House and Home books

Align With Design

"Such a great book. I never realized how we use the space we live in to express ourselves as much as I learned after reading this book." —Ask Away Blog

#1 New Release in Design and Decorating

Create spaces at home and work that align with your personality and support your goals with this comprehensive science-based guide to interior design

Discover a new design paradigm. Are you an adventurer or a visionary? A maveric or a maven? Designology makes design personal through author Dr. Sally Augustin’s 8 personality “Placetypes” that characterize the different ways we can relate to the space around us.

Personalize your space. What color should you paint your child’s bedroom? How do shapes and patterns influence how you think in a space? How do room dimensions influence you psychologically? Designology answers all these questions and more with practical how-to advice and real-world examples sure to help make your house a happier place.

Move forward with your design projects. Bust through the design paralysis that affects so many by applying verified science-based insights. Designology helps you regain control of your design-related efforts with suggestions customized to your personality and space-related needs.

Find out what really matters. Designology teaches you how smells, textures, and other factors in your home influence your happiness. It shows you how your personality and ideal design styles are really related.

Learn:

• How to sound-scape a place so you can concentrate or think creatively
• How to use scents in your home to help your family feel healthier
• How to use paint to make your living room feel more comfortable
• And much more!

If you have read interior design books such as The Interior Design Handbook, My Creative Space, or Styled, you will love Sally Augustin’s Designology.

On Interior Design, Biophilic Design, and the Five Elements of Feng Shui

“It will change the way you think, how you view your surroundings, and how you live." ―Dr. Eva Selhub, author of Your Brain on Nature and Your Health Destiny

#1 Bestseller In Interior Design, Lighting, and Energy

Fun with feng shui. The Five Elements of feng shui refer to an ancient Chinese system that brings the cycles and benefits of nature to your home interior. Part spiritual growth workbook and part treatise on the power of nature, Creating Luminous Spaces brings an energy boost to home interior design.

Nature’s elements (of style). Discover which of nature’s elements represents your energy. Should you enhance your home with natural light or a fishbowl? New organizational habits or tall, vertical lines? Featuring practical exercises, meditations, and real stories about clients and students, as you embark on this mind-body-spirit connection with your home, you’ll find out how:

• Indoor lighting and lighting design can strengthen the fire element
• Organizational behavior is influenced by the metal element
• Space planning with plants nourishes the wood element

If you have read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Feng Shui that Makes Sense, or The Holistic Home, and are ready to create a home-life balance and incorporate feng shui into your life, then you’ll love Creating Luminous Spaces.

Reach a State Sustainable Living and Eco-Mindfulness

Winner 2018 Silver Nautilus Book Award and #1 New Release in Eco-Mindfulness

Love Earth Now invites us to explore our thoughts and feelings about the waste and negative environment impacts we see daily. Author Cheryl Leutjen draws from her experience as an engineering geologist, environmental law attorney, small shop owner, and mindfulness practitioner to help put you on a path to sustainable living and environmental consciousness.

Merge environmentalism and spirituality. Do you find yourself wondering what on Earth you can do about the serious environmental challenges we face? Do you worry there’s nothing any one person can do to make a difference? Most people say they would like to do something to make the world a better place, but they just don’t believe they have the time, energy, money or power to do anything to make a real difference. Are you willing to devote 20 minutes a week to find out? Environmental activist Cheryl Leutjen has the planet’s back and is betting you do too. Her powerful book of inspired ideas and eco-mindfulness calls upon us all to Love Earth Now.

Get closer to a sustainable lifestyle, one day at a time.  All our possessions and constant shopping are no better for us than they are for the planet itself. They contribute to landfills and create a tech-tethered society that is increasingly isolated. Both helpful and hopeful, Love Earth Now is brimming with creative ideas we can all try.

Practice Eco-mindfulness. Cheryl’s book of planetary self-help and eco-mindfulness is a deeply thoughtful and lucid look at the state of our “big blue marble,” our beautiful earth. It's also a sourcebook of direct actions─large and small─we can all take to ensure our children and their children’s children have a healthy future on this planet.

If you enjoyed books such 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste or Simple Acts to Save Our Planet, you'll love the award-winning Love Earth Now.

Minimalism and the Simple Life

Author and YouTuber, Zoey Arielle, opens up about her struggle with loving all the things in life we bring home. A hoarder in disguise, Arielle has mastered the tools needed to embrace simplicity and the minimalist philosophy.

Minimalism guide. It’s natural to love stuff! More than that, it’s natural to love your stuff. That notebook from 8th grade, your Disney VHS, mismatched socks. They all have sentimental value…and they all take up space. Zoey Arielle Poulsen’s The Joy of Minimalism is the friendly guide you’ve been searching for as you embark on a life of simplicity. Life can stress anyone out. So, by embracing minimalism, you’ll be saying goodbye to stress and everything that you never needed anyway. Discover a greater focus and true freedom as you live your new life with a real sense of gratitude for everything and everyone around you.

Enjoy the simple life. In The Joy of Minimalism Poulsen shows you how to simplify the act of letting go while sharing her personal journey into this calmer sense of life. Beyond offering specific tips on transitioning, she also invites you to journal your new awakening. Minimalism is more than a movement or fad, it’s a sense of happiness and practice that will bring you closer to your true self.

The Joy of Minimalism teaches you to live better with less. You'll learn how to:

• Rediscover the freedom of owning less
• Embrace life and all the non-material things the world has to offer
• Master your own personal style for organizing and decluttering
• Celebrate your new life with a free mind

If you have read hoarding and decluttering books such as Decluttering at the Speed of Life, What Your Clutter is Trying to Tell You, or The Clutter Connection, you will love The Joy of Minimalism.

Is your home a sustainable and eco-friendly environment?

Every decision you make during the day, both large and small, has an impact on the environment. Make your daily impact planet-positive.

Eco-friendly home: With the gentle guidance of eco-expert, Alice Mary Alvrez, you can start with baby steps and progress to an advanced eco-warrior! Start with these inspired ideas and the 52 simple ways to reduce your waste, eat organic, and keep toxins out of your home. Inside this helpful and hopeful guide, you'll find tips for greening up all the areas of your life. Learn surprising facts about your impact on the environment and change your habits with do-it-yourself ideas.

Help our planet: Start with small changes, like turning off the tap, and work your way up to raising chickens and composting your leftover food. Whether you want to be a green rookie or an eco-master, you can help the planet every week of the year.

#1 Amazon New Release! ─ Cooking, Baking and Making ─ DIY recipes and DIY ideas for all seasons

DIY Ideas ─ DIY Recipes: From the creative mind of the Harried Housewife blog, comes a beautifully packaged one-stop-shop book bursting with DIY recipes and DIY ideas for the entire year! Cooking, Baking and Making - 100 Holiday Recipes and DIY Ideas for All Seasons and Reasons includes 60 DIY recipes with bonus designs and 40 DIY ideas that tie your home together for all 365 days. For example:

• Spring: Serve Herbed Cucumber Tea Sandwiches and a make a Spring Centerpiece
• Summer: Delight your guests with Fresh Berries and Cannoli Cream and make your own decorative coasters
• Autumn: Bake Dilled Beer and Cheddar Bread and make Autumn Harvest Potpourri
• Winter: Enjoy Creamy Eggnog Cupcakes and make Festive Votives

Ideas and Recipes for all seasons and a simpler time: Cynthia O’Hara presents incredibly user-friendly projects and dishes that make replicating her flavors and designs as natural as the changing of the seasons. The Harried Housewife has written articles and developed a wide variety of recipes that reflect a simpler time and are ideal for budget-conscious families. The "Harried Housewife's Recipe Box" column is syndicated nationally in regional newspapers.

• Forks Over Knives has become a worldwide movement encouraging people to eat more plants and forego meat; the book selling over a million copies with a popular film viewed by over 20 million • Much more than a cookbook, Alvrez’s book offers readers insight into why we eat the way we do • Filled with tips, tricks and secrets for a sustainable lifestyle so readers can go green • Starter garden tips for readers at any level so ditch the high-maintenance lawn and grow veggies, fresh herbs and eat food with the highest nutrient levels

[Available as audio]

The Perfect Guide to Little Space Living

#1 Best Seller in Small Homes & Cottages

"Joshua and Shelley get you thinking about what you can do to live a little simpler, even if you’re not building a tiny house."―Mario Soto, Tiny House MD. 

With this tiny homes idea book, learn how to redefine what a house is and master organization, location, and happiness to make the best of your little space. 

You’ll want to live in a mini house after reading this book. Tiny House Basics is an adventure in off-grid living. In their debut book, mini house living experts Shelley and Joshua Engberg show how you can join the revolution to downsize without giving up everything you hold dear. As avid campers and off roaders, together they help you enter the world of comfortable and entertaining small spaces. 

Learn the best tips and tricks to owning tiny homes. Whether it’s cottage-style small houses or a mini getaway house, Tiny House Basics makes tiny house plans practical and accessible. With advice easily applicable to any small home, including spaces like apartments and studios, this micro living book turns any little space into the mini house of your dreams.

Inside, find advice on small home interior design and learn:

• How to maintain a good relationship in a little space 
• The pros and cons of off-grid living and on-grid living 
• How to make your small space feel big 
• Practical storage solutions and design tips 
• Small space living with pets 

If you’re looking for ways to ramp up your little space, coffee table books for tiny homes, or small modern house gifts—like Tiny House Designing, Building, & Living; Small Space Style; or The Little Book of Living Small—then you will love Tiny House Basics.

Tips from a Professional Organizer on How to Have an Organized Home

"Real Life Organizing is a real solution to the clutter challenges we all face.” ―Peter Walsh, New York Times best-selling author and organization expert

#1 Best Seller in Do-It-Yourself Improvements, Small Spaces, and Decorating & Furnishings

An organizing book with clutter-free solutions for keeping an organized home in just 15 minutes a day from a professional organizer and host of HGTV’s HOT MESS HOUSE

Create a Pinterest worthy home on a small budget. Learn how to organize your home, simplify life and have more time for things you love. Professional organizer Cassandra ‘Cas’ Aarssen, the guru from YouTube’s ClutterBug channel and HGTV’s Hot Mess House, reveals her tips, tricks and secrets to a clean and clutter free home in just 15 minutes a day.

Simplify your life. In Real Life Organizing, Cas walks you through the steps to create a beautiful, organized, clutter free, and almost self-cleaning home. You don’t have to get rid of all of your things, be a yoga loving minimalist, or radically change your lifestyle or personality. The truth is you do not need to actually be an organized person to live like an organized person.

Organized home. Through years of experience as an industry expert, Cas has uncovered easy and inexpensive tips, tricks and solutions that enable her to maintain a clean, organized and functional home with minimal effort. After you’ve read Real Life Organizing, you too will be able to live a more organized life without having to give up your sanity.

Learn how to:

• Create a Household Management Binder
• Make a “Kids Cupboard” in your kitchen
• Create an IN/OUT system
• Organize paperwork based on your unique style
• Create a Kitchen Command Center
• Organize your holidays with a gift closet
• Build a toy organizing system

Also read Cas Aarssen's other bestselling home organizing books, Cluttered Mess to Organized Success, The Clutter Connection, and The Declutter Challenge.

Love your dog

Cooking for Sugar is the definitive cookbook for any dog parent. Rosalyn Acero, founder of Golden Woof, includes over 30 recipes to share with your pup. This beautifully photographed, user-friendly, bowl-licking collection of cooking tips, recipes and anecdotes is the perfect gift to share with any dog-loving parent. Going beyond the recipes, Acero includes detailed nutritional facts. With one in four pets being classified as obese leading to joint problems, digestive disorders, and more, caring for your best friend can feel scary. But with homemade, nutrition-conscious meals, you’ll avoid all the unknown, all the chemicals and all the dangers of pre-processed bags of mystery. Your dog will forever be grateful as you cook FOR them!

#1 Amazon Best Seller! ─ Extraordinary wedding on an ordinary budget

Desiree Siegfried-Hartsock, star of ABC’s The Bachelorette (2013 season), gives her best advice on how to have an extraordinary wedding, on an ordinary budget. In My Fairytale Wedding, Siegfried-Hartsock demystifies wedding planning and budgeting, offering super-practical tips on how to make your wedding a fabulous and memorable event. From small family weddings at home to breath-taking destination weddings, Siegfried-Hartsock guides you through everything you need for your dream wedding without breaking the bank.

Explore the Coast of California, Map Local Farms, and Meet a Dozen Diverse Growers

“A terrific book about some of my favorite farms.” –Michael Pollan, author, activist, and professor

“A true celebration of meaningful work and beauty—the values that are at the heart of these farmsteads are the values we all must learn.” –Alice Waters, James Beard award-winning chef

Featuring some of the most scenic farm locations in the country, Farmsteads of the California Coast introduces readers to local growers and their dynamic agricultural ventures. Paired with dozens of farm-inspired food recipes from the Golden State, this beautiful California cookbook sets out to reveal the inherent beauty in daily farm routines.

The ultimate farm-to-table cookbook celebrating organic farmers and their products. From boutique row crop farmers and coffee growers, to ranch raised water buffalo gelato and perfectly-grown ripe berries, Farmsteads of the California Coast captures each independent farm’s essential nature and philosophy. Inside, award-winning duo, Sarah Henry and Erin Scott, profile innovative farmsteads, sustainable practices, flavorful products, and the unique individuals behind their thriving success.

For fans of local cookbooks and Michael Pollan books. You don’t have to embark on a homesteading expedition to have your own farm-to-table kitchen. Farmsteads of the California Coast invites readers to taste the harvest firsthand with twenty-four recipes inspired by local farm-grown ingredients. This visually-rich book celebrates the best of farmstead bounty, including “beyond organic” greens, briny oysters, and:

• Creamy goat cheese
• Crisp heirloom apples
• Juicy u-pick strawberries
• And more!

If you enjoy farm books, farming books, farm life books, or even homestead books—like the Magnolia Table cookbook, Malibu Farm, or the Five Marys Ranch Raised Cookbook—then you’ll love Farmsteads of the California Coast.

Embrace and Awaken the Gardener in You

In this beautifully written and designed gardening guide, Susannah Seton takes you on a journey to maintaining the perfect garden, all the while offering invaluable life advice that both applies to and transcends your at-home garden center.

Read inspiring stories from a seasoned gardener. Susannah Seton reminds us in Every Garden is a Story that the reader and the gardener alike have much to learn from their gardens. In her book, Seton incorporates poignant and touching stories, ranging from her father's quest for a seven-headed sweet pea to cancer survival.

Learn how to nurture your garden (and yourself)! Seton teaches readers how to care for themselves (and their loved ones) by caring for the Earth. Inside these pages, find an extensive resource section of garden centers, online seed catalogs, and recommended reading to satisfy your green thumb. Intertwined throughout these pages are also tips on how to become in touch with the natural world and how to let go of unnecessary stress.

Utilize invaluable gardening techniques and garden-based crafts. Did you know you can grow your own luffa sponges? Want to encourage your children to eat more vegetables? Seton’s gardening book contains dozens of recipes, ranging from red pepper soup to stir-fried asparagus. Seton also incorporates a plethora of gardening tips and crafts, such as how to make Mother’s Day sachets, how to select a meaningful bouquet, and how to make hanging planters.

Inside, find:

• Invaluable advice on cultivating your garden and your cherished relationships
• Beautiful imagery, ranging from stunning pictures of raised garden beds to magical portraits of moon gardens
• Arts & crafts to satisfy your creative side
• Endless gardening techniques and garden-to-table recipes

If you enjoyed gardening books like A Woman’s Garden, The Well-Gardened Mind, Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden, or The Hidden Life of Trees, you’ll love Every Garden is a Story.

"Home," writes Susannah Seton. "There are few words that carry such potent feelings. It's the place where we can let down our hair, loosen our clothes, put our feet up. It's where those we love most share in the ordinariness and extraordinariness of our days. It's the place many of us spend lifetimes trying to get back to. As the proverb goes, it's where our hearts are. Simple Pleasures of the Home is for everyone who has the nesting impulse from passionate and accomplished home decorators to anyone who simply enjoys domestic downtime. Organized room by room, the book includes dozens of simple activities for bringing the family together, creative ideas for pampering yourself and loved ones, easy-to-follow instructions for making aromatherapy products, tips for candlemaking, and comfortfood recipes As the proverb goes, it's where our hearts are."

The Art of Living Well Year-Round

An abundant sourcebook of ideas, inspirational quotes, recipes, and activities, Simple Pleasures shows you how to appreciate the simple things that make up your daily life.

Secrets to happiness. Happiness in today’s frantic world is to learn how to enjoy less than we can afford. Rediscover the pleasures our grandparents knew when life was quieter and slower. When children without TVs knew how to amuse themselves. When pleasures were made not bought and enjoyed all the more because of it. From the recipe for a homemade herbal bath to quick and easy recommendations for an instant room makeover, the suggestions collected in this book offer a new appreciation for the everyday activities that nurture and comfort you.

Self-care made easy. Organized seasonally and full of touching stories, practical tips, and dozens of satisfying crafts, Simple Pleasures is both a guide to and a celebration of the art of living well. Inside, find self-care tips and learn how to:

• Make your own perfume and body lotion
• Create old fashioned sachets
• Bake the world’s best cookies

If you enjoyed other books in the Simple Pleasures series by Susannah Seton such as 365 Simple Pleasures, Simple Pleasures of the Home, and Simple Pleasures for the Holidays or books like The More or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care, The Self Care Prescription, or The Spirit Almanac, you’ll love 365 Simple Pleasures.

Tap into your inner party girl

No more boring parties Whether you're entertaining three people or three hundred, The Party Girl Cookbook can turn you into a party girl and every occasion into a memorable event. Most entertaining books are overly ambitious and complex, or assume you have limitless resources and a catering staff at your disposal. The average woman who wants to give a party without breaking the bank or her back is out of luck. Not any more. The Party Girls' number one rule is, Have fun , even and especially if you're the hostess. No deep frying or stuffing miniature mushrooms for hours on end. Each of the twentyfour themed fetes, from the familiarHalloween and Valentine's Dayto the exoticCome As You Were: Reincarnation Partyinclude ideas for invitations, party favors, decorations, music, games, costumes, and tons of food and drink.

Whether you use The Party Girl Cookbook as a stepbystep guide to throwing the most talkedabout party ever, or as a personal manifesto to living life like a party girl, it will entertain and enlighten you with its humor, energy, and originality.