Great stuff at an even greater price! What a haul! They must have been some awesome neighbors to pass along such treasures for free. I'm sure you'll miss them. But after your last couple of winters, I can see why they are high tailing it for Phoenix. lol! I'm sure they won't miss that roof snow rake one bit. Love the pottery, Pendleton blanket and the baskets. It looks like they will fit right in with your bear motif. Lucky you! I'm sorry to hear about the house. Bob and I are still waiting to hear the bank's decision on the house we made the offer on. I will be so disappointed if we don't get it. But there will be other houses out there so something just as nice will eventually come along. Like Karen said, I don't know how someone could not fall in love with your house and yard! But until that perfect buyer comes along, have fun with all your wonderful gifts!

Evelyn, that's a great idea - I'll check in with you when it gets closer to Kate's swap. I love looking at gardens. It's the main reason I go to swaps! I sure don't need more plants... ;) Thanks, lynn, lady and olya! The tithonias are great. They've been non-stop color since they started blooming. Smittee, I call it a cottage garden, too. It's funny, my neighbors have never heard the term! Cindee, you're right - cats and gardens go together. I'm glad the ones I've taken in are the lazy types that just snoop around, sniff stuff, then snooze the day away. No real wildlife deaths because of them. Sometimes there's a squirrel without a head laying around... but it's not often. ;-) Marcia - thanks for the compliments! It started out all mild-mannered this spring, now I can't get through the paths. Just the way I like it! Ha!

Lynn we are in a very similar place about our house - it's too big for us at this stage of our lives. We use most of the square footage in some way - because it's there - but could easily manage with half ! Our youngest will be graduating from college next May and HOPEFULLY will be employed and able to support himself but who knows? Our older son works for the forest service but those gov't jobs are shakey, to say the least, so we always want to have a place where they can land if needed. So.... we keep the big old house - for now. Stuff? I reached a saturation point many years ago and continually work to pare down. But it's back to that big house thing again - I'm not going to live in empty rooms so there's still far more STUFF than I actually need. When my mom died and I helped my dad move into an apartment, tons of family stuff came my way. Eleven years later when my dad died, the rest of it came to me. We've all talked about this before - the pull of family items and how hard it is to get rid of some things. But it has to be done so over the years I've pared down to the things that have the most meaning and passed the rest on in one way or another. I have dreams (nightmares?) about moving into a small home and having boxes and furniture stacked everywhere because I didn't sort and get rid of enough before moving!! Gifts? I could write a book. Christmas at my in-laws used to make me physically ill with the insane buying and giving of cr@p. It doesn't matter to me a bit how much time is put into the shopping and wrapping, or what the item is. When someone (namely my MIL) is purchasing *stuff* because of a date on a calendar and is obsessed with getting the same # of packages for each person, because that's "just what you do for Xmas" I want no part of it. We'd been married only a short time when I told my DH that I was opting out. He was totally on board. It was a sore spot with everyone in his family for many years but we held firm. We just stopped buying. Our kids would get everything they needed and some of what they wanted all through the year at a time when it made sense to get the item, not an enormous pile o' stuff, all on one day, much of it to be returned, exchanged or donated. And that returning/exchanging all fell to me, of course. A few years of that and we started just donating everything, in the boxes, tags still on. Give me a quiet day, with my family cooking together, laughing and going for a long walk...... THAT'S the gift I want.

a2gemini, my utensil drawers are 36" wide, but the inside drawer dimension is actually 31". Those bins look good! I do agree about the odd sizing. I had to buy a few of each size and lay them out to see how they would fit. Looks like you managed to almost completely fill the drawer. You do lose just a little more space due to the thickness of two adjacent bin walls, but I like the way they look and the ability to clean them up. For me, the key was to group like items in each bin. So for example your two small bins right in the middle with measuring spoons could all be in one slightly larger bin, if such a bin exists. I would even combine them with the measuring cups directly above them. One 6x12 bin would probably hold all your measuring utensils perfectly as it did in mine. But, you have to go with what fits in your drawers. I found that fewer of the big bins wasted less space that a whole bunch of the smaller ones and the organization didn't suffer at all.