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Prather’s Pick: Projects for a handmade home

Prather's Pick

If you enjoy good old-fashioned homemaking, this book is for you. It is filled with projects from fabric food wraps to homemade disinfectants and deodorants.

“Simple Farmhouse Life: DIY Projects for the All-Natural, Handmade Home” was written by Lisa Bass who has written ten other books with similar themes. Lisa writes that she finds freedom in a “simple and minimal lifestyle”—to live on a little less and to have time and resources to enjoy the simple things in life.

Lisa grew up on a 400-acre property where her grandfather raised cattle, there was a herd of forty elk, and she had a pony named Blaze. In 2007 Lisa graduated college and got married. When her first baby was born, she traded her career to be a full-time mother—well, almost full-time. Lisa founded “Farmhouse on Boone,” a video on YouTube, featuring simple living ideas. She is the blog’s author, photographer, and videographer. Eventually Lisa’s husband Luke quit his job and now the two pursue the online business together.



At the present time Lisa, Luke, and their six children live in a 130-year-old Victorian farmhouse on a seven-acre plot, complete with a big white barn, a silo, and other buildings.

This week’s book is filled with photographs of Lisa’s family and of the featured project ideas. The photographs were done by Lisa. Six chapters feature directions for handmade projects in the following categories: kitchen, home, antiques and vintage finds, body, cleaning and laundry, and garden (herbs and flowers).



Readers will learn how to make beeswax food wraps (that last up to a year), made from fabric covered with beeswax. A pocket in each wrap holds a sandwich. After folding the filled pocket, it is closed by wrapping a jute twine around a button.

The book has ideas for making potholders, linen tea towels, a linen tote, a basket liner, aprons and more. Directions are included for making a charming grain sack pillow cover from a vintage grain sack, crochet trim, and bias tape or ribbon for closing the cover.

The reader can learn to make a fruit or veggie wash, lemon rosemary foaming hand and dish soap, a wooden spoon butter to be used in treating dry wooden spoons, cutting boards, and rolling pins, and a wonderful stovetop potpourri.

But that’s not all. You can also find directions for making body products, including a grapefruit sugar scrub, bath salts, citrus body mist, orange toothpaste, lemon clay deodorant, lip balm, and more.

Homemade kitchen products include an all-purpose cleaner, kitchen disinfectant spray, glass cleaner, laundry detergent, among others.

“Simple Farmhouse Life” is published by Lyons Press, 2020. The paperback book costs $24.95. You can also find the book at the Craig branch of Moffat County Libraries.


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