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West Des Moines Public Library Receives Accreditation from the State Library of Iowa
The State Library of Iowa has announced that the West Des Moines Public Library has met the conditions for state accreditation as outlined in “In Service to Iowa: Public Library Standards Sixth Edition.”

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Style: the Art of Creating a Beautiful Home
Style: The Art of Creating a Beautiful Home is a timeless interiors book that shows you how to transform your living spaces using what you own and love. While designing can be a big investment, styling allows you to elevate your spaces with what you've already got.
This book is at once beautiful and practical, demystifying the creative process of styling so that you can create a beautiful home with confidence. Based on more than a decade of industry experience and teaching, this book will show you how to connect with your own personal style and enjoy inspiring, welcoming and authentic interiors. Styling is both an art and a science - and you can learn both.
The inviting chapters explore identifying your style; design principles; transforming spaces; visual storytelling; and nurturing your craft. As well, author and renowned interior stylist Natalie Walton steps through significant rooms in the house to provide expert insider insights on how you can create magical styling moments in your home.
The book is beautifully shot by photographer Chris Warnes, who has collaborated with Natalie on her previous books, This is Home: The Art of Simple Living and Still: The Slow Home.Edited by Kate
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The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide
“Full of practical insights, ideas, and inspiration to help you grow the flower-packed garden of your dreams.”—Greg Loades, author of The Modern Cottage Garden
The colors, shapes, and scents of flowers are as ravishing to the senses as to the soul. But it’s all too easy get things wrong: colors that clash, flowers that bloom at the wrong time, plants that fail to thrive. Enter The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide by expert gardener Jenny Rose Carey. She tells you exactly how to get started, how to combine plants for the most spectacular effects, and how to keep your garden going from year to year. Whether you’re interested in dramatic color combinations, how best to use a favorite flower, or how to create a garden for a specific purpose, such as nourishing pollinators, you’ll find the answers in this friendly, information-packed book. As Jenny herself says, “Don’t be afraid—just have a go!”Edited by Kate
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Her True Worth
Brittany Maher and Cassandra Speer, leaders of the social media sensation and ministry Her True Worth, deliver a powerful call to women to break free from the bondage of false identities and discover their true worth in Jesus Christ.
After years of working in the beauty industry, Brittany Maher and Cassandra Speer became disheartened by the false, contradictory messages about what defines a woman's worth. They saw women who were lost and wandering, endlessly seeking security and approval. So Maher and Speer made it their mission to help Christian women uncover their valuable identity in Jesus Christ.
In Her True Worth, Maher and Speer reveal what God intended our identity to be in the beginning, how sin corrupted it, how Christ has redeemed it, and how to live securely in that identity. They remind us that, ultimately, our true worth is found in Him--and that's a life-altering, soul-anchoring truth to live in and live from.
As you uncover your true worth, you'll also learn how to:
- Identify the false messages that are stealing your self-worth
- Embrace what the Word of God says about who you are
- Find your security and significance in Christ alone
Let Her True Worth be your guide as you discover the woman you were meant to be.
Praise for Her True Worth:
In a world that teaches us to measure our worth by our social media followings, achievements, and striving, Her True Worth gently turns us back to where our identity truly lies: in Jesus. Brittany and Cassandra empower women to remember the source of all hope and encourage us to lay down our idols in exchange for true peace in him.
--Danielle Coke, illustrator, activist, and founder of Oh Happy Dani
Edited by Kate
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Mini Amigurumi Birds
"Cute and cuddly amigurumi birds from the bestselling author of Mini Amigurumi Animals. Complete your menagerie with this flock of 25 birds! This charming book is full of cute and characterful birds to crochet. Choose from a vibrant peacock, puffin or flamingo, an adorable penguin, or a striking emu or swan. Attach your finished birds to purses, key rings, baby buggies or baby mobiles. There are 25 tiny birds to make and collect, and even a little egg to complete the set! All you need is a crochet hook, some yarn, and a few basic crochet techniques, which are clearly explained to get you started. Which one will fly off your hook first?"--Publisher's description.
Edited by Kate
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Fly Girl
In 1978, in the tailwind of the golden age of air travel, flight attendants were the epitome of glamor and sophistication. Fresh out of college and hungry to experience the world--and maybe, one day, write about it--Ann Hood joined their ranks. After a grueling job search, Hood survived TWA's rigorous Breech Training Academy and learned to evacuate seven kinds of aircraft, deliver a baby, mix proper cocktails, administer oxygen, and stay calm no matter what the situation.
In the air, Hood found both the adventure she'd dreamt of and the unexpected realities of life on the job. She carved chateaubriand in the first-class cabin and dined in front of the pyramids in Cairo, fended off passengers' advances and found romance on layovers in London and Lisbon, and walked more than a million miles in high heels. She flew through the start of deregulation, an oil crisis, massive furloughs, and a labor strike.
As the airline industry changed around her, Hood began to write--even drafting snatches of her first novel from the jump-seat. She reveals how the job empowered her, despite its roots in sexist standards. Packed with funny, moving, and shocking stories of life as a flight attendant, Fly Girl captures the nostalgia and magic of air travel at its height, and the thrill that remains with every takeoff.
Added by Ann R.
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How to Be Perfect (Export)
From the creator of The Good Place, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,400 years of deep thinking from around the world. Most people think of themselves as good, but it's not always easy to determine what's "good" or "bad"-especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad active. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia, and they have guidance for us. Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like, Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason? (no) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? Am I allowed to break rules if I'm a good person, or if the rules are dumb? This book provides fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues that confront us every day.
Added by Ann R.
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An Immense World
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong takes us on “a thrilling tour of nonhuman perception” (The New York Times), allowing us to experience the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that other animals perceive.
“One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction . . . Yong’s reporting is layered, seasoned with vivid scenes from laboratories and in the field, interviews with researchers across a spectrum of disciplines.”—Oprah Daily
“A dazzling ride through the sensory world of astoundingly sophisticated creatures.”—The Wall Street Journal
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses to encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.
Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.”Added by Ann R.
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The Office Bffs
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An intimate, behind-the-scenes, richly illustrated celebration of beloved The Office co-stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey's friendship, and an insiders' view of Pam Beesly, Angela Martin, and the iconic TV show. Featuring many of their never-before-seen photos.
Receptionist Pam Beesly and accountant Angela Martin had very little in common when they toiled together at Scranton's Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. But, in reality, the two bonded in their very first days on set and, over the nine seasons of the series' run, built a friendship that transcended the show and continues to this day. Sharing everything from what it was like in the early days as the show struggled to gain traction, to walking their first red carpet--plus exclusive stories on the making of milestone episodes and how their lives changed when they became moms--The Office BFFs is full of the same warm and friendly tone Jenna and Angela have brought to their Office Ladies podcast.
Added by Ann R.
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Saturday AM Presents How to Draw Diverse Manga
Learn how to create diverse manga-style characters from the talented team of artists at Saturday AM magazine, the world’s leading showcase of diverse anime and manga stories and characters.
Saturday AM Presents How to Draw Diverse Manga features Saturday AM’s most popular artists, who themselves represent racial identities, ethnicities, and cultures from all over the world as well as diverse gender identities. The reader-friendly, step-by-step presentation, which is accessible even to beginning artists, shares drawing guidance for:
- Faces, features, and expressions
- Bodies, proportions, and body positivity
- Hair, including afros, braids, and waves
- Developing character design through the language of shape, silhouette, and color schemes
- Avoiding stereotypes and caricatures
Perfect for beginning to intermediate manga and anime artists, character designers, fantasy illustrators, animators, and cartoonists, Saturday AM Presents How to Draw Diverse Manga offers an insider’s point of view and expertise on how to design and draw authentic manga characters that reflect diverse identities and backgrounds.
Edited by Kate
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Collage Your Life
Requiring minimal equipment--just scissors, glue, paper, and pens--collage is an accessible craft that offers limitless creative possibilities. Like meditation or journaling, making collage can be an avenue for self-reflection and artistic exploration. In Collage Your Life, artist and teacher Melanie Mowinski teaches a variety of core techniques including lettering, stamping, stenciling, transfers, and adhesive methods, and provides dozens of prompts to jumpstart the creative process and encourage crafters to explore the versatility of collage, such as: make a self-portrait; disrupt your routine instincts; incorporate text; assemble mementos from a trip; process anger or anxiety; collage with others; or try creating block-out poetry with pages from a magazine. Inspiring examples of the author's work along with that of other collage artists are featured throughout. Crafters, journaling fans, scrapbookers, and artists alike will find guidance and support for developing their own distinctive collage style, whether the goal is to create a visual record of daily experiences and special occasions or to expand a creative journaling practice.
Edited by Kate
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Log Cabin Improv
For quilters seeking to have some fun with improv quilting but aren't quite sure how to approach the technique, this is a must-have guide that offers some sought-after structure using a very familiar quilt block - log cabins! With the log cabin quilt block structure, you can explore a variety of improvisational possibilities while still ending up with a quilt that beautifully goes together! Featuring a collection of log cabin quilt designs that use easy improv techniques, each project includes step-by-step instructions, helpful diagrams and illustrations, expert tips, and more. Also included are sections on tools and supplies, log cabin basics, improv concepts and approaches, and design principles. Mary M. Hogan has been quilting for 25 years and specializes in improv quilting and using as many fabrics as possible. She is the author of Fast Fold Hexies from Pre-Cuts & Stash, Fast Fold Hexie Quilting, String Quilt Style, and Classic to Contemporary String Quilts.
Edited by Kate
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Dial Up the Dream
Your daughter is growing up, but you don’t have to grow apart.
Picking up where her national bestseller, Dial Down the Drama, left off, Colleen O’Grady’s Dial Up the Dream supports you in navigating your daughter’s last days at home and her transition to adulthood. This emerging-adult stage can be even more stressful on both mother and daughter than the teen years, because the stakes are higher and the changes to the relationship more profound.
This essential guidebook will validate what you are feeling and experiencing with your daughter right now as well as give you a road map for what’s coming. Dial Up the Dream will prepare moms for the three phases they will go through during the late teens and early twenties. The first goal is to preserve the relationship during senior year and not get preoccupied with the future, i.e. falling into the “college trap”. The second phase is when your daughter leaves home, whether it’s to live with roommates, travel, enter the workforce, try entrepreneurship, or go to college. As she gains her independence, you’re losing a job that’s defined you for nearly two decades. While she gets ceremonies and congratulations, there’s no accompanying ritual or even acknowledgment for the changes in your life. The third phase is letting go, which can trigger a “mom crisis.” O’Grady helps you get unstuck, make sense of your own story, reconnect with yourself and dial up your dream. The paradox is that when you dial up your own dream...you stay close to your daughter.
In this book, you’ll learn:
· Exactly what’s going on with your daughter emotionally and physiologically. And how to use this science-based knowledge to set realistic expectations
· How to think about and navigate the many complex feelings in this journey for both you and your daughter
· The most common emotional traps we moms get caught in during these years and how to avoid them altogether
· Why it’s imperative to change your parenting role from monitor to trusted consultant—and how to do that· How to use this new phase in your daughter’s life to dial up your own dreams—and why doing so is imperative to your daughter’s development and to a having a vibrant, meaningful, lifelong mother-daughter relationship.Edited by Kate
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Ritual as Remedy
A step-by-step guide to potent self-care and soul-care rituals that awaken freedom, joy, intuition, self-love, and your inner mystic
• Explains how ritual can serve as a way to ground yourself, invite in the new, let go of what needs to be shed, and tap into your own inner powers
• Shares ancient and modern rituals, ceremonies, and practices to connect with the seasons, the lunar cycles, and the five elements, as well as open your heart, dance with your shadow self, grow your intuition, and connect with your body
• Offers detailed instructions for each ritual, ceremony, and transformative healing practice
HEALING BALM for psyche and soul, ritual invokes a unique magic that allows us to step beyond the mundane and touch base with the sacred turning points in our life and the truth of our soul’s calling.
In this evocative guide, Mara Branscombe offers potent soul-care rituals and ceremonies to purify and strengthen minds, hearts, and bodies, so as to enable us to activate our inner power. Connecting with the pagan wheel of the year, the five elements, and the lunar cycle, soul-stirring rituals and step-by-step healing protocols show a path towards a deeper, heart-centered living. Transformative practices such as guided meditations and visualizations, breathwork, altar creation, and discovery of our personal empowerment mantras facilitate our healing journey. Ancient and modern ceremonies and specific spiritual formulas help us embody a loving existence, dance with our shadow self, engage with grief, grow our intuition, dismantle limiting beliefs, and heal toxic patterns to find inner strength and peace.
Ritual as Remedy is an invitation to shape-shift, heal, transform, and reclaim one’s true soul purpose through powerful self-care protocols that awaken freedom, joy, and a wild, untamed self-love.Edited by Kate
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Arte Popular
Arte Popular features 100 pieces from Rex May's extensive collection of exquisite hand-crafted objects from all over Mexico.
Coming from the reputable Mexican Museum, this volume demonstrates the dramatic power of folk art.
This bilingual volume provides a veritable treasure trove of discoveries for the curious reader.
- Features bold and atmospheric photographs
- Includes scholarly essays that delve into the collection's origins and significance
- A visual treat for lovers of Mexican art, craft, and visual cultureThe Rex May Collection-bequeathed to the Mexican Museum by the legendary 39-Mile-Drive sign designer-demonstrates the dramatic power of folk art.
This book is a companion to the opening of the Mexican Museum building in downtown San Francisco's Yerba Buena museum neighborhood.
- Wrapped in a striking, gold-foil-bedecked case, this makes a wonderful gift for artists and art fans everywhere.
- Perfect for museum goers and fans of Mexican arts and crafts
- The Mexican Museum has been a San Francisco cultural destination and educational resource for 37 years, and became the only San Francisco affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in 2012.
- Add it to the shelf with books like Mexican Details by Joe P. Carr and Karen Witynski, Crafts of Mexico by Margarita de Orellana and Alberto Ruy Sanchez, and Masks of Mexico: Tigers, Devils, and the Dance of Life by Barbara Mauldin.Edited by Kate
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Salmon Wars
A Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent and a former private investigator dive deep into the murky waters of the international salmon farming industry, exposing the unappetizing truth about a fish that is not as good for you as you have been told.
A decade ago, farmed Atlantic salmon replaced tuna as the most popular fish on North America’s dinner tables. We are told salmon is healthy and environmentally friendly. The reality is disturbingly different.
In Salmon Wars, investigative journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins bring readers to massive ocean feedlots where millions of salmon are crammed into parasite-plagued cages and fed a chemical-laced diet. The authors reveal the conditions inside hatcheries, where young salmon are treated like garbage, and at the farms that threaten our fragile coasts. They draw colorful portraits of characters, such as the big salmon farmer who poisoned his own backyard, the fly-fishing activist who risked everything to ban salmon farms in Puget Sound, and the American researcher driven out of Norway for raising the alarm about dangerous contaminants in the fish. Frantz and Collins document how the industrialization of Atlantic salmon threatens this keystone species, endangers our health and environment, and lines the pockets of our generation's version of Big Tobacco. And they show how it doesn't need to be this way.
Just as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation forced a reckoning with the Big Mac, the vivid stories, scientific research, and high-stakes finance at the heart of Salmon Wars will inspire readers to make choices that protect our health and our planet.Edited by Kate