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Articles
Abstract Art by Caryn Kamp - Our own Caryn is a marvelous painter
Books on Home Decorating
Braided Rug -
Can't bear to throw away those special family garments? Turn them
into a treasure.
Candle Safety - Learn not to
burn
Color and Feng Shui
Coasters - Tile squares become fabulous
accessories or gifts in
seconds!
Easy
Pillows -
Quickly
spruce up your home using tucked-away treasures
Garden Tray - Bring the outdoors inside with this simple painted
tray
Housekeeping Tips
Joggling Board -
Find out what it is and why you need one
Pew Baby - A simple treasure
Plates - Inexpensive art for every decor
Pressed
Flowers - A Victorian tradition for today
Rag Balls - A practical
decoration from the past
Romancing
the Room - Set the stage for romance
Rose Lampshade and
Candlestick Lamp - Easy and feminine
Safe
Grilling - What you don't know about
gas grills can kill you!
STORY - Martha Bear
and the Sweetness of Home
Stovetop Scent - Make your home smell wonderful
Teen Dream Room Makeover
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Quotations
"A couple more doilies, and it's almost a hell hole." The Class
"A room without books is like a body without a soul." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Either this wallpaper goes, or I go." Oscar
Wilde's last words
"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be
useful or believe to be beautiful." William Morris
"Home is an invention on which no one
has yet improved." Ann Douglas
"I do love ironing." Chilean extreme ironer (ironist)
"I thought that if my kitchen looked like Italy, my food might taste
better." Paula Cale
"I try to avoid visual chaos
and clutter." Randy Brown
"It's quite charming in here if one squints." Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
"Not quite Miss Havisham's wedding, but getting there." Kaye C. Hill, Dead Woman's Shoes
"People aren't going to die if we
decorate poorly." Joel, The Christopher Lowell Show
"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe
place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." Maya
Angelou
"This is like where Dracula would live if he didn't have any money and was a crackhead." Janet Evanovich, Sizzling Sixteen
more
quotations
Frog
Find
click on the frog in Erie, PA to enlarge it
more frogs
Buffalo Hunt
Fish
Float
Pirate Parade
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Books
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House Beautiful's 750 Designer Secrets has some good tips to polish your premises. It's also packed with photos. Nancy
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I
love Art Deco and although the CDO very sternly warned me, I couldn't
remodel our home without pulling in an element or two.
Carla Breeze
has assembled some fantastic photos in American Art Deco.
Yum. Nancy
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One
of the wonderful things about America is the melting pottiness (and
I use the word in the British sense of craziness) of us all. Some of our citizens may be less tolerant
than we wish, but there isn't a person in the country who
hasn't adopted something - a food,
an element of design or style - that originated elsewhere on the
planet. My personal design style is a combination of Mexican/Mediterranean/Oriental/Scandinavian,
which this book showcases. I love it/them all. Nancy
Bonus: American Style features
lots of "what the pros know" tips.
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Antiques at
Home, by Barbara Milo Ohrbach, is a pleasure to browse.
If you study the beautiful color photographs, you are sure to get
some wonderful decorating ideas and inspiration for your own home. Jane
Marie
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I snap up every book
about beads I can find.
Katherine Duncan Aimone's projects in The Beaded Home are always interesting (fringed - with beads!!! - tablecloth) if
not necessarily practical. Nancy
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No one who's visited our home would think of it as a cottage because,
well, it's not exactly charming or cozy. But I like those
things - even if you'd never know it by visiting us.
Having begun with a disclaimer, let me say that a browse through
the illustrations in the Better Homes and Gardens New Cottage
Style is to see one restful photo after another.
Modeling one's home on the guidelines in these book would result
in a comfortable haven of peace. Nancy
PS There are tons of good BH&G books - click the book link to the left and check out the latest.
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Debbie Travis (with
Barbara Dingle) has given us a ton of resources for upgrading our
homes both on television and in books. The books have great
projects and detailed instructions. Thanks, Debbie. Nancy
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As we slowly proceed
with our home decorating mega-project, I rely on books like Color by Terry Trucco to stick under the family's collective noses, saying,
"See. Our house could look like this!" Of
course it won't in my lifetime since we're moving so slowly, but
my grandchildren will be impressed with my good taste. Nancy
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I can't get enough
ideas so I'm less critical of home decor books because I always
seem to find something I like. But when I find myself wanting
to move into a picture, that's when I know a book like Leatrice
Eiseman's Colors for Your Every Mood is a winner. Nancy
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I love color.
Susan Sargent and Todd Lyon put together the vibrant The Comfort
of Color, and I adore the result. It's page after
page of bright and happy interiors. If you're just getting
your toe in the water of bright color decorating, don't deprive
yourself of The Comfort of Color. Nancy
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Jane
Marie will be surprised to read this, but I like lots of
elements of country style. Country Chic from Country Living magazine contains a lot of my favorites.
When I opened Shoestring
Chic,
I had just tossed aside two other books on home decor because
they were dull, confusing and couldn't catch my attention.
This book was different. I found myself wanting to dive
right in and begin some projects. Nancy
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Every homeowner (or
renter with passion) should check out Home Depot's very practical
guide, Decorating 1-2-3, to relatively easy projects.
They've packed a lot into one volume. Nancy
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I
really am clueless about decorating my house (although I always
know what other people nee to do). That's why I love these
books and why a book about basics like Better Homes and Gardens' Decorating Basics is essential to me. And
besides, I'm pretty sure I can actually do the window treatment
on page 128! Nancy
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No one (my
sister) thinks I read decorating books - even Martha
Bear has been trying to help me upgrade the look of the
Kamp homestead. But Teri Seidman and Sherry Suib Cohen's Decorating
Rich is proof from my very own library that I'm working
on a solution to our chaos. Of course the reason why I bookmarked
a page that contains the word "classic" remains a mystery
to us all. Nancy
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You gotta give the
late Sonny Bono credit for marrying extraordinary women. Though
I don't know a thing about wife #1, #2 Cher, #3 author and TV home guru
Susie Coelho, and #4 Congresswoman Mary Bono certainly indicate the
man knew how to pick wives.
Susie Coelho's Everyday Styling contains lots of practical ideas
illustrated in the author's home. Good stuff. Nancy
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There
is a great deal of easy to understand information about homes of
historic and architectural important in A Field Guide to American
Houses by Virginia McAlester, Lee McAlester and Juan Rodriguez-Arnaiz
. It covers the gems from the 17th century to the
present. I love seeing past styles come alive. Jane Marie
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Just because we sometimes live in squalor doesn't mean I don't know a thing or two about style.
In one of my incarnations, I worked for Myma, an interior designer
who taught me a lot.
She would
have loved French Country Junk Chic by Kathryn
Elliott, and I do too. Nancy
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I like the Dummies
books because they give a basic overview of whatever the topic might
be plus useful tips.
This is certainly
true for Home Decorating for Dummies. If you
are as clueless as I am (and I worked for a wonderful interior
designer at one time), you might benefit from this volume. Nancy
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Once upon a time, I conceived a grand passion for feng shui, the Chinese art of balancing
one's environment for a better life. Home Harmony by Suzy Chiazzari is the most beautifully illustrated feng shui
book I've seen to date. It SHOWS you what to do and why. Nancy
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Leslie Taylor has written one of the most fantastic books on color around. My only problem lies in making a
choice among the gorgeous possibilities in Inside Color. Nancy
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Despite the fact
I'm always trying to upgrade our rat hole style, I will not be trying
any of the many projects in Katie Brown Decorates.
Some of them are amazing, but my husband, our DF,
cannot be pushed too far.
Still,
there's this thing where you tie long colorful ribbons to a curtain
rod that would work in my office if only I hadn't already looped
a red light string there ... Nancy
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I've
never caught Andrea Maflin's television show on creative design,
but since I've gotten my hands on her book, Makeover Magic,
I wish I had. Her crafty projects are unique. Nancy
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I love the looks-like-it's-been-that-way-for-eons
look of Mediterranean decorating. What better way for Nancy
to find tips that will get our humble home from here to there than
Catherine Haig's wonderful book? Nancy
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When you live in
an un-showplace, you devour books like More Splash than Cash.
I can't get enough ideas to implement real soon. Real soon. Nancy
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I like color so much I've often said my house looks like it was decorated
by clowns. Chris Casson Madden, on the other hand, has a more
refined sense of style. If you prefer cool elegance to flash,
check out Madden's New American Living Rooms. If
strong color is your thing, do not buy this book. Nancy
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New Moroccan Style, by Susan Sully, has color, recipes
and ethnic charm - three of my favorite things. Naturally,
you must check out this book. Nancy
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Nina Campbell is
a British interior designer who stresses elegant detail. While
elegance is never likely to be a descriptive word for our home,
I enjoy picking up ideas from a pro. Nancy
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Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a
television show about way more than fixing up the homestead (recipes,
grooming for men, etc.), but I had
to put the book somewhere so why not here? Nancy |
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I
love color. That might
be why I got into beading.
And Paint by Elizabeth Hilliard and Stafford Cliff
works as well for necklace ideas as it does for my personal home
makeover. Great photos. Nancy
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Just because my home
design tastes and aspirations are exceeded by reality, I still enjoy
seeing how the other half lives. And that's why Barbara Stoeltie's Rooms to Remember is a favorite. It lets me
dream. Nancy
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While we are more
shabby than chic, the CDO (chief design officer for VeryShinyObjects.com)
and I are always discussing plans to renovate the old homestead.
While there's actually a lot of good stuff in The Shabby Chic
Home by Rachel Ashwell, we particularly like the open drawer
pictures because they illustrate our own approach to home decor. Nancy
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The first time we
went to Santa Fé, I was hooked on the look. I immediately
began making snakes out of self-hardening clay, which I painted
in bright colors. Pieces of some of these exist to this very
day.
Of course, there's more to achieving
a southwestern ambience than cramming one's home with the cheery
looking remains of a craft gone bad. That's where Linda
Mason Hunter's book, Southwest Style, comes in. Nancy
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It's
fun to own fantasy decorating books that have lots of pictures of
beautiful stuff in beautiful places that will never have any connection
whatsoever with our home like John Loring's Tiffany Taste . Which, by the way, we began calling Blenheim (after
the Duke of Marlborough's incredible palace) shortly after we moved
in.
-
Take that,
Stately Martha Manor (home of Martha
Bear, our very own SpokesBear).
-
If having
books is an excellent design element, I win. Nancy
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I indulge in Trading Spaces (and some
of the other television shows that show quick fixes) so I was
excited to get my hands on some of the books that show has
generated.
Behind the Scenes is the cast story. It's best for rabid fans with
more back story and less decorating advice.
Make it Yours! and Color! contain lots of decorating ideas. These are the books I found
to be most helpful in my never ending quest for a better looking
home.
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To
be honest, I didn't see anything in Cath Kidston's Vintage
Style that made me want to rush to the nearest flea market.
What I did like were the photos. The color combinations were
marvelous. Nancy
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