Ugh! I lost the long reply I had to everyone. Don't have time to re-write right now but thanks to the ideas you offered up, I've decided on a theme (Team Umizoomi - my boy/girl twins love them!) and will incorporate their circle/shapes/numbers theme into a few of the games that were suggested - particularly the obstacle course. christina_ca - I am planning on an "adopt-a-puppy" (play) theme next year for their 4th. A friend suggested it & did it for her daughter. She said it was such a fun time. She collected stuffed puppies on sale/clearance in the months before the party. On the day of the party, she had each child go with her into another room so they could select their puppy privately and then each child went to different "stations" - check up by the vet (her DH is a doctor so he was in white coat with his basic dr kit), pretend bath & grooming station, puppy treats station and receive official adoption certificate station. That was enough activity apparently and it worked perfectly for everyone to have their puppies and go into ice cream & cake. My goal now is to use the theme but remember what I wanted in the first place: an old-fashioned backyard birthday party. Having the theme puts everything into focus for me now - I didn't think to have a theme until y'all mentioned it. Again, thanks for all the ideas.

Sayde I was definitely thinking on the lines of a plain black. We have a black on our fire place that looks really nice next to the cherry boos, but that black has sparkle in it. I have to see if I can put my fingers on the paperwork. I don't think it is black absolute. Not sure how it would look if I got a thinner slab of boos in the same color for the sink end? I'm going to try and stop by the granite shop later.

In my part of Virginia, the county has a Consumer Protection Division, which has an online listing of complaints filed by companies and also intervenes on behalf of customers. You might see if Houston has one. Definitely write a letter to your credit-card company challenging the charge on the grounds of deceptive business practices (did you have the chance to watch them cut the fabric? or did they take the roll somewhere else to do it?) The attitude of the people seems to indicate that they knew they were screwing you over but to them a sale's a sale.

I guess I complicated things by saying that there is a channel across the bottom. I did also just say it was simply a slot which is really what I meant but I guess I wasn't very clear. I also shouldn't have said there was no hardware in an earlier post because there is a metal channel on each side but the bottom "channel" is just the bottom of the slot. Ya know, I've actually never looked closely inside until just now when I took the picture below. I think you can see the channel in the photo. Click on the photo as it's much more clear when enlarged. There is also a metal channel on the other side. Please excuse the horribly ugly, marred finish on my cabinets. The breadboard itself is 5/8th's inch thick. Hope this helps clarify. I have three of these in the following widths: 12", 16" and 28". Edited to add: @Gemcap - I'm no cabinet builder and that hardware you're looking at should definitely make a super-strong, heavy and stable cutting board but it's a lot more complicated than the simply U-shaped metal channels in my photo above. And would take up a lot more space on the cabinet front eliminating or minimizing the other drawers you would have. Edited to further add: I just read Denizen's post above and I do not have any kind of metal rail attached to my breadboard itself. It's just a board with a wide groove at each end to put your fingers on to pull the board forward. The cutting board is just a tad deeper than the cabinet so it sticks out from the slot just enough to grasp that groove (but the counter overhang sticks out farther). It slides in and out very easily and even the 28" wide one slides in and out with just one hand. It doesn't go cock-eyed or anything like that when sliding in-and-out. To reiterate, the only metal involved in the whole set-up are the metal channels on each side as pictured above. The channel itself is only a 1/2" u-shape. Hope this all helps clarify things.