
Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. has announced that it will pull the plug on its struggling shelter magazine, Home, due to "sharp declines in the 'mid-market home sector',"
according to the Wall Street Journal. Home will join the ranks of fellow folded shelter titles, Conde Nast's
House & Garden and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia's
Blueprint.

Unless you're
a celebrity with money to burn, or just one very successful lay-dee, most of us have to cut back somewhere when it comes to furnishing and renovating our homes. I myself have been known to drop big bucks at high-end design shops and haggle over flea market finds in the same day. And although I'll concede that spending money on my house itself is in most cases a better investment than purchasing furnishings to fill it with, sometimes I just can't restrain myself from bringing home a beautiful lamp or having a chair reupholstered.

In anticipation of the new TLC series Hope For Your Home, which
premieres this Saturday, I thought I'd share with you host Kirsten Kemp Becker's five tips for increasing the value of your property. A veteran Realtor, author and real estate company, and owner of a successful design company, Becker knows a thing or two about acclimating your home to the current economic climate. Here's a few ways she says you can do so yourself:
- Plants on the outside.

A pied-à-terre is a place of lodging for occasional or secondary use. In French, the term literally means "a foot on the ground." It was named such because basic crash pads used by traveling execs during the week were traditionally on the ground level of apartment buildings.