Felt Furnishings: 25 Accessories For Contemporary Homes by Anne Kyyro Quinn is a beautifully illustrated book with patterns and tutorials for making home accessories out of felt. Felt is a great fabric because it is inexpensive, easy to work with, and has come a long way from the inexpensive craft felt from your kindergarten days.

Some favorite projects: the decorative throw pillow with huge ruffled rosette over the front; throw pillow with bulbous, padded pleats down the front; throw blanket with asymmetrical mod circles appliqued over it – and semi-matching throw pillows; table runner with contrasting cut-outs; throw pillow cover made of strips of felt woven and sewn together; spiral-top ottoman; and striped tab-top drapes.

The felt offers a fun, mod feel – perfect for a first apartment or dorm room. Plus, the projects are easy, require little knowledge of sewing, and great directions are included for true sewing beginners like myself.

When we bought our house, I was excited that it had a verdant yard filled with fruit trees, rose bushes, and a myriad of colorful flowers that would bloom seemingly overnight. One problem: I have no idea how to care for plants.

Enter Easy Bloom. This nifty device collects all sorts of crazy info from your soil and provides plant care tips. Simply plug the Easy Bloom into your computer via USB (don’t worry, every computer has a USB port), select the mode, then simply stick the Easy Bloom in the desired location in your yard. Let it sit for at least 24 hours, then plug it back in and upload your data.

The Easy Bloom can be set to three different modes. Recommend mode takes soil, water, temperature, and sunlight readings. It will take this data and recommend different plants that would thrive in that area. Monitor mode is for existing plants. It will tell you what nutrients it has too much or too little of, and gives you care advice. Water mode – best used for indoor plants – can instantly tell you if your plant needs water.

Easy Bloom has a well-designed, easy-to-use website that will store and track your data. Over 5,000 plants are listed on the website with photos and extensive care guidelines. There is no setup, so this is perfect for any gadget-phobe.

A few things that I didn’t like. First, I would like to be able to change the Easy Bloom mode right on the device, rather than having to plug it in to do so. Second, I would like a better way to identify plants. I wish that it could tell you the exact plant just by taking soil readings, but I understand that that might not be possible. I would like a better search method within in the plant library so that I could more easily identify what is growing in our yard – a way to narrow down the library by more options than color, height, and soil.

Just about the only thing the Easy Bloom can’t do is turn my black thumb green. But it does get it closer to an olive green.