cover image Nesting: It's a Chick Thing

Nesting: It's a Chick Thing

Ame Mahler Beanland, AME Mahler Beanland, Emily Miles Terry. Workman Publishing, $13.95 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-7611-3160-1

While Beanland and Terry do care about having a nice home, throwing fantastic parties and whipping up fabulous dinners, they have better things to do than polish the silver. The coauthors of It's a Chick Thing: Celebrating the Wild Side of Women's Friendships throw Martha Stewart-esque caution to the wind in this lifestyle guide with attitude, irreverently addressing the""four pillars of nesting"": decorating, entertaining, cooking and gardening. In each section, they give a basic overview of how to approach the task at hand, and then delve into the nitty-gritty, with sidebars, lists, pull-out quotes from celebrities and quirky clip art, all with a can-do, girl power mind-set, evident in the inclusion of such lines as""I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house"" (from Zsa Zsa Gabor). Among other tidbits, readers will find cocktail recipes, flea market shopping tips, party invitation ideas, suggestions for creating a garden that suits their personality and reasons to give Martha some credit (""the chick can carve a pumpkin 200 ways and make 65 recipes from the seeds alone!"").