March 2000

Bhg.com

Transform your yard with our Editor's Choice Garden Plans. Our plans are designed to address common landscape problems, such as awkward corners or narrow side yards. Each plan includes a color drawing, a complete plant list (including substitute plants), and a detailed layout plan. www.bhg.com/gardening

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Nice Rug

Create an area rug or floor cloth that is customized to fit your color palette and personal decorating style.

Glass Design

Go to great panes by giving new glass and mirror the look of venerable stained or leaded glass.

Creating a Focal Point

Every room needs at least one strong element to grab the eye. If your room doesn't have a great fireplace or view, create a focal point with these design ideas.

Clutter-Proof Closets

Give clutter the boot by putting smart storage-stretchers like these to work in your closet.

3 basement upgrades

Rate the rooms of your house from the best on down-- and if you have a basement, chances are good you'll list it toward the bottom. After all, a basement can be dark and dingy. It seems the perfect home for threadbare sofas, raucous slumber parties, and pet salamanders.

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An Open Door

Cozy Dining Room

The Florida room attached to the back of Sharon Kauffman's Indianapolis house was in a sorry state when she purchased the home five years ago. The step-down space had crank-out jalousie windows on two sides, a flat roof with a 7-foot ceiling, and ash paneling stained a dark, dreary color.

Do We Push Kids Too Hard?

Look at your family calendar. Perhaps you see crisscrossing lines and little arrows, parenthetical notes about who is driving where. Maybe there's an occasional question mark decorating the margin near an unresolved time conflict. How do you get one child to soccer practice and another to a piano recital? Or how do you get to your workshop when swimming, gymnastics, and music lessons already fill that time slot?

Parenting with a Sense of Humor

Next time your child tells you to "lighten up," consider this: Maybe you should. Having a sense of humor is essential to surviving-- and enjoying-- kids of all ages. Too often, however, parents get so wrapped up in the daily grind that they aren't playful with their kids, and they overlook humor as an effective parenting tool.

Big Cars Can't Beat the Beetle in Bumper Tests

Don't hit that pole! The bumpers on some large family cars and luxury models have such wimpy designs that they can't withstand low-speed crashes without expensive damage. So says the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, operator of a crash test lab funded by the insurance industry.

Red, Hot & Blooming

Daylilies you know: Bloom for a day, flower all summer, easy care, all that. Savvy gardeners tend to seek out daylilies that have extended bloom time-- all the way from spring to fall-- but these green-thumbers mostly end up planting various yellow cultivars. Dark yellow, light yellow, lemon yellow, golden yellow, yes, but yellow just the same. Well, the heck with that. Enter Red Volunteer, a hort of a different color.

Countering purple's "black hole"

Got a lot of terra-cotta? Give it a new hue, perhaps blue

I've never seen a purple carrot ...

The garden at painted rock

Lilies to the Rescue

Where Clematis Can Climb

Even without looking, we can guess what's missing from your perennial bed: a vertical accent. Distracted by color and fragrance, many gardeners fail to consider height when choosing plants. Their gardens call out for a clematis that will bloom head-and-shoulders above the rest. But clematis can't reach for the sky alone; it needs something to climb on.

Wabbits Everywhere

Sew these fanciful 10- and 15-inch Berry Patch Bunnies from scraps of fake fur and felt. The soft and lovable toys make special gifts, especially for children. Stitch them up from a pattern available exclusively to the readers of Better Homes and Gardens magazine and not available in retail stores.

Take a Bough

On the warm side of your windows, forsythia branches glow golden in defiance of the gray and cold outdoors. Forsythias (above), like certain other spring-flowering shrubs and trees, can be "forced" into premature bloom indoors-- up to six weeks before their usual bloom time. The early show begins a week or two after you cut bare branches and bring them indoors. It's worth leaving a forsythia to grow unpruned in a sunny corner of your yard, just to have plenty of long switches for forcing.

The top ten reblooming roses

If the offering of a single blossom is considered one perfect rose, call this array of no-muss, no-fuss rebloomers "10 pluperfect roses."

READER SHOPPING. ..WE'VE GONE TO MARKET FOR YOU

Isn't it romantic

Ann Porter's L.A. cottage may never be on a tour of Hollywood homes, but it stops traffic anyway. A thicket of hollyhocks, delphiniums, and foxgloves sprawls right up to its cobalt blue door. The very smallness of the 700-square-foot place, a rental that originally was used in the 1920s as a dressing area for a nearby film studio, also catches the eye. But in a town where illusion is reality, what really sets this house apart is genuine character-- combined with storybook charm that seems right out of an old romantic movie.

The lodge life

Those seeking to slow down the pace of their lives often retreat to the woods, where simple fun swallows the hours. Here, the lodge is the enduring hub of it all-- a cozy place to sit in front of a crackling fire, enjoy a hearty meal, and gear up for the next day. Builder Jeff Kerr and his wife, Eileen, discovered this laid-back idyll at a new home near Nicasio, California, where their family enjoys the lodge life.

Family-fit kitchens

All good kitchens are the same. They have sensible work triangles and appropriate appliance arrangements. They're not too big, nor too small, and they're easy to move around in. Great kitchens are all different-- just like the families that use them. Instead of merely conforming to common design standards, great kitchens are adapted to meet the specific needs of families.

Chopping an Onion

A bit of sharp thinking and a good knife may be all it takes to slice or dice most vegetables. However, chopping a basic onion, with its tricky concentric layers, may leave you weeping in frustration. Our step-by-step guide shows you how to make quick work of dicing that tear-jerking bulb.

How to make it work for you

With each recipe, we give important nutrition information. The calorie count of each serving and the amount, in grams, of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, fiber, and protein will help you keep tabs on what you eat.

Good food, good health

Wonder Beans

Biting Nails Does More Than Soothe Nerves

Drivers: Butter Up Before You Buckle Up

Don't Take Leg Pain Lying Down

To Stitch or Not to Stitch?

Look, Mom--I'm a Vegetarian

Health Headlines

Sandbag Those Extra Pounds

Shake Rattle & Roll

Happy days are here again when you cruise into the diner business. Everything you need to entertain your friends and family is here: cool shakes, a tasty club sandwich, menus, and music. Just add imagination.

The Shopper's Mart

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