Butters' book provides lifestyle advice, inspiration

by Cheryl-Anne Millsap

When you sit down with a copy of MaryJane Butters' new book (so new it just hit the stores Tuesday), unlike other lifestyle, how-to books written by larger-than-life women, you aren't left feeling inadequate. Instead, you feel inspired.

Butters stirs a timely organic lifestyle with how-to hints and a hearty dose of down-home philosophy into one heavy volume and serves up a winner.

With glossy photos, recipes and step-by-step instructions for the projects she features, the words in the title, "Ideabook-Cook- Lifebook," make sense. It's a guidebook for women who want less. And more.

Butters puts a shine on the idea of farm life the way you polish an apple: With a little elbow grease. She celebrates mundane chores like doing the laundry or weeding the garden.

With pink manicured nails, a custom-painted 20-year-old bio-diesel Mercedes, and a penchant for frilly, vintage clothing, Butters has found a niche in the world of do-it-yourself divas and gurus.

The book is good looking, full of useful information and makes you want to buy a couple of acres and head for the Palouse. Or, at the very least, read more about a woman who did.