Customer Review: Packed With Goodies
If you're looking for a practical book with great home decorating ideas, this is for you. The directions and illustrations are actually usable. This is a good addition to your sewing library with a total of 18 projects.
It’s hard enough to find the right furnishings and tableware for your dining area, but it’s even harder to put them all together in a room that fits your lifestyle. Now, in this third in Capital’s popular What Goes With What series, well-known interior designer Lauren Smith comes to your rescue. Through easy-to-use lists, charts, simple black-and-white drawings, and wise words, she’ll help you combine furnishings with tableware for the way you live - from daily dining to entertaining. First, take the enlightening WGWW Quiz to define your personal style, then learn to select and combine your dining room furniture with your dinnerware, flatware, glassware, linens, colors, accessories, and patterns - within your budget. Quickly and easily, discover how to change that look - to dress, set, and accessorize your table for a luncheon, dinner, special occasion or simple eveyday dining. In this very easy-to-use guide, you’ll also find a comprehensive list of resources for furniture, tableware, flatware, glassware, linens, and other decorating resources. This book is the answer for anyone who wants to decorate a new dining room or redo an old one - with simplicity and ease.
pages 1731-1920
Herbs have been cultivated for thousands of years for their aromatic, health-giving, and culinary qualities. Today they are also valued as attractive additions to any garden or as sweet-smelling decoration in the home. In this book, herb expert Barbara Segall, Food writer Louise Pickford, and stylist Rose Hammick pool their knowledge to celebrate every aspect of herbs, from growing conditions in beds, borders, and containers, and indoors to decorative ideas for herbs in the home. Cooking with herbs is explored in 35 recipes, from snacks to sweet things. The book ends with a directory of 75 common herbs. With special photography by Caroline Arber and William Lingwood. *over 30,000 copies sold in hardcover *Includes profiles of the top 20 herbs, such as basil and lavender. *The perfect gift for anyone who enjoys growing and using herbs indoors or out--cooks, gardeners, aromatherapy fans; herbal tea drinkers, and more.
Customer Review: Excellent for the crafter and herb lover!
I really enjoyed reading this book and am reading it again right now. I loved the recipes and the photos are great. Good reference book for those getting into the field of herbs, whether it be for growing or for crafting.
Customer Review: Had to have one for myself
I bought this book as a gift, but had to buy two so I could keep one. It covers all the standard herbs in the standard way, but what stands out in this little book are the photos of some very creative uses for the herbs. The "cooking with herbs" section is also well done and I've actually used some of the recipes! The print is very small, but the typeface is clear and simple so that helps to keep it readable.
Features decorating ideas, design principles, and a wealth of sidebar information.
Includes an innovative chapter on how to design a bedroom to grow with a child ? from purchasing furniture to color schemes.
Teaches readers how to incorporate their children?s ideas into the planning and decorating process.
Contains expert advice to ensure readers can easily execute any of the projects.
Customer Review: beautiful but a bit complicated projects
I like this book, but I don't think it is the best between the "decore-it-yourself" books, because most of the projects are a bit complicated to be done without the help of a good carpenter or painter. Fabric-projects are very original and easy-to-make.
In Ethan Allen's New American Style, Vivia Chen and the design staff at Ethan Allen offer a much-needed alternative vision to the intimidating, otherworldly decorating gurus: a new American home that's completely accessible and affordable without sacrificing flair or personality. The core of this vision is something that's all too often missing from decorating advice: a practical, down-to-earth approach that recognizes your time and budget constraints, and that your desire for style shouldn't demand an all-or-nothing commitment of your resources.
So Ethan Allen suggests a real-world approach to the real-life challenge of decorating your home: Be realistic. Determine your priorities, set a budget, establish a schedule. Recognize that your home will evolve over time, as you and your family will. Admit that every choice isn't necessarily the final one and so needn't be unduly labored over. Accept that you will not have achieved your ideal home by the time your in-laws arrive for dinner on Friday night.
Whether that ideal home is a rustic seaside cottage, a rambling wood-frame Victorian, or a stark urban loft, Ethan Allen's New American Style will help you get there-not by dictating your choices, but by helping you realize your personal vision. Beginning with the foyer and examining every room of the house, from the living and dining rooms back to the kitchen, upstairs to the bedrooms, and on to the home office, the bathroom, and even to an outdoor room, this book tackles every space you might need to fill.
At the same time, Ethan Allen's New American Style is a cross section of just that: new American style. Whether that style is bohemian eclectic, traditional colonial, or modern minimalism, it's represented here-and not as a set of impractical, rigid mandates, but as suggestions, building blocks onto which you'll add your own taste.
With this sensible approach, you will end up with your dream home. And you'll avoid the innumerable nightmares, from financial to emotional, that can paralyze you. Most important, you'll have fun. And isn't that what decorating should be about?
Customer Review: Some realistic decorating ideas.
This book has beautiful photographs, and incorporates a wide variety of styles. Nearly each page provides a decorating tip, which I think would be useful to those just starting out. I imagine that most of the furniture items photographed are Ethan Allen pieces although they aren't specifically mentioned as such. However there are many that aren't. Antiques and garage sale pieces are mentioned, and the reader is encouraged to find non-conventional items to add to the decorating. So I regard this book as more than just a glorified catalog.
Customer Review: Much More than a Catalog
I just bought my second copy of this book, after giving my first to a friend. In contrast to the first reviewer, I found this book very helpful. Although it's true that the photographs in this book show furniture by Ethan Allen, the text never mentions their products specifically. It does lay out a very realistic 1-2-3 approach to decorating that allows you to make progress without breaking your budget. It shows you how to start with the basics and layer on the style as your checkbook allows, without the room ever looking or feeling or half-done. I own quite a few books on home decorating and this is one of the more practical and useful ones on my bookshelf.
