Sometimes H&G pulls off a weekend edition that's very frustrating for an AT editor: some good information but no good pictures.

We're always interested in what Arrol Gellner has to say (this week he draws a parallel between Victorian domestic architecture and today's McMansions), and we were also very intrigued by the profile of Daily Acts and their eco housing tours.

Highlights are after the jump...

• Slippery slopes: in this piece by Deborah K. Rich, the tips for creating a terraced garden include "start when you're young," and "have good friends."

• Green days: Drew Himmelstein goes on one of Daily Act's eco-housing tours in Petaluma (a "co-housing project"), collects the free gifts (a roll of recycled toilet paper and an eco-smart flourescent bulb) and shares one of the innovative non-profit's pearls of wisdom: "one light and one wipe and one act at a time."

• AROUND THE HOUSE: This week Susan Fornoff's and Sally Socolich's shopper's finds include host gifts (bowls by Simon Pearce, Michael Aram, and Decorative Things), a mango veneer desk, La Bouquetiere's warehouse sale, and Philips new-fangled holiday lawn stake lights.

• McMansion trend likely to fade when people get tired of upkeep: Arrol Gellner predicts the trend will swing back to more modest housing, as it did after 1900, "with efficiency-minded magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal leading the charge, overworked homemakers rebelled against the large, ornate and hard-to-maintain homes of the Victorian era." We can only hope.

• Christmas trees may carry pitch cank: A very good reason to get rid of your tree soon after the holidays are over.