There comes a point every autumn when the trees have finished showing off, the last few leaves come drifting down, and the yard begins looking like someone dumped an enormous bag of confetti across the lawn. Naturally, our first instinct is to clean it all up. We reach for the rake, drag out the leaf blower, and begin the annual campaign to remove every last leaf from the property. We stuff enormous bags, build piles by the curb, and spend a perfectly good Saturday doing a jo

Spiral-bound recipes, peculiar casserole names, handwritten notes, and the wonderful stories tucked inside America's community cookbooks. If you've ever wandered through a thrift store, church rummage sale, or flea market, you've probably come across one of those little spiral-bound cookbooks with a faded cover and a title like Our Favorite Recipes or Good Cooking from Good Friends. They're usually not particularly fancy. The covers might feature a simple drawing of a church,

Vintage kitchen tools, forgotten books, and the pleasure of finding something wonderful when you weren't looking for anything at all. There is something particularly enjoyable about wandering through a secondhand shop on a chilly November afternoon. Maybe it's the weather, or the fact that the days are getting shorter and spending an hour indoors poking around someone else's old belongings suddenly seems like a perfectly reasonable way to spend an afternoon. Whatever the reas