It depends on what part of OK you live in. Blueberries are kinda picky and only the folks along the eastern edge do well with them. Blackberries do well just about anywhere but will need water the further west you go. I struggled with raspberries when I lived in the center of the state. I now live on the east coast and grow both fuzzy and hardy kiwis. The vines can get massive but you'll have more fruit in the kitchen if you keep them cut back and under control. You'll have more fruit on the vine if you let them ramble but the squirrels and raccoons will eat most of them. Pound for pound berries seem to have more nutrients than large fruit and berry bushes and vines are easier to grow but harvesting takes more time. Peaches grow like weeds but require spraying to keep ahead of pests and disease. A well maintained tree with protection from wildlife can produce a lot of fruit. I have to grow cane crops out in the open because they sucker really bad and come up everywhere. Out in the open I can just mow around them to stop the spread. If you plant them along the fence they will spread into your neighbors yard.

Marti, up north my DH put rollout wire trays in his lower cabs. They were much lighter weight than the Rev-A-Shelf trays. So I have to be careful when I load them down with the canned goods. And they do not hold as much cookware in the rollouts adjacent to the stove. I'm not where I can take a photo of them now, but will be up that way by the end of May. I'll upload a shot of those roll outs. After he installed the first RevAShelf for me, which attaches to the cab door and the whole thing pulls out, he was the one who insisted on doing the other two. Those top/bottom shelves in a base cab roll out individually, and are absolutely great. He did not complain about installing them. Now I can access all sorts of things. If you have a base cab without a drawer, the top rollout of the RevAShelf can hold really tall objects. You could put your blender or mixer on those. Heck, they do make the roll outs with wood instead of wire, but all are good quality. I wanted a roll out pantry from them, but just the insert/metal part, not the cabinet which we'd have to provide, was up close to $1500, and I had sticker shock. I did let my DH know I was not planning to install that, so he would feel consoled by my frugal nature (hehehehe). Now it does not seem so bad to him that I want all the shelves in that pantry to have metal tracks to make them ADJUSTABLE. And he likes that too. When I lived AND worked on boats, I discovered all sorts of ways to use "lost" space. Then when I moved into MoccasinLanding, the house felt totally empty and had so much wasted space!! But over the 17 years I lived there, I gradually expanded (like a gas vapor) to fill the available space. If you have it, you will fill it. Sometimes it is easier to just hang on to something, if there is a place to put it, instead of tossing it. I try to avoid doing that. But I am a real nut about nice pots and pans, which makes me enjoy using the kitchen. When my son was little, he told me, "Mama, you are a good cook for somebody who does not use the stove." It is still true....we don't presently HAVE a stove...just a 2burner hot plate. :) But when I save up, the 24" Berta Italian stove is my dream range for a small kitchen.

I have about the same aisle widths on three sides, with the fourth side (short side) open to the dining area. My island is more of a work table, just over 34" high, and I use it for baking prep. Mine works very well, in part because the DW opens into a long aisle, not against the island, and the island overlaps the fridge and range by only half, so there is adequate step back space for both of those appliances. The seating aisle is actually the narrowest of the three, but there are no appliances on that side, just base cabinets and shallow uppers (10" deep) for storage of baking supplies. My KA mixer is in the corner of that run, but there is an opening to another room directly to the left, so again, it feels more open than if it was in the corner of an L, or against a wall. I usually cite the NKBA minimums when giving advice, but I really like my island, and feel having narrow aisles is an acceptable trade-off. The kids love eating there--they seem to prefer it to the dining table, where we ate every meal when they were young. We have a bench on one long side, a swing out seat on each short end, and a shallow cabinet on the side facing the fridge and range. I can easily walk by anyone sitting on the bench, and can pass by any of my tall, thin kids standing in an aisle. Of course, if the fridge, oven, or DW doors are open, someone needs to detour around, or wait a few seconds. I've posted before that we host the dinners for my large extended family, so the kitchen is set up for easy serving and clean-up (yesterday was family dinner Sunday--I had my mom's cherry pie for breakfast this morning :). Also, I've had a friend staying here on several recent week-ends, and even though she is twice my weight, I had no problem sliding by her if she was working at one of the counters. My house is older, and the marble table was purchased on Craigslist--I didn't have a choice of sizes, although we altered it from dining table height to work table height. If I were designing a new house and new island, I would follow the NKBA recs, but my kitchen works very well for me and my family. If you post your layout, we can help you make the most of the space you have available.

The doors to the two rooms are immediately adjacent to each other. It's not going to be hard for your kids and their friends to pop from one room to the next. And if they are anything like me and my friends were, they want to sleep in the same room.