Kate Morales’ office wasn’t much to look at. The dark furniture and leather chairs were new, but you could see peeling paint and hear the old radiators wheezing to keep the place warm on a rainy afternoon. They’d said she was good with my kind of…

Welcome your holiday guests, delight the neighbors or just cheer yourself up when you come home from running errands on a dark afternoon. Plants, seasonal decorations and lights — especially lights! — can magically transform your damp yard or empty…

Imagine preparing your home — just once! — in a way that will welcome guests and delight family from the feasts of November through the celebrations of the New Year. While you may choose to make a few tweaks for specific celebrations, this base…

“I love my backyard studio,” Seattle jazz vocalist Dina Blade says. She recalls trying to practice music in a corner of her family’s dining room: “Everyone would be coming and going — and talking to me.” Blade, who has lived in her Ravenna/Bryant…

It was 5 a.m. when my neighbor’s three dogs started barking and three hours later when they finally stopped. By then, it seemed like everyone on the street was awake and annoyed. The dog owner came home from work that afternoon to find an angry…

When it came time to replace the roof on their house in Seattle’s Crown Hill neighborhood, Jeff and Kim Carlson made a popular decision — they stayed with composite shingles. “Contractors brought up a metal roof as a possibility,” Kim Carlson says,…

Adrian Lipp’s chickens once ranged free in his Ballard neighborhood. His neighbors with vegetable gardens, however, were less than happy about sharing their plants with his foraging fowl. So Lipp built an extensive chicken yard featuring a multilevel…

As we head inside for fall, it’s a great time to look around our homes and think about options for flooring updates. A new flooring surface can refresh and revitalize the look of your interior, whether you redo a room or the entire house. Plus, it…

In Seattle, you can count on the weather being delightfully gray and cool — except for about eight weeks of summer. One July morning we wake up to find we’ve seemingly been transported to the Arizona desert: It’s relentlessly sunny and hot. The…

Pets love routine, and so do most pet owners. But the stay-at-home order has turned everyone’s routine upside down. Whether you’re spending this time sprawled on the couch bingeing Netflix, hunched at a makeshift desk peering at a Zoom screen, or…

You see them everywhere these days: in dorm rooms and apartments, condos and offices — even on Instagram. From tiny succulents to large potted palms, indoor plants are back. According to experts, we’re spending so much time indoors that we’re starved…

Thinking about taking your interiors to the next level? Laid-back but fashion-forward, Northwest style has plenty of room for mixing up the new with the traditional. Four area designers have suggestions for fresh colors, finishes and ideas you can…

Unnoticed By K.G. Anderson It wasn’t that people deliberately ignored me. They just didn’t notice me. Or half the time they thought I was somebody else. “Why did you guys make me so…average?” My parents exchanged glances. Mom flushed, licked her…

I’d said barely a word to anyone all the way from New York to Santa Fe, but the cowboy’s toothy grin disarmed me. “Where you from, miss?” “New York,” I murmured. He squinted and shook his head. He couldn’t hear me over the rattle of the stagecoach…

Up at 5, take the hellhound walkies, then catch the Underground to Styxbridge for a bagel with sulfur spread. They say Hell is other people, but somehow I’m always alone. I trot along the hot lavawalk to the office, clutching my flaming triple…

About Karen Anderson Karen G. Anderson is a freelance journalist, arts reviewer and technology writer. She has recently begun to publish short fiction. The views expressed in this article are her own and do not reflect those of the organizations for…

Karen G. Anderson explains the controversy surrounding the 2015 Hugo Awards for science fiction that led to a vote of “no award” in five of the most coveted categories. Think of the Hugo Awards as the Oscars of fantasy and science fiction — they…