I too love to butterfly garden. I started out as you did just doing it for the plants, but butterfly gardening is just so much more fun and interesting... My yard is for the most part dedicated to butterfly's (gulf frits, monarchs, and swallowtails). i mainly have gulf frits, the monarchs are around every so often, and i'm working (and praying) to attract swallowtails. want lots of gulf frits? plant a maypop vine. they will be everywhere!

Hi florantha, I know exactly what you mean by lots of space but no space! That exactly describes my home. In fact, I don't really have a space for a desk right now because of that. I wish I had my computer so I could upload some pictures (I'm using my iPad right now), but I will just have to use words to describe my space for now: When you walk into my house, you walk right into my kitchen, which is 13ft x 12ft. So if you think of a square, the front door is on the bottom side at the far right. The right side is a wall, along which is the recessed pantry, and this wall stops at the end of the 12ft. There is a walkway in front of you, and the rest of the bottom side (to the left of the door) has the fridge and a short counter. The left-hand wall has that counter continuing from the corner, then a sink under a window, then a counter over the dishwasher, and then a wall oven with microwave and short cabinets over it. There is no fourth wall ahead of you - the tile just transitions to wood floor and there is a wood beam overhead to divide the rooms. So if you walk to the end of the tile, you are in the left half of a rectangular room, and our dining set is in the same room at your right. So, the dining room is a 15ft 7" by 24ft rectangle, and my current kitchen is like a square under the long left side of that rectangle. The dining set fits into the right-hand 12ft stretch of dining room, and the left-hand side (that my current kitchen opens onto) is useless empty space right now. So I'm pushing my kitchen straight backwards into that space, and my current kitchen will be the mudroom/entry. That was probably clear as mud, but it's the best I can do for now, sorry! The place where my wall oven and microwave are, will house a tall cabinet which will contain the stacked washer/dryer. The sink und the window will be replaced with a utility sink and keep the short counters at either side - I'm hoping to make that all soapstone. So the will be both top and bottom cabinets at either side of the sink (and under it), and I was thinking of having those cabinets and the tall one housing the W/D similar to the kitchen cabinets. The fridge and short counter, to the left of the front door, will be replaced by the coat stand. So that's where I'm agonizing over having the different stains. They would be right up again each other in that corner... Would it look terrible if they were different, as I described in my post above? I'll be putting in a long countertop between the two rooms to separate the mudroom from the kitchen, leaving a 4th walkway from the door straight to the kitchen, and adding an open shelf right under the ceiling beam as well, to separate the spaces. I figure that can be a handy folding area as necessary, or we can use the dining room table. I don't sort, really, and my pantry is big (7th x 2.5th) so if need be, I can shove the hamper in there out of sight when company comes. Hampers stay in rooms/closets until I do laundry, so I don't think it will be a big deal? And the ironing board can go in the pantry too, with one if those wall retainers which holds the iron up above. I never hang clothes and I suppose I could always use the coat hooks and a hnagerrs for rare occasions, too? Does this all make sense or have I created mass confusion by now?

From what I've read so far, both plans strike me as...starters. I also definitely like the U better, but that's not saying much yet. I'm making some assumptions here that may not be at all valid in your case. But, you're having trouble designing a kitchen you really like into that space. You have a lovely room for dining that you almost never use. Is the front living room what you think of when you look forward to getting home or also gathering dust? Yes, center-hall colonials are tricky, but is the way your first floor serving you all you could want? If you could somehow sell seldom-used square footage for $50,000 and the promise of at least hundreds saved each year in expenses, would you? And be happy to live in the downstairs space still left? With this sort of scenario in mind, to me the first plan makes expensive changes with absolutely no promise of genuinely expanding living into the space available. Enlargement of the kitchen should shift at least one daily meal into the space currently occupied by the dining table, but would it? Or would it just perch you guys on stools and damage the DRM's elegant ambiance? I know the bay is new, but it also looks like a former kitchen and breakfast room that underwent an unfinished transformation--that outside wall an obvious remnant of its previous life. (If you did this, how about doors to a nice brick or stone patio outside instead?) The second plan is a simple spiffing up of the parts of your house that get heavy living, so I agree it's a good choice if you like the way you live in the rest your house just fine as is. Small kitchens are greatly underrated and can be truly excellent, so once you work out the details to get what you want--excellent. I'm also guessing the coziness of your kitchen dining area is one of its big assets, so that part doesn't need to be larger. If this were my remodel, though, and if the front rooms were mostly unused, I'd be not be happy with the allocation of my space. People do find ways to make good use of center-halls without ruining their character. Those that do tend to sell very well in most markets. After all, a lot of people who like their look won't buy them because of their space-use issues. For my own list of wants, I like halls for themselves and would definitely want the center hall as a major feature--with nice views in both directions. I would not want a large kitchen, but I'd want a bit larger one laid out just the way I like it. I'd like two places to dine with different moods, but only if they were both used a lot. One would be decorated nicely enough for seating guests to dinner, but so formally that it repelled us most of the time. (We have this, BTW.) I'd want a living area that multifunctioned for daily living and allowed guests to separate--in actual chairs!--into different conversation groups. If it had to be in 2 different rooms, I'd want good circulation and communication between them. I'd want an inviting, comfy area I could go read while my retired DH watches drag races, and vice versa--he splits while I watch Design Star, (one of those embarrassing things I wouldn't normally admit to). I'd like one living space to be sunny, with doors to the garden, and I'd like another to be just right for snuggling up inside when it was horrible out. All this in a center-hall with those great corner rooms and a kitchen remodel opening up possibilities, and I'd start by erasing their labels.

Not to totally dispute that, but researchers are on the fence as to just what keeps some of them in South Florida. Some say that there has always been a strain of Monarch that have over-wintered in South Florida. Some think that it was just a matter of a migrating group that got sidetracked due to changing landscapes and ended up in South Florida. Supposedly, some Monarchs have made it to Hawaii (or were released there) and are now year-round residents of those islands. They even have Monarchs over in Australia that have a similar, but upside down migration. Personally, I do not know, but I would hazard a guess that the food isn't what is keeping them here. I have a friend up in Michigan who grows milkweed in her yard for the Monarchs and many of her neighbors also grow it, but the Monarchs always leave long before hers is killed off by a frost. So she ends up having a month or more of the milkweed growing unhindered and reseeding itself. If they took their cues from the food, then they would stick around until the frosts come in. And supposedly once they go through the hormonal change for the long flight to Mexico as well as their extended lifespan (that really is an amazing feat on their part), they don't switch back until they have migrated back and are ready to breed again. So the idea that they switch to Migration Mode, travel to South Florida, switch to Breeding Mode and then switch back to Migration Mode in the Spring just seems off to me. If anything, I would say it is probably a number of factors that have put a year-round group in South Florida and no one plant or any other one thing is to blame.