Setting the table is the best part of entertaining for me. I love using my beautiful things, and I love washing them and putting them away again, and washing and ironing the linens. (Yes, I hate ironing shirts as much as the next person, but ironing linens keeps me in touch with where they came from- my mother, my grandmother, my MIL, wedding gifts, and even tag sale linens!) I love using my sterling, which my mother picked out for me when I was a baby, and my grandmother's Haviland and cut glass. I love fresh flowers and candles on the table. In fact, I love using the dining room, and if it's more than the 2 of us, I do. We moved last year and the dining room in the new house is easier to use than in our previous house, and I'm happy it gets so much use. I don't always use my good china for everyday dinners in the DR, but I always use my sterling. When my boys were small, I taught them the correct way to set a table, and we always used placemats and cloth napkins, even in the breakfast room. My daughter-in-law is beyond casual - no placemats or tablecloth, sometimes you have to ask for a napkin, bread in a plastic wrapper, etc. My GD, her daughter, is only 2, but she refers to my china and crystal as "Su-su's pretties". I tell her, "Play your cards right and this can all be yours." I gave her an infant feeding spoon in my pattern when she was born as well as a sterling baby cup and a small spoon and fork in my pattern. I am pleased to see that my DIL lets her use them often. I am going to give my DIL (among other things) some pretty washable placemats and cloth napkins (no-iron). Small steps.

GREAT NEWS EVERYONE!!!! I'm once again in the process of moving and while going through my filing cabinet, I've located the two lost recipes. I have NO idea how they ended up in my taxes...lol. I'd love to thank everyone of you that have tried helping me or even given suggestion on different recipes. A special thank you to lizbeth-gardener for going in her attic to find the Minestrone recipe. I feel as though I've won a lottery!

I've had this exact thought myself. My whole life, all I ever had was a single sink until moving into my current house 6 years ago. Now I have what would be a 75/25 sink. It has a 21" wide section and a 7" wide section. At first I thought the small sink was useless. But now, I'm noticing all that I do use it for. I often will stand up cookie sheets and cooling racks waiting to be washed leaving the large side clear for washing food. Sometimes it's vice versa with dirty dishes in the big side and room to wash food on the small side, although less often because it is so small, it's uncomfortable to use it that way. When I bought the house it came with a very cold grotty plastic bowl that fits the small sink perfectly. Must have come with the sink. I never used it because it is old, stained, and yucky and I'm not the one who made it that way. So now I'm wondering if I want a small sink next to my 33" farm sink.

Just wanted to pop in and say, no, I am not in hibernation. I actually check the forum at least every other day, there just hasn't been anything in which I could add my two cents. That and since around February my back has been giving me more fits than usual, so I haven't been able to spend as much time working the beds as I would have liked, but I do get out there when I can. It has been more or less dry around here with the storms going by us more than passing over us. When we do get rain, it is a quick downpour that doesn't do a lot in the way of hydrating the ground. On one hand, many of my plants were chosen to handle this type of weather and they are doing fine. On the other hand, some plants that could stand a bit more rain, bananas, tomatoes and other 'crop' plants, aren't performing as well as they could. The issues with my back means I haven't been lugging around the water cans like I have in the past and I sometimes wish I had set up automagic drip systems... though our water has had unusually high amounts of chlorine in it. I lost all the fish in my pond from a light topping off (that never before bothered them) and we even lost one of our cockatiels. We have a new park manager and I think he is overdoing the chlorine, but a recent water survey from the park owner says the chlorine is 'within norms'. We've installed water filters to remove the chlorine from our drinking water and I am thinking about adding a whole-house filter. So there you go, a quickish update from Waypoint.