Five local landscape companies were allotted 300 to 500 square feet to decorate at will for the Lane County Home and Garden Show. Even though winter’s chill still clings to the Willamette Valley, visitors who stroll through these mini-gardens will be surrounded by color, light and warmth.
Tag Archives | Register-Guard Home and Garden
Straw Bale Building Works – Even in Oregon
Thanks to that old story “The Three Little Pigs,” conventional wisdom holds that only a glutton for punishment would build a house of straw. But it’s time to take a match to that old cliché, particularly when the building material is bales of rye grass. A 1 1/2-story home was Eugene’s first straw bale dwelling […]
Meaningful Merriment – A Vintage Christmas Collection
Christmas comes but once a year, but for Trudi Diffendaffer, the joy lasts a lifetime. Come November, Diffendaffer’s large collection of vintage ornaments, including many Scandinavian items and some from the Victorian era, take their places of honor throughout her south Eugene home.
Vicki Norris – Home Organizer Extraordinnaire
Vicki Norris, owner of professional organizing company Restoring Order, has a shock of blond curly hair and a laugh that can’t be ignored. She may be small in stature, but her ideas are powerful. Norris’s appearance at the 2010 Lane County Home Improvement Show was met with such enthusiasm that she’s been invited to give […]
Barnwood Cabinets
What’s the quickest way to ensure that your new cabinets have some character? No, not paint. Try using wood that wasn’t milled for cabinets.
Artistic and Functional Cooking Stoves
Small, compact cooking stoves are nothing new, but most of the designs don’t look great in a kitchen or garden. Todd Albi’s SilverFire cook stoves, with stands designed by local metal sculptor Ian Beyer, certainly do.
Blackberries Without Thorns? Yes!
Many people know that berry crops grow well here in the Northwest thanks to our warm, dry summer days and cool nights. But this is not only a hospitable climate for berries, it’s also the center of berry cultivating research. Dr. Bernadine Strik is Professor of Horticulture at Oregon State University, Extension Berry Crops Specialist, […]
Santa Collectibles are ‘Snow’ Joke
In today’s Christmas celebrations, Santa Claus is a jolly, round, white-bearded figure symbolic of joyful giving. But he wasn’t always this friendly. Shelley Maynard, owner of Pewter Rabbit Antiques in Eugene, has a circa 1910 postcard with Saint Nick holding a switch, to whip you if you weren’t good. “That’s where the ‘naughty or nice’ […]
Over-the-Top Countertops
For a durable countertop, granite fits the bill. But so do alternative materials off the beaten path, including exotic natural stones, wood slabs and even man-made laminated papers. The Novak family, for one, wanted something unusual when choosing countertops for their country home’s hardworking kitchen and recreation room.