I'm not doing so much in the garden now. These first few cold days chase me back inside until my blood gets used to it. I come out on the occasional warm days. The only digging I do lately is on native plant rescues. Went on Sunday and got some nice things: evergreen galax, maidenhair fern (now dormant), witch hazel (there was a beautiful one about 10 feet tall that had been knocked down by the loggers; it was blooming up a storm!) and other things. I planted most of this in a side area that I have been enhancing lately. Can't wait to see how it looks come spring. An idea for your newsletter, Yo, is taking time to evaluate the garden for winter interest. Now that the foliage is gone, what looks good, what areas need structure? How could you make improvements to make it look better next winter. Luckily in this area, trees and shrubs can still be planted. Adding benches and other hardscape materials can be done any time.

Well, you've sold me!!! We (DH and I) are going with stained and poly'd plywood. We had thought about doing ply floors when we first moved in, but later thought we should do something "nicer". But after looking at the tower pictures posted here, we are both COMPLETELY sold on the idea! It is beautiful! You should know, we made a trip to Lowe's Tuesday and were shown how "tough" laminate is- the guy demonstrated how scratch-resistant it is by running a penny across it. It scratched up pretty badly! He sheepishly grinned... We decided then and there that laminate would never stand up to what children, garden soil, and two 100 lb. dogs would dish out. So, plywood it is! Cheap and tough. We are going to stain and poly it before we lay it down, even sealing the edges. I realize there may be touch-ups to do here and there, but I can't imagine having to do it all after it is down---yikes!!! One more thing...I saw a really neat technique where you quickly run a blow torch over the plywood...it darkens the raised grain, giving it a lovely bit of depth. I am going to try this on a scrap piece and see if I like it. I can't wait to get these floors done! I just know they are going to look wonderful!

I don't have mine hung up yet, but I just finished making my own message board. I used a piece of foam insulation board that we had leftover from construction. I then covered it in quilt batting, using spray adhesive to join them. Then I covered it in a fabric I found, again using the spray adhesive. I took my glue gun and used that to attach the edges of the fabric to the back of the board, wrapping and pulling it as neatly as I could. Using my glue gun again, I applied two different colors of ribbons , crossing them in x patterns across the board. Each place where the ribbons crossed each other, I glued a decorative button on. Push pins easily go into the foam, or I can just tuck notes under the ribbons. The entire project only took just over an hour and I spent a little over $15 for the fabric and ribbons. I already had the foam (which is fairly inexpensive at Lowes, Home Depot, etc.) quilt batting, buttons and glue. I wanted a large board to hold all the school papers, calendar, and such, so we made it 40 inches by 68 inches. However, the foam is easily cut to any size you want. Here is a picture of it sitting in my kitchen, waiting to be hung by DH!

Why is it mindblowing that some people are not physically addicted to their phones? There are more people every day who are switching back to dumbphones because they found themselves way too addicted to their phones. To demand that the entire world comply with what smartphone users want is childish, IMHO. There are millions of sites online that don't even have apps. You're lucky this one is trying to make one that works. App creation on an existing site is more difficult than building a site so that it automatically complies with mobile. This site isn't even responsive, for goodness sake, so that makes it that much more difficult to make the page fit into a phone screen without losing a lot. They want you to be able to use it, but still see the ads. I imagine those who pay for a pro account would be pretty upset if their ads weren't visible on your phone. If they're going to cater to anyone, it's going to e their paying pro users.