If you know the latin names of your bulbs (these should be on the packages), you can Google them and find out their winter hardiness zones very easily. It's not a bad idea to mark your bulbs with their names somehow so that you can find them to lift, divide, and spread the wealth later on. I like to use pieces of old vinyl window blinds that I write on with a Sharpie. If you put the ink side under the ground, the sun will not fade it. Leave just enough of the slat above ground that you can find them easily.

Ball had coupons in the Sunday paper a couple of weeks (?) ago, $3 off 2 cases. Expiration 7/29/12. They run them quite often through the summer. You can also sign up for their newsletter at their website, though I don't recall them ever mailing or emailing me any. Made pickles last night and discovered I only had a few lids left, plus a dozen (unopened box) rings and lids I bought at Goodwill! Mostly I have WM lids - so time to hit the store to get more RM lids even if I don't buy jars (which I probably will). Too bad no coupon for lids. W@lm@rt is the best place I've found around here for jars and lids, even though their prices keep going up. May be time to hit TSC and see if they've put their stuff on sale yet - seems to me they sold out/pulled stuff from shelves well before Labor Day last year. My grandma used to have a big walkin pantry with a window on 1 side and cabinets/counter/shelves on 2. And the farmhouse used to have an even bigger one (again with a window) with just shelves. Sadly, both houses have been renovated. And I wasn't into canning when we built our new house so have to keep my stuff in basement. Though I always did like to stock up, and asked builder for walk-in pantry with shallow shelves on 3 sides. He said the pantry was too narrow, couldn't do it. But my linen closet in master bath is the same width and they made that deep (stand-in), crazy with 16" shelves, I've got over a foot of wasted space in front of them. But don't want to store jars up there - too humid ;-)

Do you want the wall ovens for the oven space or do they have to be in the wall? If they don't have to be in the wall, how about two ovens in the island? Or a range with oven and then the second oven in the island or in the base cab next to the range? As an aside, I had double wall ovens in my old kitchen for 11 years and ditched them in the renovation. My range has a second, smaller oven, and that will be enough for us on those occasions when we have a lot to bake. I did like not having to bend over with the wall oven, but the trade off in loss of counter space made it not worth it to me. I guess that, in the long run, unless you can figure out a way that you like to add in a pantry to the existing cabinets, you might need to decide which is more important to you--the oven space or the food storage space. That's something that only you can decide.

I bought LVT for my home and did not buy it from the first brick and mortar store that I found it and I don't feel that my decision was at all unethical. The first store was Carpet One. The salesperson was nice, showed me where the LVT flooring was and answered questions about the quality. I picked several samples to bring home and was torn between 2 of the samples. One was a national brand, one was a Carpet One Exclusive brand. When I read reviews and did some research I found a review that talked about yellow staining with the light colored tiles. I asked the salesperson and she told me she had never heard of anyone having this issue, and if they did it would be covered by the warrantee and replaced for free. The review had said the warrantee had an exclusion, so I called the manufacturer and found out that their was an exclusion for "environmental staining" (macadam oils getting on your shoes and tracked over the floors causes staining). That left me with the Carpet One exclusive product. I decided to do some more research before committing. What I found out is that the product was manufactured by Coretec for CCA Global Partner stores. (Carpet One, ProSource, The Floor Trader and Flooring America). The same product and color was not sold through Coretec, but was available under different names at each of the CCA Global stores. I checked prices at each of the stores and found very different pricing. Even if two stores were both Carpet One stores the price was different. I decided to get two quotes from two different stores. One for just materials and one for installation and materials. Both stores are brick and mortar stores in my local area. The first store (Carpet One) was charging significantly more for the same product (about $2.00 SF more), but they charged a bit less for installation. Overall price was still higher than the second store (Flooring America) but it dropped the savings down to about $1.00 per square foot. When I asked about installing the product myself they told me the product came with installation instructions and could be installed by the homeowner, but didn't offer any other information. Out of curiosity I did ask the sales person at Flooring America about the staining issues with the national brand product. He was aware of the issue and told me that it was excluded from the warrantee. When I asked him about installing the product myself he not only told me it was not all that hard to install, but also offered several options that would help me with the installation. 1. They rent tools by the day if you don't own the tools needed to complete the install 2. They sold a basic installation kit (Pull bar, tapping block, spacers) 3. You could hire one of their installers for 2 or 4 hours who would teach you the basics and help you get started. It wasn't just the price, although I don't see a reason why I would have knowingly paid more for the same product. It was a combination of price, trustworthiness and services offered that made this a really easy decision.