Expo closing sale starts Tuesday with 10% off

The going-out-of-business sales start Tuesday at Home Depot's 34 Expo Design Centers. The Atlanta home-improvement retailer said today it would be closing the chain, costing 7,000 jobs.

Discounts start at 10% and will increase through April 8, the last day the stores will be open.

Home Depot launched the Expo chain in 1999 to offer higher-ticket merchandise to do-it-yourself fans who wanted to remodel without a decorator. The cavernous Expo stores, which provided design and installation assistance for a fee, were organized around a series of tasteful room displays.

Home Depot also is closing five YardBirds stores, all in California; a Design Center store in California and another in North Carolina and a bath remodeling business called HD Bath.

Twelve of the Expo stores are in California, including:

-- Anaheim, 1011 N. Tustin Ave.
-- Huntington Beach, 6912 Edinger Ave.
-- Laguna Nigel, 25600 Rancho Niguel Road
-- Westwood, 10861 Weyburn Ave.
-- Monrovia, 407 W. Huntington Dr.
-- Redondo Beach, 1519 Hawthorne Blvd.

-- Nancy Rivera Brooks

Photo: Expo Design Center in Monrovia. Credit: Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times

If you're looking for unique, it has to be handmade

Crafters, artists and fans of handmade goods were out in full force at Unique Los Angeles during its debut at the California Market Center. About 6,000 people showed up to peruse goods made by some 200 vendors (most of them local) offering lithographs, jewelry, hair clips, letterpress stationery, T-shirts, clothing, leather goods, stuffed animals, children’s clothes and much more.

The setting — the unfinished top floor of the center — gave the show a loft-like, airy feel, perfect for the fun and funky items displayed in booths. Letterpress cards and stationery at the Tiselle booth caught our eye, the delicate graphics and lush colors standing out. Owner and designer Tianyi Wang, an Art Center graduate, said she draws some of the designs by hand before turning them into polymer letterpress plates. "My background is in oil painting," she said, "so I love mixing inks."

Next stop was the Purrr booth, where designer Junko showed us her one-of-a-kind clothes made from recycled vintage items: youthful mini-dresses fashioned from oversized men’s sweaters, embellished with little bows, and men’s shirts crafted into feminine blouses, complete with ruffles.

DIY gifts for people good with their hands (or think they are)

Are you short on cash this year? Or have waaay too much time on your hands? Or maybe have a lot of bacon lying around? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might want to check out Popular Mechanics' list of 10 DIY gifts, which include a marshmallow gun, knife holder and bacon soap (not recommended for eating).

You can probably make these gadgets if "you're the type of person who likes getting his hands dirty fixing, servicing, and building your home, car, and garage hobbies," according to Popular Mechanics. Sure, that sentence doesn't make much sense, but hey, you like "building garage hobbies." Grammar is not your specialty.

Even those of you who don't like building garage hobbies might want to check out the DIY gifts, which include perfume, noise-canceling headphones and crooked knives. And it should probably be noted, if you're the type of person who thinks you excel at fixing/building things but your endeavors usually end with an emergency call to the plumber/electrician/poison-control hotline, maybe you should not DIY.

-- Alana Semuels

Photo: Bacon is endlessly popular. Credit: scurzuzu via Flickr

This season, Santa's shopping locally

It's sometimes easy to lose sight of the great products we have right here in Southern California.

So this Christmas, why not keep your gift-buying close to home?

Concentrate on shopping locally and you might find parts of the area you've never seen before and even meet the producers face to face. And if all of that just seems like too much, almost all of the items in the coming list are also available over the Internet.

The Food staff of the Los Angeles Times put together this list of homegrown favorites to get you started. Among the picks: giving the fun-yet-practical gift of coffee. In particular, Los Angeles-based George Laguerre's coffee -- mellow and rich, with caramel notes that go really well with milk and a bit of sugar -- it's just the thing for a sleep-deprived morning of unwrapping gifts.

Photo: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

50 ways to save money this holiday season

Considering everybody on your holiday gift list -- friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, your kids' teachers -- you might be needing a stimulus package before you even get to the big-ticket items this year. So why not take a page from your grandmother's playbook and make the smaller gifts yourself?

Not only are homemade gifts less expensive, they also capture the spirit of holiday giving in a way that purchased gifts simply can't. And if you consider the ubiquitous traffic and holiday crowds, a leisurely morning spent baking breadsticks or whipping up a batch of homemade marshmallows seems positively Zen-like by comparison.

Gifts you make yourself can triangulate personal taste with both economy and invention. Make a stack of shortbread cookies spiced with your neighbor's favorite lavender, then tie them up in cellophane the color of her kitchen. Or wrap up a tin of brownies in the sports page for a friend who's a rabid Lakers fan (maybe the standings -- an idea you might need to finesse if your friend is a Clippers fan).

Use antique bottles found at flea markets (sterilize them first) to show off a rich caramel sauce spiked with Cognac or a batch of vinegar you've infused with thyme and peppercorns. Just tie the tops with velvet ribbon and thread on greeting cards and you have terrific gifts, at once pretty and practical.

These are just a few of many possible ideas. If you have more than 50 people on your list, riff on some of these, invent your own -- or e-mail your Facebook friends pictures of gifts instead. Read more here....

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo: Homemade marshmallows. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

Arts & Crafty: Budget-minded gifts at Etsy

If you think of calendars as gifts that shout "I didn't know what to get you," check out these ideas from artisans at www.etsy.com.

Satsumalynn has a wall calendar inspired by Japanese textiles perfect for fans of letterpress. It's $44, and you can see a photo below. Another, CecilyInk had a $14 printed calendar, whose modern graphics in pumpkin, chartreuse and raspberry, sure to brighten the desk and mood of a co-worker. (Photo at right.)

Scouting around for deals on Etsy, you'll also find personalized teacher gift sets by saratams; a calendar that doubles as postcards by SureAsBlue; calendars with reminder lists by pixelimpress; and a letterpress calendar by SycamoreStreetPress that benefits orphans in Ethiopia.  Also worth a look are artistscs28, InkspotWorkshop, pistachiopress and TurtlePapers (search for them under "sellers: usernames").

And if your list is bigger than your budget, try littlebrownpen, AnaPapeterie and bluetricycle. For $5, you get a PDF file that lets you print as many calendars as you need. They're perfect as party favors, too.

Santa's Little Helper: Have a green Christmas

It would be hard to find a list of more mundane gifts, but these humble household items have two huge benefits: They’re cheap to buy, and they keep on giving . . . and giving . . . and giving, because they save so much money and precious resources.

Be sure to wrap them in a reused gift bag or old newspaper!

1) .5 Gallons Per Minute Faucet Aerator

Instead of allowing 2.2 gallons of water to flow out of your kitchen or bathroom faucet head each minute, this chrome-plated aerator restricts the flow to a meager 0.5 -- and does it with an even spray. Price: $1.95. Info: www.e3living.com/5-gallons-minute-aerator

2) Dishpan

If you throw a plastic bin in the sink and hand-wash your dishes, you can collect excess water and, rather than send it down the sewer, throw it on your plants. Price: About $1 and up

3) Water heater blanket

If your water heater has a tank and you don’t have the cash or willingness to go tankless, at least wrap it with a blanket. It will keep the water warmer longer and cut down on the energy needed to heat it in the first place. Price: About $10 

Santa's Little Helper: Gifts for kids who cook

We asked Times Food writer Amy Scattergood to, uh, cook up a list of gift ideas for the pint-sized chef in your life. Here's what she, uh, served up:

1) "Fanny At Chez Panisse: A Child’s Restaurant Adventures with 46 Recipes" by Alice Waters. Shop around, but we found it at Amazon.com for $14.

2) An immersion blender. Great, safe, convenient tool for kids with a big fun factor. Shop around, as prices vary.

3) Kid’s chef outfits (hats, coats, aprons). Shop around, but prices range from $9 to $25. Here's one site we like.

4) Colorful measuring cups. Teach basic measuring and math skills while you work on recipes. The cooler colors, the better.

5) Tongs, about $20 and up. Kids LOVE these; good for lifting up pasta, etc., as well as playing jousting games with and picking up mudpies.

Butterfly art wings its way into home decor

Designers have brought the ethereal butterfly indoors, using it as a motif to brighten homes. The creatures are decoupaged onto coffee tables and lampshades, laser-printed on fabrics, painted and etched on china and carafes. Some are fashioned into mobiles and hanging balls. Here's a photo gallery of a few standouts.

Photo credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Everything's coming up roses

The ancient Romans associated the rose with their goddess of love. European aristocracy in the 17th century prized them so highly they were accepted as payment for debt. Times staff writer Barbara Thornburg explores how the tradition of beauty continues with a new crop of rose-inspired furnishings: ruffled-edge bowls, tiles with digital imagery, linen fabrics — even a whimsical chair upholstered in paper roses, as seen here. Check out this rose photo gallery.

Photo credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times