Christophe Pourny learned the art of furniture restoration in his father’s atelier in the south of France. In this, his first book, he teaches readers everything they need to know about the provenance and history of furniture, as well as how to restore, update and care for it—from antiques to midcentury pieces, family heirlooms and funky flea-market finds. The heart of the book is an overview of Pourny’s favorite techniques—ceruse, vernis anglais and water gilding, among many others—with full-color step-by-step photographs to ensure that readers can easily replicate each refinishing technique at home. Pourny brings these techniques to life with a chapter devoted to real-world refinishing projects, from a veneered table to an ebonized desk, a gilt frame to a painted northern European hutch. Rounding out this comprehensive guide is care and maintenance information, including how to properly clean leather, polish hardware, fix a broken leg and replace felt pads, as well as recipes to make your own wax, shellac, varnish, stain, and more.

If you love camping, but you’re tired of sleeping on the ground (or you have a dream of simply checking out and hitting the road), then a teardrop trailer is the perfect DIY project for you. Sleek, nimble, and oh-so-comfortable, a custom-built teardrop trailer lets you escape in head-turning style. Covering everything from sketchbook ideas to the complete step-by-step know-how, The Handmade Teardrop Trailer trains you up like a pro on how to successfully build this iconic camper.

Have your healthiest winter yet! The Herb Companion has compiled some of our best articles on staying healthy during the cold winter months with the help of powerful herbs and plants.

The Herb Companion's Guide to Healing Herbs is filled with articles that are full of helpful tips, advice, recipes, photographs and more to help you fight back against flu-season. Articles include:

• Healing Soups
• Build Your Bones
• Fight Winter Colds
• Perk Up Circulation
• Get the Sleep You Need

This reference guide is organized by category, from apothecary essentials to eye health and sweet slumber to skin soothers. Within each section are articles and profiles of plant and herbs that help each specific area. The diabetes category features articles such as You Can Beat Diabetes and Naturally Sweet. It profiles the plant Stevia, an herb that's 300 times sweeter than cane sugar.

Guide to Healing Herbs will provide you with all the information you need to fight those winter colds, boost your brain, improve your heart health, strengthen your immunity and more!

The Herb Lover’s Spa Book shows how easy it is to grow and prepare therapeutic herbs for a custom spa experience in the comfort of your own home. It helps you unplug, relax and make the world go away. Since the days of Cleopatra, we have been in search of the "Spa Experience": a mystical place of white fluffy towels, populated by the finest of facial masks and lotions. But this vision of relaxation can come with a hefty price tag. That is about to change. In her new book, herb gardener, spa enthusiast and award-winning garden designer Sue Goetz shows us how to create the luxury spa experience in our own home, featuring fragrant, therapeutic herbs from the garden. With lavish photos throughout, this book gives the reader simple steps for growing and preparing herbs for the home spa: aromatherapy oils, lotions, tub teas, masks, scrubs, sachets, travel bath mixes and more. It has never been easier to enjoy the spa ambiance and let the stress of the day melt away.

With The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking, it's possible and even convenient to create an inviting space for living and entertaining on a budget. From unique décor ideas to growing strawberries on your fire escape, Kate Payne shares fun, low-cost (and often free!) creative solutions that will make anyone feel more accomplished in minutes.

Inside this savvy motivational guide filled to the brim with small-scale creative home projects, Payne's tongue-in-cheek tone will keep you tuned in to her much-needed advice. In three easy sections, you'll learn how to create a comfortable space while being time- and budget-conscious. Section One, Home-ify Your Pad, features quick, convenient ways to make your place cozier with low-cost, special touches to help you tap into and show off your inner artist. Section Two, Impressive Acts of Domesticity, teaches how to impress others (and yourself) with the gratifying pleasures of self-sufficiency—a first-time guide to cleaning, sewing, repairing and other previously out-of-the-question tasks. Section Three, Life After Restaurants, frees you to release the take-out menu, avoid pricey bar tabs, and entertain others in the space you've so thoughtfully and gorgeously created.

User-friendly "how-to" sidebars, illustrations, and tips and tricks throughout the book offer easy-to-follow recipes and do-it-yourself craft suggestions for making your home hip, comfortable and inviting. Keep in mind that this is not your grandmother's handbook and it's not the kind of wisdom your mom knows how to impart. Modern women need a modern approach to domestic pleasures—a guide to doing household things on our own terms, because most of this stuff isn't as hard as we've been led to believe. Don't worry, she's not asking you to host Tupperware parties or iron your underwear. But as all beginning home keepers know, a surefire way to feel bad about ourselves is to consult Martha Stewart. So ditch that 2-inch thick handbook, dust off your pots and pans, and join Payne on this journey to incorporating creativity and self-sufficiency on the home front.

If you dream of getting back to the land but you’re economically challenged, Dorothy tells how she did it—and how you can do it too. No previous experience is required—you can learn as you go and pay as you go. All you need is the courage to get started and the perseverance to keep going. Fresh, humorous, and poignantly philosophical, The House That Dorothy Built is an inspirational narrative of one determined woman’s journey of transforming a barren piece of property into a beautiful oasis. You’ll be shocked to learn the log home that took her six years to build burned down the day after it was finished. Her incredible rebuilding story of triumph over tragedy, and her boyfriend’s super-human strength and undying love and devotion, will amaze you!

The New Farmer’s Almanac, Volume 3 contains 360 pages of original agrarian content, essays, cartoons, imagery, and historical snippets, ?harnessed from more than 120 contributors to the Greenhorns (a nontraditional grassroots organization made up of young farmers and ranchers). Farmers hold space in many interwoven commons, and possibilities for our shared future rests on how these intersecting commons are governed?particularly at the juncture of humanity and ecology, where farmers make their workplace. In re-visiting the almanac format, this volume asserts a version of Americana and addresses how to equip ourselves for the challenges of rebuilding the food system and restoring a more democratic, more diverse, and more resilient foundation for society. In the face of a dystopian future where the weather is unpredictable, the fossil fuel economy is on the point of collapse, monopolies are endlessly consolidating, and the country is, for the first time in our history, majority urban, this publication provides a utopian voice. It reminds today’s farmers about the foundational concepts of an agrarian democracy?concepts that are themselves utopian. This almanac also rejects the self-propelling logic of techno-utopia?dependent upon extraction economies and enclosure of common resources. Instead, the book orients itself toward the words of Ursula Le Guin, who reminds us that the intent in utopian thinking should not be “reactionary, nor even conservative, but simply subversive. It seems that the utopian imagination is trapped, like capitalism and industrialism and the human population, in a one-way future consisting only of growth.” This tidy volume holds a civil, lived testimony from people whose work, lifeworld, and behavior patterns beamingly subvert the normative values of the macro economy called America.

The Organic Seed Grower is a comprehensive manual for the serious vegetable grower who is interested in growing high-quality seeds using organic farming practices. It is written for both home seed savers and diversified small-scale farmers who want to learn the necessary steps involved in successfully producing a commercial seed crop organically.

Detailed profiles for each of the major vegetables provide users with practical, in-depth knowledge about growing, harvesting and processing seed for a wide range of common and specialty vegetable crops, from Asian greens to zucchini.

In addition, readers will find extensive and critical information on topics including: o The reproductive biology of crop plants o Annual vs. biennial seed crops o Isolation distances needed to ensure varietal purity o Maintaining adequate population size for genetic integrity o Seed crop climates o Seed-borne diseases o Seed cleaning basics o Seed storage for farmers o And more ...

This book can serve as a bridge to lead skilled gardeners, who are already saving their own seed, into the idea of growing seed commercially. And for diversified vegetable farmers who are growing a seed crop for sale for the first time, it will provide details on many of the tricks of the trade that are used by professional seed growers. This manual will help the budding seed farmer become more knowledgeable, efficient and effective in producing a commercially viable seed crop.

With the strong demand for certified organic produce, many regional seed companies are increasingly seeking out dedicated seed growers to ensure a reliable source of organically grown seeds for their farmer and gardener customers. This trend represents a great business opportunity for small-scale commercial growers who wish to raise and sell vegetable seeds as a profitable part of their diversified small-farm operation. Written by well-known plant breeder and organic seed expert John Navazio, The Organic Seed Grower is the most up-to-date and useful guide to best practices in this exciting and important field.

Save more, spend less, and get prepared for any disaster. This book contains cost-saving strategies for stockpiling emergency supplies and becoming fully prepared, without breaking the bank! Survival is expensive. Water, food, medication, and shelter are just the beginning of what a family needs to safely make it through a catastrophic event. How is it possible to prepare for a hurricane or blizzard when it’s already a challenge to keep the bills paid? The Penny-Pinching Preppershows readers how to get ready for the worst-case scenario tomorrow without going broke today.

This guide provides a complete step-by-step plan for the entire family to prepare for, survive, and thrive after a catastrophic collapse. Hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, floods, earthquakes: Disaster can strike suddenly, leaving a wake of chaos much too big for emergency responders to handle. The action plan presented in The Prepper’s Complete Book of Disaster Readiness is the key to riding out the aftermath of a crisis when the power grid is down, supplies are running short, and anarchy is the rule of the day.

With detailed information on storing food, securing and strengthening a house, drafting emergency contingency plans, preparing children, packing bug-out bags, and even performing minor surgeries