Little House in the Suburbs


Book Description

A beginner's guide to self-sustainability in the suburbs Gardens, goats and chickens in the suburbs? Absolutely! The easy-to-follow advice in this book will show you everything you need to know to enjoy an abundant, independent life on food and products grown in your own back yard. You may feel like you have superpowers the first time you prepare a meal using only ingredients you grew in your garden. And is there anything you can't do after you lather up with a bar of soap that you made in your own home? This book is full of recipes and tips that will help you discover the joy of self-sufficiency. Don't worry; suburban gardening doesn't mean you have to rip up your yard, or risk being ostracized by neighbors or your municipality or homeowners association. Inside you'll find: • Gardening instructions for any-size yard and any skill level • A complete overview of keeping chickens, mini-goats and bees in the suburbs • More than 40 food recipes featuring ingredients from your garden or animals • Canning techniques • Recipes for natural deodorant, toothpaste, lip balm and other beauty products • Step-by-step soapmaking instructions and soap recipes • Natural cleaning recipes for kitchens, bathrooms, surfaces and laundry • Gift basket ideas • Community-building ideas including babysitting co-ops, meal swaps, and barter systems • Advice on how to keep the peace with family, neighbors, and officials if your self-sufficient plans meet resistance




Radical Suburbs


Book Description

America’s suburbs are not the homogenous places we sometimes take them for. Today’s suburbs are racially, ethnically, and economically diverse, with as many Democratic as Republican voters, a growing population of renters, and rising poverty. The cliche of white picket fences is well past its expiration date. The history of suburbia is equally surprising: American suburbs were once fertile ground for utopian planning, communal living, socially-conscious design, and integrated housing. We have forgotten that we built suburbs like these, such as the co-housing commune of Old Economy, Pennsylvania; a tiny-house anarchist community in Piscataway, New Jersey; a government-planned garden city in Greenbelt, Maryland; a racially integrated subdivision (before the Fair Housing Act) in Trevose, Pennsylvania; experimental Modernist enclaves in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the mixed-use, architecturally daring Reston, Virginia. Inside Radical Suburbs you will find blueprints for affordable, walkable, and integrated communities, filled with a range of environmentally sound residential options. Radical Suburbs is a history that will help us remake the future and rethink our assumptions of suburbia.




The City Kid & the Suburb Kid


Book Description

Two cousins, one from the city and one from the suburbs, spend a day and a night together at each other's house, and decide that each likes his own home better.




Little Boxes


Book Description

A fascinating visual journey through the Westlake District of Daly City, California, one of America's first and most iconic major postwar suburbs.




The Little City Girl Meets the Suburbs


Book Description

Alexandra loves living in the city, but then the unthinkable happens. Her mother tells her they're moving to the suburbs! Can Alexandra find happiness in the suburbs when The Little City Girl Meets the Suburbs?




Young House Love


Book Description

This New York Times bestselling book is filled with hundreds of fun, deceptively simple, budget-friendly ideas for sprucing up your home. With two home renovations under their (tool) belts and millions of hits per month on their blog YoungHouseLove.com, Sherry and John Petersik are home-improvement enthusiasts primed to pass on a slew of projects, tricks, and techniques to do-it-yourselfers of all levels. Packed with 243 tips and ideas—both classic and unexpected—and more than 400 photographs and illustrations, this is a book that readers will return to again and again for the creative projects and easy-to-follow instructions in the relatable voice the Petersiks are known for. Learn to trick out a thrift-store mirror, spice up plain old roller shades, "hack" your Ikea table to create three distinct looks, and so much more.




Living Large in Our Little House


Book Description

Traditionally, the American Dream has included owning a house, and until recently that meant the bigger the better. McMansions have flourished in suburbs across the country, and as houses got bigger we filled them with more stuff. Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell had been subconsciously trying to live up to this American Dream when circumstances forced her and her husband into a 480-square foot house in the woods. What was supposed to be a writing cabin and guest house became their full-time abode and they quickly discovered that they had serendipitously discovered a better way of life. They realized that by living smaller, they were in fact, Living Large. They were not spending extra time cleaning and maintaining the house, but had the freedom to pursue their hobbies; they did not waste money on things they didn’t need; and they grew emotionally (as well as physically) closer. Kerri and her husband realized that Living Large is less about square footage and more about a state of mind. As Kerri relates the story of her transformation to a “Living Larger,” she also profiles more than a dozen other families living tiny house lives and offers practical advice for how you can too. The book will: *walk you through the financial advantages of small space living *help you define and find the right size house *teach you to scale down to the essentials to be surrounded only by things you love *show you how to make use of outdoor space *give tips on how to decorate judiciously and much more. Whether readers are inspired to join the tiny house movement or not, they are sure to be inspired to Live Large with less.




The Sprawl


Book Description

For decades the suburbs have been where art happens despite: despite the conformity, the emptiness, the sameness. Time and again, the story is one of gems formed under pressure and that resentment of the suburbs is the key ingredient for creative transcendence. But what if, contrary to that, the suburb has actually been an incubator for distinctly American art, as positively and as surely as in any other cultural hothouse? Mixing personal experience, cultural reportage, and history while rejecting clichés and pieties and these essays stretch across the country in an effort to show that this uniquely American milieu deserves another look.




Suburban Hell


Book Description

A Chicago cul-de-sac is about to get a new neighbor...of the demonic kind. Amy Foster considers herself lucky. After she left the city and moved to the suburbs, she found her place quickly with neighbors Liz, Jess, and Melissa, snarking together from the outskirts of the PTA crowd. One night during their monthly wine get-together, the crew concoct a plan for a clubhouse She Shed in Liz’s backyard—a space for just them, no spouses or kids allowed. But the night after they christen the She Shed, things start to feel . . . off. They didn’t expect Liz’s little home-improvement project to release a demonic force that turns their quiet enclave into something out of a nightmare. And that’s before the homeowners’ association gets wind of it. Even the calmest moms can’t justify the strange burn marks, self-moving dolls, and horrible smells surrounding their possessed friend, Liz. Together, Amy, Jess, and Melissa must fight the evil spirit to save Liz and the neighborhood . . . before the suburbs go completely to hell.




The End of the Suburbs


Book Description

Originally published in hardcover in 2013.