The accurate name of our front door colour is "Desert Shadows" and it is a brownish purple...if that makes sense. I love it! I failed twice to get the hue I wanted...and Benjamin Moore came to the rescue. I remember that Benjamin Moore was what Honey (where ARE you???) chose for her smart red room too. As far as house projects, the last thing around here was replacing lightbulbs (6 of them) and some flashlight batteries. No big projects on the screen for a while. Cindy, so nice to hear from you. I hope your weekend is all about relaxation. Glad things are looking UP. Speaking of circus...I'm reading Like Water for Elephants. WOW, what an opening. The retirement home is so depressingly accurate, except that the ladies seem more verbal than the ones I met at Mom's place. Well, the puppet I started as a cat ended up being a bear! In fact, I'm not at all sure it is recognizable as any animal in particular. DH thought it might be a wolf! It is at least fuzzy and brown. Not being able to use button eyes is a real problem as far as critter personality is concerned. I'll try to make the next one a CAT! Woody, I'm so glad to have you posting again. The garage is looking so tidy and clean. (Ours is not, though several garbage bags worth of plastic pots were given away.) That last photo of Randy is not the best I've seen. You ladies have to know that he is one very handsome dude! I am of course glad to have Eden and Martie stopping in again frequently. Today seems to be the day of frantic cleaning and cooking, that is, south of the Canadian border. I have done little this past week along those lines and mainly served soup and cheese and crackers as dinner. That's fine with us, it's Autumn after all! Julie, just always filled with admiration for you guys turning your lives inside out, after retirement no less. It is for the best of causes and I hope DS has an inkling about what you have done for him as well. I can almost imagine abandoning such a project...but I would have done what you did in the end, given your circumstances. If anyone deserves huge thank yous, it is the two of you. Of course we don't always get those...but I hope you do!!! I'm told that Ms Ivy was discovered on the second stair up to the main floor, in spite of the gate having been firmly installed. Such a physical little rascal she is. I guess if you aren't pushing through teeth or growing long hair you gotta do something. She stands next to everything these days: walls, the couch, chairs, etc. She also falls at times too. Drema, that birthday begonia (?) for Marian is one gorgeous plant! I always fall for white blooms...and get teased for it too. And Marian, I hope you are feeling a bit better with each day. DH is in Toronto once again, so I'm off to nibble a few things and call it lunch. Later, 'bug

Marcia, When we built our home we dug up all the generic plant/shrub stuff from the contractor. We then planted about 5 thryallis bushes. They were truly lovely! I love the tender gentle leaves and delicate yellow flowers. When we put in the hacienda brick raised bed out front, we were looking for more sturdy plants and thus removed the thryallis. It is really a pretty shrub if you have room for it. Very cheery and adds a soft touch! Here's a pic with some yellow shrimp plants when the Thryallis was in it's glory. Lordy!! That was back in 2005!! Where did my life go??? I think I will maybe plant some more thryallis over by the boat pad, just foo the wall to conceal the boat a bit. They would look real sweet there I am thinking! (CLICK ME TO SEE ME BIGGER)

Sharon, I have grown abutilon both from purchased plants and from seeds, and they were only okay. I got the impression from watching them grow that they weren't very happy about our summertime heat. They grew well enough in spring, but slowed down in summer. I kept them in morning sun and afternoon shade, and grew them in containers so I could keep them more moist than if they were in the ground. I believe I grew them from about 2000-2003 or 2004, starting with new plants every year because I did not bring them inside to overwinter. The flowers are really pretty, but I never saw a hummer or butterfly or bee visit them. There's lots of different abutilons so it could be that the ones I had just weren't attractive to the wild critters for one reason or another. I don't grow them anymore because I found they needed more pampering than I was willing to give them. Dawn

I don't understand that drawing. Is that a wall with nothing on it at the right side of the kitchen? And what's going on with the island? I don't understand what those little things along the bottom row are (below the DW, sink, etc.). Here are some issues that jump out at me from this layout: - Two tables so close to each other? That seems weird. Why not put seating on the outside of the island instead of that little table at the end? You would get a lot more island seating that way, and also you wouldn't have someone sitting IN the kitchen right in the traffic path between range and fridge. - Sink across floor from range (instead of on same counter run or around the corner). This is a safety issue. It can work in certain configurations where the traffic pattern allows or where there are no kids or pets in the household, but your kitchen is open on both sides (so people can come towards the cook from either direction), which makes it more of a safety issue, and your kitchen has plenty of room to put the sink on the same run as the range. So I'm not seeing the point of putting it on the island. BTW, you can keep the DW on the island--it doesn't have to be next to the sink, just near it. - MW all the way across the kitchen from the fridge. Normally these are close together because the MW is used to heat leftovers, frozen meals etc. that come from the fridge. Putting them far apart creates a lot of unnecessary traffic, and that traffic will cut right through the main work area. - Pantries and hutch on other side of island from range. If you plan on keeping anything in these pantries that you would ever need when cooking, such as canned goods, oatmeal, baking supplies etc., this setup will get annoying fast. Also, why such shallow pantries? - Trash/recycling pullout: in this configuration the cook will do most prep work between the sink and the DW, because people naturally tend to prep between sink and range and that's the stretch of counter that is closest to both. This configuration means no one can access the trash while someone's cooking (or that is, they will have to ask the cook to move). Also, the cook will have to move every time she wants to throw something away. And of course, with the natural prep space being between the sink and the DW, no one can do dishes while the cook is prepping. In other words this configuration scrambles the zones, which creates inefficiency. You have plenty of room to keep the zones separate, and that will be far more efficient. See, the thing is, you might expect prepping to take place on the counter to the right of the range, since it's not far from the sink either, but that would require the cook to pick up all the freshly washed stuff and carry it across the aisle. That's just not what a human being is likely to do, especially because you often also need the trash while prepping and the trash is on the island. So what this configuration does is work against natural human instincts--in other words, natural human instincts would lead a person to use this kitchen in an inefficient way, by doing almost everything on the island, which scrambles the zones and leaves that whole nice long counter run to the right of the range unused. The way to solve this in a kitchen of this shape is to put the sink (or at least A sink, i.e. a prep sink) on the same counter run as the range. So I think your needs might be better served by a U-shaped kitchen (i.e. attach the island to the wall on the right, get rid of any wall that extends beyond the island, and put the pantry/hutch inside the kitchen on the closed end of the U). Making the pantries deeper, with pullouts, would mean you might only need one of them, so that closed end of the U would not need to be super long. A U-shaped kitchen with the closed end facing the garage will mean you can't walk straight into the kitchen from the garage, but if the fridge is on the far end of the kitchen you will be carrying groceries that distance anyway. It is no more effort to carry them on the kitchen side of the island or the outside of the island (or peninsula, since with a U-shaped kitchen the island would become a peninsula).