Making It Home

“Shows us why the actions that prepare us for emergencies and energy descent are the right things to do no matter what the future brings.” —Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden Other books tell us how to live the good life—but you might have to win the lottery to do it. Making Home is about improving life with the real people around us and the resources we already have. While encouraging us to be more resilient in the face of hard times, author Sharon Astyk also points out the beauty, grace, and elegance that result, because getting the most out of everything we use is a way of transforming our lives into something much more fulfilling. Written from the perspective of a family who has already made this transition, Making Home shows readers how to turn the challenge of living with less into settling for more—more happiness, more security, and more peace of mind. Learn simple but effective strategies to: · Save money on everything from heating and cooling to refrigeration, laundry, water, sanitation, cooking, and cleaning · Create a stronger, more resilient family · Preserve more for future generations We must make fundamental changes to our way of life in the face of ongoing economic crisis and energy depletion. Making Home takes the fear out of this prospect, and invites us to embrace a simpler, more abundant reality. “Americans are born to be transient—Sharon Astyk has the prescription for dealing with that genetic disease, and building a healthy nativeness into our lives.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author “Exhaustively researched and compassionately delivered.” —Harriet Fasenfest, author of A Householder’s Guide to the Universe

This book celebrates inventive and inspired homes that are at once original and the product of visionary designers at the height of their powers. Making House features the houses and apartments of leading interior, furniture, and product designers—homes by designers, as designed for themselves—including the abodes of well-known figures such as Jonathan Adler, Marc Newson, Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci of Dimore Studio, and Stephen Sills. A great degree of inspiration is to be found among the personal homes and interiors of the masters. Designers, architects, and artists are free to experiment in a way that is unique, without any of the traditional limitations of a client-commissioned project. These are laboratories of invention. They are also private retreats, which offer a range of design solutions for common challenges from which the reader may glean new ideas and the motivation to make such ideas real. Beautifully illustrated, this volume is at once a document and a celebration of some of the most inspiring homes from around the world and the creative minds and personalities behind them, photographed specifically for this book.

Just a century ago, cheese was still a relatively regional and European phenomenon, and cheese making techniques were limited by climate, geography, and equipment. But modern technology along with the recent artisanal renaissance has opened up the diverse, time-honored, and dynamic world of cheese to enthusiasts willing to take its humble fundamentals—milk, starters, coagulants, and salt—and transform them into complex edibles. Artisan Cheese Making at Home is the most ambitious and comprehensive guide to home cheese making, filled with easy-to-follow instructions for making mouthwatering cheese and dairy items. Renowned cooking instructor Mary Karlin has spent years working alongside the country’s most passionate artisan cheese producers—cooking, creating, and learning the nuances of their trade. She presents her findings in this lavishly illustrated guide, which features more than eighty recipes for a diverse range of cheeses: from quick and satisfying Mascarpone and Queso Blanco to cultured products like Crème Fraîche and Yogurt to flavorful selections like Saffron-Infused Manchego, Irish-Style Cheddar, and Bloomy Blue Log Chèvre. Artisan Cheese Making at Home begins with a primer covering milks, starters, cultures, natural coagulants, and bacteria—everything the beginner needs to get started. The heart of the book is a master class in home cheese making: building basic skills with fresh cheeses like ricotta and working up to developing and aging complex mold-ripened cheeses. Also covered are techniques and equipment, including drying, pressing, and brining, as well as molds and ripening boxes. Last but not least, there is a full chapter on cooking with cheese that includes more than twenty globally-influenced recipes featuring the finished cheeses, such as Goat Cheese and Chive Fallen Soufflés with Herb-Citrus Vinaigrette and Blue Cheese, Bacon, and Pear Galette. Offering an approachable exploration of the alchemy of this extraordinary food, Artisan Cheese Making at Home proves that hand-crafting cheese is not only achievable, but also a fascinating and rewarding process.

The idea that 'home' is a special place, a separate place, a place where we can be our true selves, is so obvious to us today that we barely pause to think about it. But, as Judith Flanders shows in this revealing book, 'home' is a relatively new concept. When in 1900 Dorothy assured the citizens of Oz that 'There is no place like home', she was expressing a view that was a culmination of 300 years of economic, physical and emotional change. In The Making of Home, Flanders traces the evolution of the house across northern Europe and America from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, and paints a striking picture of how the homes we know today differ from homes through history. The transformation of houses into homes, she argues, was not a private matter, but an essential ingredient in the rise of capitalism and the birth of the Industrial Revolution. Without 'home', the modern world as we know it would not exist, and as Flanders charts the development of ordinary household objects - from cutlery, chairs and curtains, to fitted kitchens, plumbing and windows - she also peels back the myths that surround some of our most basic assumptions, including our entire notion of what it is that makes a family. As full of fascinating detail as her previous bestsellers, The Making of Home is also a book teeming with original and provocative ideas.

Making Home(s) in Displacement critically rethinks the relationship between home and displacement from a spatial, material, and architectural perspective. Recent scholarship in the social sciences has investigated how migrants and refugees create and reproduce home under new conditions, thereby unpacking the seemingly contradictory positions of making a home and overcoming its loss. Yet, making home(s) in displacement is also a spatial practice, one which intrinsically relates to the fabrication of the built environment worldwide. Conceptually the book is divided along four spatial sites, referred to as camp, shelter, city, and house, which are approached with a multitude of perspectives ranging from urban planning and architecture to anthropology, geography, philosophy, gender studies, and urban history, all with a common focus on space and spatiality. By articulating everyday homemaking experiences of migrants and refugees as spatial practices in a variety of geopolitical and historical contexts, this edited volume adds a novel perspective to the existing interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of home and displacement. It equally intends to broaden the canon of architectural histories and theories by including migrants' and refugees' spatial agencies and place-making practices to its annals. By highlighting the political in the spatial, and vice versa, this volume sets out to decentralise and decolonise current definitions of home and displacement, striving for a more pluralistic outlook on the idea of home.

Learn how to create rooms filled with warmth, meaning, and your own unique story of home Kim Leggett’s ï¬?rst book, City Farmhouse Style, was a big hit. Now Kim is back with the welcoming interiors her fans crave and a no-rules approach that is all about using what you love to create rooms that tell your personal story. Everyone has a story worth telling, and every room can become part of that story—whether you decorate it with heirlooms, flea market finds, simple mementos, or a mix. In Home Stories, Leggett shows readers how to use all these treasures to design very special rooms filled with interest and meaning. She begins by asking readers what it is that attracts them to a certain piece: “Thinking hard about what really speaks to you, and then using it as the basis for design, is the secret behind all of the best, most interesting rooms.” Each chapter presents fascinating spaces and the stories behind the accessories, furnishings, and mementos that fill them. There are plenty of projects, too, plus practical design guidance and design inspiration for refreshing decor as the seasons change.

During the westward expansion of America, white middle-class ideals of home and domestic work were used to measure differences between white and Native American women. Yet the vision of America as "home" was more than a metaphor for women's stake in the process of conquest--it took deliberate work to create and uphold. Treating white and indigenous women's struggles as part of the same history, Jane E. Simonsen argues that as both cultural workers and domestic laborers insisted upon the value of their work to "civilization," they exposed the inequalities integral to both the nation and the household. Simonsen illuminates discussions about the value of women's work through analysis of texts and images created by writers, women's rights activists, reformers, anthropologists, photographers, field matrons, and Native American women. She argues that women such as Caroline Soule, Alice Fletcher, E. Jane Gay, Anna Dawson Wilde, and Angel DeCora called upon the rhetoric of sentimental domesticity, ethnographic science, public display, and indigenous knowledge as they sought to make the gendered and racial order of the nation visible through homes and the work performed in them. Focusing on the range of materials through which domesticity was produced in the West, Simonsen integrates new voices into the study of domesticity's imperial manifestations.

Add style and individuality to your home with DIY—even when you’re renting! The concept of a large, professional renovation isn’t possible for many people who are short on time and money, especially when you rent. But that doesn’t mean you don’t want a beautiful, cozy home that reflects your unique taste and personality—it just means you need (and want) to get creative! Home Is Where You Make It is a simple, practical, and affordable craft and styling book that offers tried and tested design advice and top hints and tricks for key spaces, including: -Six steps to success, with color palette and reno tips -Update your rental space and restyle on a budget -Transform an imperfect room into a beautiful and functional space -Unique solutions for tricky spots -DIY projects and styling advice that works for any room -Easy-to-grow indoor plants and planter ideas Channeling the simplicity and beauty of modern living, this is a room-by-room guide to making and DIYing your own place, with hundreds of smart styling hacks, repurposing and upstyling ideas, and easy weekend projects to create the home of your dreams.