Home Improvement

Put your backyard to work! Enjoy fresher, organic, better-tasting food all the time. The solution is as close as your own backyard. Grow the vegetables and fruits your family loves; keep bees; raise chickens, goats, or even a cow. The Backyard Homestead shows you how it's done. And when the harvest is in, you'll learn how to cook, preserve, cure, brew, or pickle the fruits of your labor.

From a quarter of an acre, you can harvest 1,400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2,000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, 75 pounds of nuts.

This inspirational design book presents a multitude of ways to create a sanctuary in every room of the home. Known for her minimalist interiors that are infused with natural elements, Clodagh provides many solutions for tackling the complex demands of today’s living by addressing the senses with grace and beauty. She shows how to shape indoor and outdoor spaces that will free the mind and make a fulfilling tranquil environment. Whether it is a sensual bedroom, soothing spa bathroom, or a lively common room that can also be transformed into a quiet lounge, she provides ways to cleanse and balance spaces. A useful feature is her "Top Nine" visual checklist of essential design elements. With its beautiful photography, Your Home, Your Sanctuary is the ideal source for achieving a harmonious yet practical home.

Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams know that the key to comfort is how you set up your home.
 
For two decades, their home furnishings have been synonymous with relaxed style. For them, comfort and beauty work in concert; they are never opposing ideals. Gold and Williams's elegant collection of home furnishings is often the first—and last—place people go when they want pieces that are perfect in scale, comfort, and price.
 
In The Comfortable Home, Gold and Williams share their insights, experience, and practical knowledge so that you can make your home one that is both designed—and designed for living. With a focus on spending money wisely—investing in pieces you will have forever and making strong statements with affordable "pretty little things," Gold and Williams cover all aspects of creating a beautiful, inviting living space, including:
 
·        Working with color
·        Deciding whether to hire a decorator (or not)
·        Furnishing small spaces
·        Finding inspiration in the world around you
·        Creating flow from room to room
·        And much, much more
 
Taking the reader throughout the home—from the entryway into the bedroom, dining room, and all the living spaces—The Comfortable Home is apropos, whether your style is modern, traditional, or something in between. There is plenty of advice on everything, from choosing the perfect bedside table to displaying a beloved collection to deciding where to splurge and where to hold back.
 
Throughout, sumptuous original photography provides inspirational tours of real homes—including Gold and Williams's New York City apartment as well as a revitalized ranch, country cottage, and Federal-style home in the city.
 
Whether you are starting from scratch or looking for a smart way to update a room with a few new pieces of furniture, The Comfortable Home reveals how rooms with different functions can merge into a perfect whole that is inviting and recharging.
 

Become a green cleaning machine. Fully updated and revised to focus on cleaning the "green" way-naturally, with no chemicals-this guide takes readers room-by- room, teaching them how to clean thoroughly, efficiently, and in an environmentally sound way. New and expanded coverage includes info on making small changes that have a huge impact on cleaning difficult areas, green-ifying personal care products, and more.

*Provides specific cleaning hints and teaches how to clean quickly and efficiently
*Uses only common ingredients, but also provides suggestions for alternatives that readers might like better

How to be green, save green, grow greens-even turn a thumb green.

Self-sufficient living can mean a healthier life, a way to protect the earth, or a way to save money. This guide helps readers find their perfect degree of self reliance in the areas of food, shelter, energy, clothing, and more. For both the urban and rural dweller, it covers gardening, cooking from scratch, preserving food, raising livestock, keeping chickens, generating or supplementing energy, essential tools and equipment, foraging for wild foods, hunting, fishing, and trapping.

•Saving money in today's economy and self-sufficiency go hand-in-hand

•For the growing number of eco-friends considering self-sufficiency

•Existing books focus on either rural or urban self-sufficiency, but this covers both