I think saving the $1000 might make me smile when I walk into the new bathroom. :-) We have no border in the master bath and a vertical stripe on one end wall in the hall bath. In our previous home, we had no border in the master bath even though the tile went up to the ceiling. We did have a border in the kids' bath, but that was done in 1986! I think they're still "in style", they've just changed - no longer just 2/3-border-1/3 -- now the borders are vertical, diagonal, zig-zaggy, horizontal, etc.

My DD just recently did a one year old baby girl birthday party using a cute "woodland" theme featuring owls, birds, etc in pastels (blues, greens, pinks, yellows). It turned out very girly. She picked up some odds and ends at Party City and Hobby Lobby, ordered some things (paper products and cutler) that coordinated with it from Oriental Traders. It was VERY CUTE and could be used for a baby shower. DD has a talent for mixing and matching - she threw in some of those "gawdy" paper lanterns in solids, some coordinating polka dot balloons, etc and created a beautiful party for baby girl. Here is a link that might be useful: Woodland Owl party examples

Well, you knew I'd have an opinion, didn't you? (Insert smiley face here..) The Christian celebrating of Christmas is relatively new, Easter being the highest of the holy days. The December dates for Christmas were chosen to coincide with the existing mid-winter festivals of pagan Europe, when the days began to lengthen again, and the seasons turn in the direction of spring. So the 24th (despite the fact that the actual shortest day of the year moves about a bit) reflects the moment when darkness begins to retreat, and the light comes back into the world. In my tradition, the religious season begins on the 24th (midnight), and ends at Twelfth night (January 6th). The more secular bits and the Advent celebrations start way before, and I think you should decorate when you want to, and when your family tradition says to. Some waves lap the shore, but some are tidal, and you might as well swim with them! When I was a child, we prepared for Christmas and began to celebrate through Advent - cleaning, shopping, baking, partying, that sort of thing - but we didn't put up the greenery and the creche until the week before, or decorate the tree until Christmas Eve, and we took it all down on January 6th. The youngest member of the household put the Baby Jesus into the little manger on Christmas Eve at bedtime, and the three wise men didn't get put in until the morning of the 6th. I brought those traditions along with me, until my DH finally said, couldn't we please start a little sooner? This from the humanist with Jewish heritage! So of course we did, but we always tried to put the brakes on the commercial excesses for which the children lobbied relentlessly.

There are wall-mounted soap dispensers that could be hooked up to something like a Never-MT. See here: http://www.ribaproductselector.com/Product.aspx?ci=4770&pr=Lovair-Soap-DispensersL-480WallMountedSoapDispenser My concern would be that these are designed for small amounts of soap with very low viscosity. It would take several pushes of the pump to get out the amount of shampoo needed. And a highly viscose material like conditioner could very well gum up the works. I love the idea of it, because I hate having bottles all over my shower. I use those 4 compartment wall mounted dispensers for my shower products. Which are not exactly attractive. But having used them for a while, I can see all the potential problems with a more permanent system. The pumps fail after a few years, especially for the conditioner. Easy enough to replace a compartment for my exposed unit, but how would you access to repair a pump in the wall? How would you easily clean out the hose when it got clogged up, or clean it out to change the product being used? But if you manage to get such a system up and working, definitely post it here. I would love to see a more attractive solution does exist!