January 2010: Kids

Get it together Problem: How to corral kids’ clutter into the common areas of a small home The 800-square-foot, two-bedroom city home that Kerry MacFarland shares with her husband, 3-year-old daughter and newborn baby boy is a study in multifunctional use of space and hidden storage.  Kerry McFarland and her kids—Hannah, 3, and Sage, 6 […]

January 2010: Real Estate

In real estate, timing is everything. And no time is that more true than when gearing up for the spring selling season, traditionally the most brisk time for moving homes during the year.   But a big mistake a lot of buyers and sellers make is actually waiting until springtime to get serious about putting a […]

January 2010: D.I.Y. Diary

The trench in which we buried the two conduits. One of the silliest projects we ever took on was also a somewhat involuntary one. We needed to run four lengths of 3/4" tubing through a pair of underground conduits between our outdoor furnace and our basement. These would carry water back and forth to power […]

January 2010: Instant Decorator

We don’t know about you, but here at Instant Decorator, we keep magazines lying around for months. (Being the crafting mavens we are, we just know that someday they’ll come in handy!) Luckily, this month’s craft puts them to good use. You can make this project exactly as we did, or come up with other […]

January 2010: Toolbox

The workhorse tool in my house is the cordless power drill. That’s true even though most of the bits for boring holes, grinding and sanding are collecting dust in the garage as our serious D.I.Y. home improvement projects are behind us (for now anyway).    Mostly we use the bits for easily driving and removing […]

January 2010: Spare rooms

Loes van Riel is an artist, and at her day job, she sells jewelry at the Downtown store Angelo. It’s somehow unsurprising, then, to find that in her studio at home, her current materials—seedpods, maple leaves, dried orchid flowers—are arranged and appreciated just like gems.    The setting certainly enhances the effect. Van Riel and […]

One habit you shouldn't kick

New Year’s resolutions bug me: much too ambitious and made in haste. To ensure success this year, try these fun-to-keep wine-related resolutions. 1. Keep a wine journal. This summer, I was a guest at a dinner honoring a wine salesman and bon vivant who won his battle against cancer. We had several remarkable wines that […]