, most of us want what's tried and true.

Blueprints for Mixing Patterns

Mixing patterns-- whether on a table or in your living room-- requires courage. If you're timid about trying, these print-blending plans will help you take up the challenge. And your enlived rooms will thank you for it.

Three Bay-Side Built-Ins

1 Bedside library under the sill. Several years ago, John and Cathy Allen bumped out their bedroom wall with a spacious bay window. Cathy wanted to have bookcases there, but "at that time the budget didn't allow for them."

No-Hassle Tassels

Two long strands of tassel-end cords stretched between a pair of store-bought decorative tiebacks or hooks provide an instant caddy for lightweight textiles. In the kitchen or bath, they serve as towel racks (above). At the window (below), they hold valances or cafe curtains as an alternative to a drapery rod.

Red and White All Over

Four of the five best-selling cars

priced under $15,000 are adequate-- but not great-- at protecting passengers in a crash. The lone safety straggler, based on both government and insurance industry tests, is Chevrolet Cavalier. Cavalier lags the field because of its weak one-star rating (lowest on a scale of one to five) in the government's side-impact test and because of its "poor" rating in the front-end offset crash conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

A Helping Hand for Homeless Children

A Brighter Holiday for Homeless Families

Here are gifts that will contribute to brighter holidays for the homeless. At least 45 percent of the cost you pay goes toward the work of The Better Homes Fund, a national nonprofit organization founded by Better Homes and Gardens magazine to help families in need. A card identifying the giver and explaining the work of the fund will be enclosed with each gift. Visit www.tbhf.org for more information.

Top-Rated Educational Toys

The best and brightest of the people who create and evaluate educational toys know the truth: A common set of wooden building blocks teaches and charms, as always. But there are new kids around those blocks. The market is delivering toys that can simulate a lifesaving surgery, monitor the progress of a caterpillar's journey to flight, or teach about dinosaurs.

PC in Your Pocket

No longer just a toy for techno geeks, small handheld computers are now showing up in purses and kitchens as often as in briefcases and meeting rooms. Once limited in ability to organizing addresses and schedules, the current generation of tiny computers lets you check e-mail, review stock quotes, and get driving directions.

Six Ways to Say Welcome

The warm welcome at the home of Stephanie Cohen, a designer and teacher in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, starts with the garden out front. Can you borrow her ideas for your own yard? Yep. Here are six, starting with "Curve the Walk." See how the path to the front door (above) makes a long turn to prolong the show of color? The white flowers are Shasta daisies, the purple are Shortwood phlox, and the tall perennial on the right is Joe-Pye weed.

Darling Dark Dahlia

Flowers in the round, Part I

Flowers in the round, Part II

READER SHOPPING

Rock and ajuga, cleft for me

Gardening Help

Fun, Fast, and Easy Yard Art

Fresh Fruit Gift

The queen mum

Think of your chrysanthemum venture as akin to a surefire dot-com stock purchase. Get a jump on old-economy gardeners by purchasing little plugs, or starts, for as little as a dollar each. After only a few months, these fingerlings will be full-size and blooming in your garden. No need to invest in several $10 pots of blooming mums. Your savings: 1,000 percent.

All-american style

Aside from apple pie and baseball, there's probably nothing more American than gathering the family for some fun in the sun. And if you're lucky enough to be kin to Jane and Charlie Forman, you get to experience reunions on the charming island of Nantucket, where the couple puts out the welcome mat at their spirited red, white, and blue home.

Home offices

When Joe Ruggiero's creative muse speaks, he listens. This time its message was clear: Make a U-turn, leave the Los Angeles traffic and hubbub of a downtown office behind, and head home to work and inspiration. Since the designer/TV host considers his home an ever-changing interior design lab anyway, the challenge of putting style and efficiency into a home office was appealing.

Intelligent kitchen

Futurists 50 years ago may have assumed that robots would render the family cook useless by now. Never again would mom, dad, or even the kids need to bake another batch of chocolate-chip cookies. But 2000 isn't quite like that. Sure, ready-made food has cut out some cooking duties, but the kitchen is busier than ever-- and so are today's families. That's why we've designed the Intelligent Kitchen. Its state-of-the-art appliances, convenient storage systems, and welcoming, multipurpose floor plan save time without alienating the family. No cold robots here. After all, they'd probably just burn the cookies.

MANDOLINE SLICER OFFER

CIRCLE CUTTERS OFFER

MINI TART PANS OFFER

SQUARE CUTTERS OFFER

TIERED CAKE PANS OFFER

ORNAMENT COOKIES

Should You Fear the New Foods?

What do you get when you cross a bright red tomato with an Arctic flounder? Give up?

Guilt-Free Feasting

The typical American puts on slightly less than a pound from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day.

You can't wish away Osteoporosis

It begins with tiny fractures in the bones of your spine. Instead of healing, the bones compress and flatten. As the disease progresses, the upper spine is pushed outward and the shoulders round. The rib cage travels downward and settles on top of the hip bones. Organs crowd together, and the abdomen begins to protrude. Your skeleton can become so fragile that just bumping into something or even a cough can damage a bone.

Holiday crafts with an angelic touch

Yes, it's that time of year again when you-know-who is coming to town. That means it's time to clean your room without Mom or Dad asking (too often). You might even start treating your little brother or sister with at least a bit of extra kindness. In short, it's time to put on your best angel face, and help get your home ready for the holidays with our host of decorating ideas.

The Shopper's Mart

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

The family next door