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Lifetime's guru is champion of domesticity made easy
By Beth Gardiner, Associated Press writer 
Katie Brown just LOVES Martha Stewart.
But she sometimes frets over the domestic diva's gourmet recipes and fabulous home improvement schemes. They're so complicated -- and so costly.
So when Brown -- no slouch herself in the domesticity department -- got her own homemaking show on the Lifetime cable network, she made simplicity her touchstone.
One of a slew of imitators riding the wave of Stewart-stimulated interest in hearth and home, Brown gears her craft and cooking tips toward career-minded 20- and 30-somethings who hope to create cozy homes and tasty meals with a minimal investment of time and money.
"You always have to ask yourself the question, 'Would anybody ever really do this?'" said Brown, whose half-hour show "Next Door with Katie Brown" airs weekdays at 9 a.m. and Saturdays at 1:30 p.m. "I want the answer to always be yes."
The relentlessly upbeat Brown makes scented soaps and candles, mixes martinis, experiments with flower arrangements and concocts fancy but easy-to-replicate breakfast entrees. All with enough encouraging smiles to put Martha to shame.
"Next Door" focuses on "how to do cool stuff if you don't have a ton of money, you don't have a ton of time," explains Brown.
Brown isn't bothered by those who dub her show "Domesticity for Dummies" -- she thinks the tag is on target and says viewers appreciate her focus on the basics. One recent show offered a primer on setting the dinner table, with an oh-so-creative twist -- Brown draped swatches of fabric across her table and tied napkins with long blades of grass. She decorates picture frames with birch branches, cures her own olives, and makes book covers festooned with images of flowers, leaves and post cards.
Brown, 36, thinks the Generation Xers who watch her show are longing for a homeyness they may have lacked as children.
"Our generation was really the first generation of divorce," Brown said during a recent interview, looking downtown hip in a wrinkled white-and-orange shirt and green scarf, her short brown hair mussed and her hands splattered with white paint from a morning's work. "We're all a little bit homesick, and we like to daydream about having time to get fresh-baked cookies out of the oven."
The desire for domestic bliss only seems to grow with the harried pace of modern life, Brown says. She hopes to show viewers that a busy work life doesn't have to mean chaos at home -- pre-made pie crusts and pastry dough and store-bought everything are staples of her recipes and decorating ideas.
"Women of my generation ... we get to pursue a life outside of the home, and it's fantastic," she said. "But you still have this urge -- clearly I have it -- to nest, and make a home and learn how to cook.
"I don't want to make stock from scratch," she continued. "But I still want my family and people I love and my friends to know that I put some time in. So I just try and take some of the steps out so that people can be domestic and proud of it, and still have a life that doesn't just revolve around the hearth."
Brown's dumbed-down approach to homemaking may be catching on. Her show draws an average of 371,000 viewers daily and 834,000 in its Saturday slot, very respectable for a niche cable show. By contrast, the genre's Goliath, the syndicated "Martha Stewart Living," gets about 1.9 million viewers per episode, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Brown learned her trade growing up in tiny Petoskey, Mich., surrounded by a large extended family whose members gathered often for home-cooked meals.
"The biggest claim to fame for them was, 'How many did you feed last night?' " Brown said, recalling her competitive aunts' answers: "'I fed 10!' 'I fed 12!' "
She absorbed their nurturing inclinations and added a keen mind for business and promotion. After struggling for several years as a would-be actress in New York and starting a catering company in Los Angeles, Brown opened Goat, an L.A. shop she crammed with antiques and eclectic what-nots. She soon began hosting weekly dinner parties there, putting a long table in the middle of the store and serving platters piled with food.
When she went home to Michigan three years ago planning to open a similar shop near her parents' home on Mackinac Island, serendipity struck. Lifetime executives, scouring the country for someone to host a down-to-earth homemaking show, called a local official for help.
"Les, who runs the Chamber of Commerce, said, 'Yeah, Paul Brown's daughter does that kind of thing,'" Brown said. "When he came down with this ripped-up piece of paper in his hand and said 'Lifetime television called, they want to do this show,' I thought it was my sisters playing a joke on me."
Many meetings and audition tapes later, "Next Door with Katie Brown" premiered in late 1997.
Brown is also working on a book about dinner parties, and spends much of her time brainstorming new cooking and decorating ideas -- at a stylish SoHo restaurant, she gushed over cut-glass salt-and-pepper shakers and admired comfy-looking leather chairs.
But she tries not to get too wrapped up in the quest for domestic perfection.
"It's not that serious," she laughs. "I mean, if worse comes to worst, just order pizza."
Photo by The Associated Press
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