Home and house maintenance Books

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Book SynopsisHave you always wanted to transform your house into the home of your dreams but you''re not sure where to begin? Create Your Dream Home on a Budget will equip you with the motivation and how-to you need to create living spaces you love on a budget you can afford. With inspiration from beautiful photos, DIY projects, and foundational building and renovation concepts, you''ll be on your way to creating your own dream home.Seasoned home-renovation experts and TikTok stars Daniel and Noell Jett (@JettSetFarmhouse) know a thing or two about building gorgeous homes with cost-effective tips and tricks. You''ll learn how to add functionality, beauty, and charm to each room of your home--including ideas for outdoor spaces--whether you''re renovating or building from the ground up! In Create Your Dream Home on a Budget, the Jetts provide:Steps to modernize your home without a major renova

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Book Synopsis A spy is suddenly aware she's being stalked through the streets of an overseas city. A special ops soldier intuitively recognizes something's 'off' during a high-risk mission. In these life-threatening situations experts know exactly how to use their senses and what actions to take. At the intersection of The Gift of Fear and Make Your Bed, The Power of Awareness will make sure you will, too.   In his empowering book, Dan Schilling shares how to identify and avoid threats using situational awareness and intuition just like the pros. Told with wit and wisdom, this compelling guide uses harrowing stories from Dan's special operations career and those of other experts to outline six easily implemented rules you can apply anywhere to improve your personal safety.   It incorporates exercises to understand how situational awareness works in real life, how to better listen to your intuition, and when confronted by a criminal how to make a plan and take action with confidence—so you can escape the threat before it's too late.   He also includes tools on how to secure your home or hotel room, use public transportation, plan international travel, and reduce your criminal target appeal and exposure, in addition to how to escape an active shooter situation. As a bonus, you'll even learn how to survive a date without getting murdered.   By the last page you'll know that your own Power of Awareness can save your life.

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Book SynopsisReady for new 10 new practical ideas for creating yourbackyard homestead? 50 Projects for Building Your Backyard Homestead: AHands-On, Step-By-Step Sustainable-Living Guide updates one of the most popularbooks on the subject with the addition of 10 new projects to help yourhomestead thrive. Inside, experienced homesteader and contractor, David Toht,will teach you backyard homestead project ideas like accessible garden paths,insulated chicken coops, and backyard essentials from fences to feeders. Are youa beginner? Don't worry; you'll learn how to handle simple builds like raisedgardens. Getting a little more advanced as a homesteader? Learn how to build adrought-resistant landscape or build passive ventilation systems to keep yourchickens comfortable. Gardens, gates, PVC, pens, aquaponics, hydroponics, windturbines, solar panels, roofing--it's all here. No matter what your homesteadlooks like, you'll come away from 50 Projects for Building Your BackyardHomestead, Updated Edition with encyclopedic knowledge and inspiration for whatproject to tackle next. This is an all-encompassing, comprehensive guide forthose looking to expand their current homestead or embark on a moreself-sustaining lifestyle.    

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Book SynopsisSince 1973, Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletins have offered practical, hands-on instructions designed to help readers master dozens of country living skills quickly and easily. There are now more than 170 titles in this series, and their remarkable popularity reflects the common desire of country and city dwellers alike to cultivate personal independence in everyday life.

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Book SynopsisSince 1973, Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletins have offered practical, hands-on instructions designed to help readers master dozens of country living skills quickly and easily. There are now more than 170 titles in this series, and their remarkable popularity reflects the common desire of country and city dwellers alike to cultivate personal independence in everyday life.

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Book SynopsisDriven in large part by the popularity of the NHL’s Winter Classic, outdoor hockey is enjoying an unprecedented revival. For a sport that began under the open sky, a backyard rink allows for a return to the origins of the game and can provide a memorable neighborhood gathering place and a place for players to train without the expense of indoor ice rental. In Backyard Ice Rink, blogger and professional rink builder Joe Proulx guides you through every step of building your own backyard ice skating rink. From the simplest wooden frame to elaborate tall-board rinks, from measuring the slope in your yard to constructing your frame using parts found at your local hardware store, Proulx makes the project easy to tackle. In addition to the four easy-to-follow photo-intensive rink plans, Proulx also covers ice maintenance, building your own bench and goals, teardown, and storage through the summer months.

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Book SynopsisYou Can Change the World: The Global Citizen's Handbook for Living on Planet Earth should be required reading for anyone who cares about the future of the planet. Written by renowned scientist, futurist and Club of Budapest founder Ervin Laszlo, You Can Change the World answers two pertinent questions-first, what is at the root of all the conflict and crisis in today's world? And second, what can actually be done to move toward a world where we can live in peace, without marginalizing and killing each other and destroying the environment?A handbook that urges readers to become global citizens who aspire to live responsibly on this precious but highly exploited and crisis-prone planet, You Can Change the World provides a simple and basic message: in today's world it is neither wealth nor power, nor the control of territory and technology that make the crucial difference. How we think and act shapes our present and decides our future.

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Book SynopsisEnjoy delicious, nutritious berries from your own backyard! What says summer more than a bowl full of fresh berries? How about a yard full of them? Homegrown Berries covers the information you need to know about the process from planting to picking. You’ll learn the best varieties of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, currants, and elderberries for you, how to fit them into your landscape (including in borders and containers), and how to maintain them for peak harvest. Summer just got sweeter!

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Book SynopsisStop hating your house and start adoring it—40 steps to make your home express who you are and work for the way you really live Deco­rating can be daunting and overwhelm­ing, but here’s the secret: If you want to love your house, the inspiration and ideas need to come from you. Interior designer Paige Rien thinks it’s about more than creating a beautiful space; it’s about creating a home that reflects you and all that you find comforting and inspiring in your life. Through 40 actionable steps, you’ll discover tools that will help you:   Explore your life story: Mine your life for those things that inspire nostalgia and create a positive connection to memories, explore your family’s heritage, and be conscious of how you want to live now. Understand what you’re working with: Take stock of your stuff, understand the history of your home, and get clear on the space you have. Create an inspired action plan: Discover how to ap­proach design room-by-room, find the through line that ties the whole house together, and work in ways that empower your own ideas and creativity. Learn the design skills that matter: Get tips on pick­ing paint colors, choosing window dressings, arrang­ing art, and more.   When you start decorating your home with you as the starting point, you can create a highly personalized space that reflects your past, your future, and how you want to live today. In the process, you’ll gain the confidence and inspi­ration to come up with a functional and fabulous living space that’s just right for you and your life.

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Book SynopsisFind order and beauty in the kitchen with this delightfully elegant primer on washing the dishes that elevates and illuminates a seemingly routine chore.Washing the dishes is an ordinary, everyday task--but with examination and care, it can become much more. In this reverent guide to the household chore, Peter Miller shows us how washing dishes can become a joy, a delight, a meditative exercise, and an act of grace and rhythm.We pay so much attention to recipes but little attention to maintenance and cleanup. Washing the dishes is as much a part of making a meal as prepping the vegetables, making the sauces, or seasoning the meats. At times it is quite routine, sometimes raucous, other times complex. It is never convenient. Despite its din and clatter, and despite its reputation, washing the dishes is the coda to the meal. It is a bustling musical of water and soap, of flow and surface, and done well, the fragile shall sit as proudly as the cast-iron.There are some who do the dishes for the clarity and privacy of it, and there are some who relish the quiet isolation of putting things in order where they belong. There are some who feel the time and movement is a kind of digestive. In the evening in particular, there is a silence when it is all done. How to Wash the Dishes brings elegance, art, and a bit of mindfulness to the sink. It is the perfect gift for those who love to clean and equally as apt for those we wish would clean a bit more.

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Book SynopsisOur Observer’s Notebooks, on astronomy, trees, and weather, have won praise for their unique combination of a beautiful journal aesthetic with useful lab-notebook-like information. Home is the latest addition to the series. What can you do with a box of baking soda? A half of lemon? The answers are myriad and extend far beyond the kitchen. Home features 160 pages of lined paper, along with useful charts and drawings. Whether you need an illustrated guide to canning and pickling, or a chart of kitchen knives, Home blends compelling and practical information with a plentiful assortment of lined pages for writing, recording, journaling and list-making.

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Book SynopsisIf you’ve ever thought about starting your own farm or homestead but weren’t sure how to get started, follow Shannon and Stewart Stonger, two self-made homesteaders, and their plan on how to start and succeed at homesteading. Shannon and Stewart left their home in the city and moved to an empty plot of land, with hopes of starting their own farm. Their research and experiences produced not only a successful and fruitful farm, but also a fully functional homestead, without modern conveniences. They’ll show you how they did it, and how you can do it too, all on a budget. You’ll learn how to plow your land, grow your own fruits and vegetables, create a viable water source for watering crops, harness energy from wind and the sun, preserve the harvest through canning and dehydration, raise livestock and much more. These attainable, game-changing tips and projects will allow you to live a simple, debt-free life and start your own agricultural homestead, all with your own two hands.

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Book SynopsisAs seen on the BBC's This Farming Life The inspirational story of Lynbreck Croft--a regenerative Scottish farm rooted in local food, community, and the dreams of two women. A ripping good account of the guts, luck and perseverance it takes to create a productive and healthy farm or croft that jumps the rails of our conventional industrial agriculture.--Nick Offerman, New York Times bestselling author of Where the Deer and the Antelope Play I raced through this beautiful story with mounting awe and excitement. . . . Pragmatism, honesty and openness to new and old ideas shines through on every page. I hope it inspires legions of new farmers.--Isabella Tree, author of Wilding Lynn and Sandra left their friends, family, and jobs in England to travel north to Scotland to find a bit of land that they could call their own. They had in mind keeping a few chickens, a kitchen garden, and renting out some camping space; instead, they fell in love with Lynbreck Croft--150 acres of opportunity and beauty, shrouded by the Cairngorms and deep in the Highlands of Scotland. But they had no money, no plan, and no experience in farming. In Our Wild Farming Life, Lynn and Sandra recount their experiences as they rebuild their new home and work out what kind of farmers they want to be. They learn how to work with Highland cattle, become part of the crofting community and begin to truly understand how they can farm in harmony with nature to produce wonderful food for themselves and the people around them. Through efforts like these, Lynn and Sandra have been able to combine regenerative farming practices with old crofting traditions to keep their own personal values intact. Our Wild Farming Life is what happens when you follow your dreams of living on the land; a story of how two people became farmers--and how they learned to make a living from it, their way. [This] is a warm yet realistic chronicle of the world of the small-time farmer, sharing a vision of how we humans can feed ourselves sustainably and ethically while living in harmony with the natural world.--Booklist For anyone who has ever sat in a city office dreaming of . . . living off the land, this book will inspire them to take the plunge.--The Telegraph

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Book SynopsisFor homeowners seeking a simpler life and apartment dwellers dreaming of their own space, tiny houses represent an inspiring, attainable ideal. For those fueled by wanderlust, converted buses—they call them “skoolies”—take the tiny house adventure one step further. Reborn as cozy homes, these retired school buses are ready to hit the road. And unlike the bohemian house buses of 1960s counterculture, many of today’s conversions adhere to a contemporary aesthetic of sleek minimalism. In The Modern House Bus, journalist Kimberley Mok shares 12 buses that are sure to inspire. These are families following a new American dream that values financial freedom over square footage, adventure over manicured lawns. Designed to fit the owner’s lifestyle and needs, the conversions are filled with inventive architectural details, creative materials, and unique style. Filled with photographs of the buses and their breathtaking surroundings and ideas space-saving hacks, this is a book for aspiring bus-owners and armchair adventurers alike.Trade Review"[#Buslife] is the latest trendlet in vagabond living, a fantasy of mobility, DIY adventurism, and off-grid self-sufficiency…says Kimberley Mok in her practical and transporting primer on the so-called skoolie movement.… Mok has practical advice galore…and an infectious enthusiasm for redefining the good life." -- Taylor Antrim, Vogue.com

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Book SynopsisIf you like to eat your fruits and vegetables (and even if you don’t!), you should value our planet’s bees. Yet, because of environmental pollution, loss of green spaces, and a general disregard for the well-being of insects, humans have caused the number of bees to plummet. In the past year, the managed honeybee population of the United States has dropped 40 percent, and there has been a 25 percent decline in wild bees—figures that are alarming at best. Helping the bees is easier than you might imagine, however, as outlined in this charmingly illustrated call to action. Here are 50 easy suggestions, along with an informative introduction, to get you started. Try cutting your lawn less frequently, buying ethical honey, and keeping your yard dark at night. You can follow easy instructions for building a bee-friendly window box or a green-roofed garden shed. Little things can make a big difference. Just ask a bee.

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Book SynopsisVivid: Style in Colour celebrates the influence of colour in the world of interior design and our everyday lives, showing you where to begin if your life feels like it could benefit from some new (coloured) energy.The eight chapters (orange, red, blue, green, pink, yellow, neutrals, and black) are built around the insights of renowned stylist Julia Green gathered over several decades and feature interviews from leading proponents of the art of colour around the world, including Martyn Thomson (Sydney), Jessica Bettenay (Melbourne), Marielle Ienna (Palermo), LRNCE (Marrakech) and Los Enamorados (Ibiza).Short essays on the science and psychology of colour complement the stunning interior shots by Armelle Habib, alongside travel vignettes that tell the story of how different palettes are interwoven into our lives. Topics like confidence in bold or clashing colour, using colour to connect or divide spaces, artworks, layering colour for depth and texture, and styling for small spaces and for the seasons are discussed in depth.

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Book SynopsisIn an era of ubiquity, nomadism and ecological challenge, the maturity of wireless technologies, the readiness of broadband Internet access and the popularity of smart terminals should contribute to emancipating IT services in connection with the home and home-based resources. This book, in light of several years of applied research and technological surveys, aims at describing the digital home networking environment, its techniques, and the challenges around its service architecture. Digital Home Networking aims to provide a broad introduction to state-of-the-art digital home standards and protocols, as well as an in-depth description of service architectures for entertainment and domotic services involving digital home resources. The book covers aspects such as networking, remote access, security, interoperability, scalability and Quality of Service. Notably, it describes the generic architecture, which was proposed and developed in the context of the EUREKA/Celtic research project "Feel@Home".Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction 1 Romain CARBOU 1.1. Cultural context around a definition 1 1.2. A brief history of home automation 3 1.3. Coming to a definition of the digital home 7 1.4. Plan of this book 9 1.5. Bibliography 10 Chapter 2. Actors in Digital Home Networking 11 Romain CARBOU 2.1. Scope 11 2.2. Categories of actors 12 2.3. User roles 15 2.4. Bibliography 16 Chapter 3. Network Technologies 17 Pablo NAJERA and Ana NIETO 3.1. Local connectivity and networks 17 3.2. Connectivity to main networks 30 3.3. Bibliography 54 Chapter 4. Standards 59 Rémi BARS, Jorge GOMEZ-MONTALVO, Mohamed MAHDI, Cristina ALCARAZ and Rodrigo ROMAN 4.1. Introduction 59 4.2. Standards used in the home 59 4.3. Remote access to homes 82 4.4. Bibliography 92 Chapter 5. Personalization and Home Context 97 Gema MAESTRO, Lin SUN, Daqing ZHANG and Bin GUO 5.1. Introduction 97 5.2. Personalization 98 5.3. Context management and sharing 112 5.4. Protégé – an ontology editor 129 5.5. Bibliography 136 Chapter 6. Security 139 Anas ABOU EL KALAM, Marc LACOSTE, Mohamed MAACHAOUI, Francisco MOYANO and Rodrigo ROMAN 6.1. Importance of security and privacy 139 6.2. Security requirements of the extended digital home 143 6.3. A conceptual security architecture 149 6.4. Relevant security mechanisms 156 6.5. Applying the security architecture 189 6.6. Bibliography 195 Chapter 7. Quality of Experience and Quality of Service 203 Jorge GÓMEZ-MONTALVO and Ernesto EXPOSITO 7.1. Introduction 203 7.2. QoS concepts and standards 204 7.3. IETF multimedia protocols 220 7.4. Semantic approach for QoS management in home networks 223 7.5. Conclusion 251 7.6. Bibliography 252 Chapter 8. Service Management 259 Marta BEL MARTIN, Olivier DUGEON, Julien FASSON, Anas ABOU EL KALAM, Mohamed MAACHAOUI, Béatrice PAILLASSA, Francisco Javier RAMÓN SALGUERO and Warodom WERAPUN 8.1. Introduction 259 8.2. Service management basis 260 8.3. Basic protocols 262 8.4. Network architecture and service management 277 8.5. Conclusion 305 8.6. Bibliography 306 Chapter 9. The Feel@Home System 309 Marta BEL MARTIN, Gema MAESTRO MOLINA, Mohamed MAHDI and Olivier DUGEON 9.1. The Feel@Home architecture 309 9.2. Local and remote content distribution through VPN 329 9.3. Local and remote content distribution through IMS 337 9.4. Conclusion 352 9.5. Bibliography 353 Chapter 10. Home Interconnection through the Internet 355 Olivier DUGEON and Mohamed MAHDI 10.1. Introduction 355 10.2. Interoperability scenarios 356 10.3. Internet-based content sharing between remote homes 370 10.4. Conclusion 384 10.5. Bibliography 384 Chapter 11. Conclusion 385 Michel DIAZ 11.1. Bibliography 388 List of Authors 389 Index 391

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Book SynopsisThis book is a celebration of all the simple pleasures of hanging out at home. Written and illustrated by fellow introvert Elizabeth Gray (@thegraytergood), it's filled with musings about the cosy, creative adventures to be had in the great indoors. Inspirational quotes, self-care tips and light-hearted activities and journalling prompts remind you that lying low is cool-and actually healthy for you. The book also features unique bonus items to enhance your indoor fun, including a window suncatcher cling, drink coasters, a bookmark and nail art stickers all designed by the author.Trade ReviewIn addition to embracing the homebody lifestyle, the book acts as a manifesto of mindfulness. It issues calls to rest and relish quiet moments spent with a good book, or in the adult equivalent of a blanket fort. It’s as much about connection to one’s self, reflection on priorities, and engaging in activities that bring one joy as it is about the location where those things happen. Its cozy hodgepodge of advice, encouragement, and reflection space complement its overall tone. --Sarah White, Foreword Reviews

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