This brings back memories. I visited the Bottle House many yrs ago when Grandma was still living there. It was really an interesting place. How she came up with some of her ideas ,too.Seems like we asked about green bottles & she said someone kept throwing them away & she just kept building that section until the bottles stopped. I can't remember anymore but we all went away thinking what a remarkable woman she was.Sure some unusal items. Bathtub chair looks bit like torture chamber!!LOL Glad to see they are still keeping the bottle house there tho don't know if you can visit anymore. Jan (At 1 point they wanted to tear it down)

A lot of art you love can "go together" if you know how to arrange and stage it properly. There are a lot of books and maybe even web sites that discuss this that you could get. Also, you can create groupings of things you already have that are artistic. I found a bunch of rusted and non-functional copper pieces in my parents basement that were unusable and basically just junk, but I put them in my kitchen above the kitchen cabinets and grouped together they created a very warm country feel in the kitchen. They were my mom's old copper tea kettle, a set of copper canisters she had, and grandma's wonderful albeit cracked pottery mixing bowls. Throw in a non functional coffee pot made of copper and a corroded salt and pepper set, (which looked OK from a distance) and you had a really cool set of real copper decorations. Their flaws were not visible the way they were arranged. Chances are you can find something like that somewhere, even at a thrift store or antique place, if you don''t have a fertile basement like I did!

Linelle - I don't eat fish (I have, but I prefer not to). I don't like to even wade in waters where they swim for fear of touching them. I have, at times, been so startled by an unexpected photo of a fish when turning the page in a magazine that I have actually thrown the magazine across the room - just an automatic response. I can't pinpoint the exact moment when this fear came on, but I was pretty small. I do remember being in a pet store when I was maybe four or five years old, and running my hand along a table full of sale items. My hand stopped on something that felt odd, and when I looked to see what it was, it was a dried-out, dead fish. Horrifying! I believe I started having fish dreams not too long after that. I'd wake up screaming in the night, certain that a fish was in the bed with me. My poor mom, being awakened at dark-thirty and having to quell the unreasonable fears of a very insistent little girl! When I was a tween, I used to like to go fishing with my grandfather when I visited my grandparents' lake house in the summer. He would bait the hook for me and take any fish I caught off the hook, and I thought it was great fun. I guess I wasn't horribly phobic at that time. One day he and I went fishing out in his boat. I caught 17 fish, and we took them home with us. My grandmother deemed them too small to fix for our dinner, so she decided to make a sort of stew out of them for the dog. She put them in a pressure cooker (I have no idea why), thinking they were all dead. Something happened and once the thing heated up, we heard hideous thrashing inside the pot. After awhile it stopped, but when she lifted the lid, there was a nasty film on top and a few eyeballs floating around. Again - horrifying stuff. The dog ate it up though. Once I told a boy in high school about my phobia, and shortly thereafter I opened my locker to find a huge dead fish inside. The boy thought that was just the funniest practical joke ever, and chased me up and down the halls holding it by the tail. I remember trying desperately to keep my cool and not show how agitated I was, but I fought not to burst into tears - or pass out. (I know this is getting to be way too long ...) A few years ago I decided that I wanted to overcome my phobia once and for all and actually sought counseling for it. I also tried to do a bit of immersion work on my own, and DH and I went to a local aquarium one afternoon. It's long been difficult for me to even get close to a fish, in any manner - even those behind glass. The salt water aquariums didn't bother me terribly; after all, those fish are often beautifully colored or comical looking. The freshwater tanks, however, caused me to panic. I forced myself to remain seated next to one that was built low to the ground with glass walls, with the various lake-living fish swimming right up to me on all sides and behind me. I couldn't do it. I sat there and just bawled and hyperventilated, and DH got me the hell out of there. Around that time we were traveling regularly to Mexico, and scuba diving was very popular where we stayed. In spite of my fish phobia, it sounded like a lot of fun, and I went so far as to take a few scuba lessons here, but did not go on to be certified. I didn't like the feeling of breathing underwater and couldn't get past a feeling of simmering panic. I know I wouldn't have made certification anyway - at least not with the instructor I had - as his group went to a local man-made lake to receive their certification, and the waters were often murky and always filled with curious fish. Pretty sure that seeing something like this would have induced dangerous panic in me! Gosh, I am sorry to have told you more than you ever wanted to know. I've not been asked about this in a long time, and I guess my memories just came flooding back!

We have all cream colored walls, and solid chairs and sofas all in the brown and tan family...Except for a outrageous red chair in our family room. I love the splashes of red with the tans and Browns. I love pillows and dress up the chairs and sofas with pillows. Heck, even our throw pillows have throw pillows.. including our DR chairs they have throw pillows as well. :) Most of them are needlepoint with some tapestry pillows. I change them around often. I have many in reserve. I also love animal prints. This is the LR and DR area. The family room has a leather sofa recliner, Two leather chairs, a red chair and yup, lots of throw pillows.