Home and Garden

Decorating Arrangements

Dozens of articles about interior decoration. The "Design Styles" section features information about styles such as Art Deco, Asian, French country, rustic, shabby chic, and Shaker. Includes home tours, and design ideas for specific rooms and for items, such as baskets, candles, lamps, and window treatments. From Home and Garden Television.

Do It Yourself Home Repair, Improvement and Remodeling

The site contains a large collection of tips, tricks, and tutorials covering a variety of subjects, from appliance care to pet care to woodworking. You can scan a list of subjects or search with keywords. There is also a free monthly newsletter.

Epicurious

Everything for food lovers - cooking videos, recipes, articles, cookbook reviews, and information on wine and restaurants.

Family Conversations and Family Mealtimes

This site describes how a family eating dinner together "is a simple, effective way to reduce the risk of youth substance abuse and to raise healthier children." It also provides a short list of discussion topics such as sharing childhood memories and discussing books and movies.

The Garden Gate

This is an annotated directory of selected gardening sites and contains useful original material. “The Garden Gate offers gardeners and nature lovers a carefully-selected and well-organized collection of links to informative and interesting horticulture sites around the world.”

The Garden Web

Here's the place to order all those gardening catalogs you love to read! In addition, you'll find lots of useful gardening information, including an extensive list of public gardens in the U.S. by state and type.

Home Maintenance and Repair

"Full text articles on topics of home maintenance and repair. Includes information on stains, cleaning, minor household fixes," and more. Searchable, and browsable by topic. From Michigan State University Extension.

Home and Family

Home and family topics include aging, children, clothing, family relationships, housing, parenting, finances, food, nutrition and health.

Psychology Today: Parenting Center

Collection of articles about the psychology of parenting. Subjects include adoption, division of labor, fatherhood, grandparenting, child development, communication, child abuse, child neglect, sex education, technology, discipline, and more. From Psychology Today magazine.

USDA Hardiness Zone Map

Will your plant survive in Iowa’s climate? Check the online version of the government publication showing the growing conditions in areas across the USA.

Wine Lover’s Page

Learn all about wine with links that include a pronouncing glossary, vineyard weather, food-wine matches, and tasting notes on over 50,000 wines.

Yard and Garden

Provides how-to tips and gardening basics. Topics include flowers, fruits, houseplant, lawns, trees and shrubs, vegetables and herbs, weeds and pests.

Energy Efficiency tips from MidAmerican

Energy efficiency programs help save energy, money and protect the environment. MidAmerican has tips tips and tricks for all energy users to encourage Iowans to take control of their energy use.