Filled with lots of cute ideas for DIYs, decorating, and hosting, A Beautiful Mess Happy Handmade Home is a beautifully photographed, cheery and bright book. Although there are a few ideas I will take pointers from, most of the book is not for me as my interior style is more minimal rustic modern than cute bright kitschy.
I definitely enjoyed reading the book and looking through the photos. It is well written and easy to read. I do however wish that there were more step-by-step instructions for projects.
For example, I really loved the look of the box garden + path project, but there were no instructions on how to make it! I guess it's a pretty self explanatory project (especially for book authors used to building things, simple and not so simple), but I definitely don't know my way around power tools and gardening as well as the authors and would have loved more than a simple paragraph about how cute and easy to maintain container gardens are. Some pointers on how deep they should be, should they be lined, what kind of soil to use, etc, would have been greatly welcomed.
If you are looking for a complete instruction manual for DIY projects (like I was), I cannot recommend this book. However if you are simply interested in being inspired, and having a launching pad for ideas of you own, I say go for it.
