July 2000

Dress Up Your Yard

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Good Food, Good Health

Great Grilling

BH&G TV

Between friends

Down-Sized Decorating

Sometimes, to divide a room is to increase its function-- and these partitions do it with style. Replicate one of these screens, or adapt one to suit your room's size and decor.

Ironstone

Sleeping In

Almost any quiet spot will do for a catnap. But with imagination, you can turn an ordinary alcove into a favorite retreat-- ideal for catching a few winks... or dreaming grand schemes.

Rustic garden getaway...

Fresh-Air Additions You Can Build

Grown-Up Plans

Mosaic Planters

Personalize a pot with leftover tiles, seashells gathered at the beach, or rocks polished by the water's motion. It's a great way to display a collection of nature's jewels.

Right as Rails

When choosing the right railing, form and function come into play. Here's how seven homeowners artfully blended both.

Backside Bump-Out

Top-selling cars--how safe?

Last year's best-selling car, the Toyota Camry, is also a good choice for safety, based on two kinds of crash tests. Federal head-on crashes (star ratings in the chart, above) test how well seat belts and air bags work. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety uses an offset crash test to evaluate a vehicle's structure and hands out ratings of good, acceptable, marginal, or poor. Other safe bets include Explorer, Accord, and Taurus, which combine four or five stars with offset crash ratings of good or acceptable.

Teaching the Art of Conversation

Admiring pictures of the planets with his dad, 4-year-old Wyatt Ronan asked a question about the rings around Saturn. He listened to his father's explanation and then said, "That's insteration, Dad."

ROAD RULES: FUN

SAY GOODBYE TO TV LAND

Ten Undiscovered Classics for Kids

Enduring classic books, such as Goodnight Moon and Make Way for Ducklings, continue to delight young children. But what of those lesser-known books which, despite our childhood love of them, never quite made "classic" status? Contrasted with current books, which sometimes suffer from a trend to impose a moral through a thinly conceived plot, the books of our own childhoods were often rife with adventure, conflict, and humor. Lessons were learned through excellent storytelling.

SAFE LOOKS AT THE POOL

Graduate's Endless Summer

Parents who have been there call those days between high school graduation and leaving for college the "endless summer," says Mary Kay Shanley, coauthor of For Parents Only: Tips for Surviving the Journey from Homeroom to Dorm Room (Fall 2000). Your teenager is somewhere between being a kid and an adult; you're somewhere between being a parent and a friend. So, how do you navigate the limbo months?

WANTED: FOOTBALL MOMS (AND DADS TOO)

It's Christmas in July!

Talk Radio

Overlooked No Longer

Astrantias are powerful petal performers, but when your flowers are only 1¼ inches across you tend to get overlooked. The Hadspen Blood variety keeps the freely flowering masterwort trait, but couples this with a red so dark and rich that it cannot fail but get noticed. The palmate leaves have a flush of purple in them, providing a splashy launchpad for the little bouquets to tower over.

A farmstead's banana belt

The Feinswog family farm

Dynamic duos in dappled shade

READER SHOPPING

A Wall of Flowers

They perform their feats of flowering high above the ground, drawing your gaze skyward. A sturdy trellis, then, is the necessary apparatus from which a vine launches its routine. Sure, you could grow your morning glories on a chain-link fence, but don't they deserve better?

Backyard Projects You Can Build

Build them yourself and save! The Garden Arch (left) will provide a graceful accent to your backyard, as well as provide a place to take a load off your feet (or knees) while gardening.

Go for the gold

Like many impassioned gardeners, Jim Damis has yellow fever. He finds that a liberal salting of golden-foliaged plants ties his landscape together thematically. "Plus it adds life to all the beds," Jim says. "Yellow is what gives them light." One plant in particular sparked his intensive foray into yellowdom-- gold hakone grass.

Little house in the big woods

Tucked deep into thick green foliage, Cheryl and Henry Kluck's Michigan house hints at its off-the-beaten-path interiors. The couple have chosen to leave standard decorating traditions behind in order to forge their own way with unique collections and furnishings that tell stories rather than follow rules.

Don't fence me in

Creative souls, being free spirits, tend to wander. They step outside the box-- even when it's home. Two souls we know, artist and author Rebecca Jerdee and designer/TV host Joseph Ruggiero, are proof. But neither one went far for liberation.

Cooking in the light

Bread dough doesn't simply rise with the sun, but our spirits often do. That's why kitchens and sunlight have melded so naturally for years-- and maybe why Grandma enjoyed baking all of those cookies. Check out this trio of kitchens, including one (below) looking onto a lush garden, where light counts as a chief ingredient.

"NO-ICE" ICE CREAM MAKER

MINI PIE PANS OFFER

NEW GRILLING BOOK

Nutrition Information

Lights camera Vacation!

Hit the road-- Hollywood style-- with our vacation crafts, including a feather boa to tickle your fancy and other memorable ideas that make you a star.

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