July 2001

The Berry Best

Picnic Time

Deadheading 101

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As summer begins heating up, many of us start daydreaming about calling a travel agent, packing our bags, and taking off for that much-needed vacation. In July, let host Jeanette Trompeter be your tour guide. She'll take you on her culinary adventures all over the map, including a cruise to a sun-drenched tropical island in the Caribbean and a trek across the high desert country of northern New Mexico. Come along! You'll have a chance to meet some well-known chefs with great recipes and entertaining ideas.

Between friends

Window add-ons

Sometimes a window treatment is more than skin deep. Frame your views with added dimension by incorporating folding doors, bookshelves, a window seat, or a canopy.

Get wired

Metal sparks textural interest in any space. But unless you've mastered blow-torch basics, most metals leave do-it-yourselfers cold. Wire is one welcome exception. This accommodating metal is pliable and safe enough for the novice crafter to work with. Plus, wire is one of today's hottest home fashions. Bent into baskets or coiled into candlesticks, each creation is your signature sculpture.

Pillow scaping

Softened with goose down or filled with foam, pillows are the final word in feathering the nest. Pillows are a feel-good place to plop a weary head or back, and they're important decorative props as well. Pile pillows on thick, in shapes and patterns that state your special style.

TABLE GRACE

Experts say we're living longer these days-- long enough for two lifetimes. Many people have a first practical life, and a second, more creative one that's full of personal choices. The same is true for a piece of furniture or an accessory that outlives its first function and moves on to a second, more artful mode.

Holidays in Crafts

The temperature outside says it's time for lemonade and snow cones on the porch. But if you're more inclined to craft up a storm while catching the breeze from the air conditioner, try our easy-to-use kits. Make something for the Fourth of July, or get a head start on Christmas gifts.

Internet Appliances Come Home

With their "instant-on" feature and one-touch buttons, new Internet appliances are easier to use than the microwave ovens and bread machines they sit next to on the kitchen counter. These "Net devices," or "information devices" as they are also called, provide simple e-mail and Web access, cost less than standard PCs, and require no computer experience.

Fresh-Angle Kitchen

Eye-pleasing angles revitalized this former galley kitchen belonging to Rosemary and Dan Hole of La Jolla, California. Starting at the top, the ceiling was raised to open up and brighten the original dark, cramped layout. The former peninsula remained in roughly the same place. But it's been remade into an angular island, so it's easy to walk all the way around it and access the newly expanded family room.

Bringing Cool Air Inside

In many parts of the country, supplementing an air conditioner with a whole-house fan saves big bucks on electricity bills. Depending on where you live, you may even be able to get by most of the summer without using the air conditioner at all.

Before-and-After Porch

Hassle-Free Home Plans

If the home shown in our "Hassle-Free Hideaway" story (pages 161 to 168) is right for you, we offer complete blueprints to build your own. If you do not need complete plans at this time, but would like more information, try our Study Plan booklet.

Entry Upgrades

By adding a gable in the middle of the porch, the long plain lines of this front exterior were interrupted. Two sets of columns on each side serve to frame the small windows on both sides of the front door. Along the top of the porch, the generous use of moldings add classical definition. Paneling inside the door alcove lightens the recessed area and adds visual interest.

Casting Shadows

Adding porches and other outdoor structures may be appealing, but don't sacrifice your enjoyment of nature in the process. By the time you put up a cover for the rain and a shield for the wind, you may be shutting off sunshine and soft breezes. Designer Kathleen Donahue devised an airy courtyard space (above) that is private, yet in touch with its surroundings. Sunshine casts architectural shadows through this structure in the same way it filters through nearby pine trees.

More Parental Involvement Means Student Success

Parents and teachers should work together to ensure a student's success in school. But these two parties often start with different goals, says Roger Weissberg, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an expert in school-family partnerships. "If I'm a parent, my goal first and foremost is to make sure my child gets the best of everything," says Weissberg. "A teacher's goal is to make sure everyone in class has a good educational experience."

Raising Kids in an Age of Affluence

Everywhere kids turn, they're urged to buy. The underlying message: Spend more to be more popular and happier.

Safe in the Sun

Just in time for summer cruising, the helpful folk at your federal government have released new crash test ratings on three convertibles. For safe tanning, mix liberal doses of sunscreen and the Audi TT Roadster.

Golden Graham

Everything is looking up

Now available: Free roses

Ted's third pond--a real charmer--may not be his last

Watermelon lore gets thumped

Window boxes

Window boxes make choosing colors twice the fun. First comes paint. You can lean toward colors bright enough to stop traffic (red might work) or choose from a calmer palette, as Pat Collins of Portland, Oregon, did with a gray-blue that matches the window sash (above). After paint comes choice number two: plants. In a box that spans a window, there's room for a miniature garden-- tall plants, such as Verbena bonariensis (1); trailing plants, such as ivy geraniums (2); plants that flower endlessly, such as these other geraniums (7); and plants that have eye-catching leaves, such as the phalaris grass (5) with its striped green and pale green blades.

Best Face FORWARD

When you plant a garden of flowers in your front yard, you offer a cheerful greeting to all who pass by. Here are three yards that face the world with a smile.

The everything garden

To a certain subspecies of suburbanite, gardens mean everything. To these committed souls, a garden is a place to play, to relax, to reflect, to (in the lexicon) whatever. And so that's what Dolores Cavanah has included in her garden-- everything.

In a family way

Soul mates pop up in unexpected places. Artist and designer Annie Moore bumped into her future husband, Colin, on a crowded train in Paris. Three children later, as the couple was house-hunting in Tampa, she fell in love again. "When I saw this house, I saw a French cottage. It wasn't in the Florida vernacular," Annie recalls. Despite its "fish out of water" looks, Annie and Colin saw what they could make of it: A home that would expand and grow as their family did.

Hassle-Free Hide a way

Dodging the rat race needn't require a long trek to far-flung resorts in the tropics or the north woods. For New Yorkers Pat and Tom O'Neill, getting away from it all is a much simpler matter.

Short-Order Appetizers

Crab Cakes

You know when you're eating a great crab cake: Chunks of meaty crab accented with ingredients hand-picked to bring out the crustacean's sweet and briny flavor almost melt in your mouth. Here's how you can make a batch at home.

Novel ideas

Capture your most creative ideas, personal thoughts, and favorite keepsakes in your own handcrafted books.

The Shopper's Mart

The family next door