COLUMBIA, S.C. – Hundreds of years ago, a woman who used lipstick quite literally took her life in her hands.In the centuries before MAC and Clinique, before Revlon and Maybelline, anyone who wanted to accentuate her lips had to use a product colored with cinnabar, a poisonous red shade of mercury. If she ingested enough […]

Girls have a new best friendBy Deb AcordThe Gazette COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The bride was dazzling. As she walked down the aisle, wedding guests gawked.But were they looking at her, or at the gigantic rock on her ring finger?She preferred to think it was her beauty, for she knew in her heart that the […]

If you’d like to add a little “wildlife” to the yard this spring, this trio of deer planters is a fresh and attractive way to display plants and flowers on the porch or patio, and they’re guaranteed not to nibble the produce. They also work indoors for houseplants, and when the holidays roll around, they […]

ST. PAUL, Minn. – In case his neon-pink Mohawk doesn’t make the point, Jim Kolles is ticked.The extreme hairstyle that once personified rebellion and anti-establishment is now, believe it or not, trendy. But the 22-year-old Minneapolis resident who leads a punk band with a name not quite fit to print (rhymes with grass) is fighting […]

This do-it-yourself play structure has something for everyone. For boys and girls, it’s a treehouse, fort, hide-out, clubhouse and jungle gym all rolled into one. For dads and moms (and grandpas and grandmas), it’s a sturdy playhouse with a safety-conscious design and a clean, unobtrusive look.In addition to the smooth hardboard slide and gently inclined […]

Q We have just adopted a one-year-old boy and want to make the house safe health wise for our son. With so many antimicrobials and disinfectants on the market, I don’t know what is best or what to use. What about those “mutated germs” like SARS – what do I use for them? A: Relax! […]

Every busy needlecrafter knows that when it comes to crocheting, the one thing that’s always in short supply is time. As soon as one project is completed, there’s another one ready to go. Wouldn’t it be great if you could effectively double your output in the same amount of time? Now you can, and the […]

So where’s the deck?You already should have something in the works, since peak summer entertaining – July Fourth to Labor Day – is only a charcoal briquette away.But it was a harsh winter and a chilly, damp spring. The economy isn’t great, and there was a war.On top of that, talk about the possible health […]

If ever there were an ultimate testing ground for sunglasses, it’s Iraq, under the blazing sun and blowing sand, as sticky and scratchy as sugar.So brutal are these conditions that some U.S. Marines in the past have brought in reinforcements of cardboard cutouts, affixed over sunglasses with slits to see through and to hold them […]

Let’s say each week you eat six breakfasts, five dinners and two lunches at home. That’s 676 paper napkins a year, or 2,704 for a family of four.That sounds dramatic, but the cost savings from switching to cloth would be only about $40 a year for that family of four (based on a price of […]