ANTIQUE DECORATIVE

Two-Hour Christmas Crafts: 200 Inspirational Decorating Ideas to Celebrate the Season

Two hours is all you need to craft any of these more than 200 holiday projects. Includes a Paper Angel Garland, Snowman Clay Pin, Chenille Christmas Stocking, and more. “Complete instructions, patterns, and material lists for each project....Inexpensive, easy-to-make designs.... Will provide a holiday season to remember.”—Country.

Everyone runs short of time at the holidays, but busy crafters can easily squeeze in dozens of extra projects with the quick and easy ideas in Michele Thompson's Two-Hour Christmas Crafts. The slightly overcrowded but well-photographed pages are crammed with ornaments, stockings, candlesticks, topiaries, wreaths, decorative boxes and bottles, picture frames, centerpieces, card holders, lamp shades, guest towels, and more--some nicely glitzy, some quaintly country, some romantically Victorian.
Directions are quite brief and occasionally too superficial, but most are adequate for these fairly simple projects, and patterns are included where necessary. Beginners can seek further help from the general instructions section, which helps clarify the basics of decoupage, fabric painting, wirework, polymer clay, and other common techniques. More advanced crafters will appreciate the quantity of pretty projects they can whip up--often in far less than two hours. --Amy Handy

Satisfaction Guaranteed
They're not exactly a boy band, but there's no denying the bad-boy appeal of the Rolling Stones. Now they're back—again—with a new CD and tour.

By Lorraine Ali
Newsweek

Aug. 15, 2005 issue - For a month now, the world's greatest rock- and-roll band has been holed up in this private school in Toronto—putting itself back together again for yet another tour—and it's made itself right at home in typical fashion. In the room Mick Jagger has appropriated, white curtains are pulled wide open for maximum sunlight, fluffy white rugs cover the floor and a humidifier blasts 24/7 to protect his 62-year-old voice from the arctic AC. In fact, he's shivering: like the other Stones, he has zero body fat. (He works out daily with a dance instructor—"not exactly a choreographer; he just helps me plot out my stage moves.") He's wearing loose white cotton pants, a pink, pin-striped dress shirt, black and red Adidas. He points to a full-length gray and white fur coat. "I was wearing that because it's so cold in here," he says, "but I thought I'd better take it off before you came in, or it could look a little... well, too much."

Keith Richards, meanwhile, has converted a classroom into a candlelit den, with blackout curtains, dozens of blood-red roses and a skull he uses for a candy dish. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air. "It's comfy, innit?" he says, gesturing around with a clawlike hand. Richards, 61, wears a tattered scarf around his head, and random charms—an eagle head, a cross, a Chinese coin—hanging from his matted quasi dreads. He says he has no idea what-all is in his hair: his kids and his friends like to decorate him while he's passed out. Richards has no trainer, no regimen, and plots out exactly nothing. "Mick has to get up in the morning with a plan," Richards says. "Who he's going to call, what he's going to eat, where he's going to go. Me, I wake up, praise the Lord, then make sure all the phones are turned off. If we were a mum-and-pop operation, then he'd be Mum."

This mum-and-pop operation called the Rolling Stones has been in business now for 43 years. Just three of the original five—Jagger, Richards and drummer Charlie Watts—are still running the shop; guitarist Brian Jones died in 1969 and bassist Bill Wyman retired in 1993. They haven't had a No. 1 album since "Tattoo You" in 1981. But while most of their peers have either died, dropped into obscurity or taken to limping periodically through sad "reunion" tours, the Stones remain one of the world's top concert attractions. Want a ticket for this year's tour, which kicks off in Boston on Aug. 21? Hurry, it's almost sold out. The question is, when they step onstage, do they still feel it? The answer is, why else would they bother? "I could see why some people may think we're phoning it in after all this time," says Richards. "But playing the music we do, and playing it with these guys, 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' can be a new song to me every night. I mean, we don't need to do it to feed our families. We don't need to do it to prove anything. And nobody wants to be the first one to get off a moving bus. You end up in the dust—'Uh, excuse me, where's my suitcase?' "

In recent years, the Stones' tours have gotten more praise than the new albums they write and record before hitting the road. Their last album, the double-CD "Forty Licks," was mostly repackaged material. "There's no harm in doing that occasionally," says Jagger, "but we didn't want to do it again so soon. You become like an oldies band." The Stones' latest, "A Bigger Bang," which comes out in early September, is a welcome throwback to their scrappy beginnings. This time all the songs are new—a raw, "Little Red Rooster"-style blues number, a couple of Richards's endearingly bedraggled ballads and the usual raunchy, swaggering club anthems. Jagger is clearly proud of it. "We put new stuff out because we still can," he says. "We have lots of it—it's not like we're just eking it out. Rock fans tend to be conservative. 'Ah, I much prefer "Brown Sugar".' Yeah, well, but listen to this, c—t."

Producer Don Was, says Jagger, "is always worried the songs won't sound like the Rolling Stones. I don't care if it sounds like them—us. It would be an achievement if it didn't." But "A Bigger Bang" is classic Stones all the way. It's their longest record in 33 years and is sequenced to sound like two sides of an old vinyl album. "The record company felt it was too long," says Jagger. "But I said, 'What's the favorite Rolling Stones album of all time?' 'Well, "Exile on Main Street".' 'There, you see? "Exile." And how long is that?' 'It's over an hour.' 'And the problem is?' 'Uh, nothing'."

Jagger and Richards say they worked together more

"Den Haag CS"

Den Haag CS is the contrast of Haarlem. It is the only large station build in the seventies. As the sixties when ideas came for this, were very unprofitable.
It replaces the old "State Railway station". To me it is told that oldie was in deplorable state and needs to be break down

Den Haag CS is very typical for seventies architecture. One idea is briliant. To integrate tram, bus and train. It also has typical 70's parts what are outdated. As the bus and tram platform is above the platform, it is very dark around the trains. no daylight. Typical for the seventies. But in general: I do like this station

A worthwhile trip is to go from this "modern station" to the station "Holland Spoor"; the other big station in the Hague. A situation with historical reasons. As both big railways of the 19th century,
HSM and SS, build a large station in this important city.

Nowadays both are connected and the two main stations work out well on the city. The old Holland Spoor is the same kind of attraction as Haarlem: old, rich decorated and also beautiful.

Here on the pic. a typical 70's stairs.. in the background then planned buildngs, from some later date. Guess this is how it is meant.

Steve Crowley, Money Editor of ABC's "Good Morning America", forecast the three fastest growing small business opportunities of the decade - selling gift baskets is one of them. This book is for anyone who wants to get in on this industry. Readers get started by learning all about the materials that are used - including bows, ribbons, and balloons - and how to work with them creatively. Then a series of original step-by-step projects show how to add individual touches while focusing on specific themes.