What a wonderful playful looking space! Great green accents. I like how the added lights in the curved ceiling section really plays up the architectural lines. Really makes it a standout feature. Love all the drawers, the backsplash (of course!) and the improved layout. Thanks for sharing your LED color temperature solution. That drives me crazy too when they're not the same. It has been difficult to find the more neutral color temps (forget the exact kelvin temp at the moment), so your solution sounds great! I saw this really cool Lutron dimmer that reminds me of your space and would look really cool if it could work with your Insteon (I'm not familiar with this) dimming system, or if not, maybe something separate. In a single or a double switch plate, there is a thin vertical slot that has Green LEDs (also comes in Blue or White) that you can touch anywhere for the dimmer (all the way up is full On and any position lower is dimmed by seven levels I believe). And there is a small Amber light at the lowest point that softly glows when it is all off so you can find it in the dark. The wall plates are available in the 10 standard colors and 11 brushed metal colors so you could get a brushed aluminum or stainless steel looking one to match what looks like what you have (see the picture below). I'm going to use these in my bar in the Blue to coordinate with the granite countertops there, so just thought these would look cool in the Green for your great space. This is one of the most distinctive dimmers I have seen. The picture below is of the single in the Green with an aluminum plate (also comes in a double plate as well) and a link with the specifics. Just a thought for you if you haven't finished all of your switches. :-) (edited for a typo I didn't catch the first time) Here is a link that might be useful: Lutron Vierti dimmer switch This post was edited by cindallas on Mon, Sep 8, 14 at 16:56

Thats funny - actually I was going to add that to my post but decided I'd already ranted on another thread and figured folks were gonna get tired of it. But yes - I've been to many places in Europe and am always surprised and dismayed by the number of American chains I see, by the kind of music thats played (all American for the most part), on and on. I miss being able to go somewhere and find it. unique to that culture. Globalization is good for economics, but not so good when you are curious and want to know more about the people in our world. That being said, maybe the more we are alike, the less likely we are to look at another group with hate and bigotry. Or not - people being people, they'll find a way.

Larry, That is a beautiful and awesomely tall example of variegated reed grass! Maybe yours is going to get head high to the Jolly Green Giant? Jacob, If I didn't have the 8' tall deer fence all around both garden plots, the deer and I would not be friends. I think Bambi lost her mother, perhaps to a hunter. We have tons and tons of fawns this year---it seems that most does had at least twins this year and one that comes regularly has triplets. I love seeing them. If only the fawns could stay little, cute and adorable forever. People who hunt the property due west of us (it is the buffer that sits between us and the river, so they get a ton of wildlife) are getting pretty large bucks every year....say they sit on their property and wait for the bucks to come off our property. I rarely see the bucks because they feed at night, but I know they are there because every now and then late at night when we are out late, we spot them as we are arriving home. I tried for the first 8 or 10 years to have nice landscaping around the house/yard, which my husband stubbornly refuses to fence off with an 8' fence. The deer ate every single thing I planted, so I finally gave up. Now we just have trees, shrubs, trumpet creeper vines (because apparently the deer don't eat those), grass and some four o'clocks. Everything else? Hostas, hydrangeas, roses, perennial salvias, any annual flowers I planted for color, day lilies, etc......all deer chow. They even would eat the tough, prickly leaves of the hollies in drought periods, but finally the hollies are so big and old and tough that they don't bother those any more. If I ever convince Tim to surround our house and yard with a big ugly fence to keep the deer out, I will plant everything I've ever wanted around the house. I think his desire to not have a fence is much stronger than my longing for one. Where he grew up in Pennsylvania surrounded by woodland, nobody had fences so you could look out and feel like you owned hundreds of acres of forest as all the back yards and farms just sort of flowed together. So, he remains anti-fencing based on fond childhood memories from the 1960s and 1970s.....even though, if you go back there to his childhood neighborhood now, everybody has fencing and the farms and woodlands mostly are housing subdivisions with lots of fencing. I still think that someday I'll at least have a fenced back yard I can landscape. We'll see! Nancy, I am so sorry about your mom's passing. I know I don't "have to" comment, but I want to. Tim and I send you and your family our deepest and most sincere condolences. What an incredible, long life she lived, and you did everything you could to move her to the place that was best for her to live out her final stage of her life. You were a great daughter and I suspect it is because you were reared by an amazing mom. When y'all do travel to Buffalo in a few weeks, I wish you a safe journey. I do think Tiny Dude needs to travel with you so he can enchant and delight your friends and family who see his photos on Facebook and undoubtedly want to meet him in real life. Many cats travel well in a cat crate. Do they microchip cats like they do dogs? If they do, I'd get him microchipped in case he escapes from the vehicle, or at least get him a collar with a tag so you could put your cell phone number on the tag. Being close to the interstate where wrecks are frequent, we get lots of requests to watch for/search for pets that escape from a vehicle (not necessarily a wrecked vehicle---pets can bolt from a broken down vehicle when someone gets out to check and see why the engine is acting up or to change a tire or just when their owners stop at a gas station or fast food place). Sometimes you can find the pet, even weeks later, but it is hard by then to figure out which traveler passing through was searching for that pet if they aren't tagged. In my meager 20 years of living here, an early winter almost always equates to a bad winter. Or, for snow-starved southern OK, a really good winter. But, we don't get the ice storms that folks further north get in bad winters so what a lot of you might view as a bad winter, I might think of as a delightfully cold and snowy winter....if we get snow. If we don't get snow, then who cares? All winter without snow means is that we are cold and wet. I don't like being cold and wet, but I love snow. Not that I've had much snow to love. Our county does sometimes get the ice storms that bring down trees and power lines, but so far, that sort of weather never has come as far south as our house---it has made it down to maybe 3 or 4 miles north of us though. The bad thing is that if we get cold enough for ice and snow, then we get cold enough to lose Zone 8 plants that I planted here in order to see if they would survive here. They will survive here for a few years until we get an extra cold winter and snow. So, I sort of hope for snow, and sort of don't. I rarely plant Zone 8 plants here any more, although I planted a couple this past year.....which pretty much guarantees a cold winter is coming so it can wipe them out. I haven't seen a hummingbird since a week ago Thursday, but left the feeders up in case any were going to ride down on the big cold fronts. I haven't seen any, but will leave the feeders up until Monday or Tuesday, just in case, and then take them down. We ended up with the oldest granddaughter coming to stay with us for the weekend after her plans to spend the weekend with her dad fell through at the absolute last minute. We are always excited to have her come visit for a weekend, even if it wasn't planned. So, we ate dinner out with her, her mom and Chris last night, and then they headed home to get sleep before the busy work weekend with long shifts scheduled at work. We went to Wal-mart after dinner and bought everything we needed to stay home indoors and out of the rain today. We're going to carve pumpkins, which she has been dying to do....but I wanted to wait for cooler weather so the heat wouldn't ruin the Jack-o-lanterns. I think the heat isn't an issue any more. We're going to decorate Halloween Jack-o-lantern cookies (pre-baked and sold with a decorating kit). She has a long list of Halloween crafts she wants to make, including the Halloween version of a gingerbread house (we'll see about that one), so we'll work out way through that list as much as we can. I awakened at six and saw on the radar that the rain was almost here so rushed to get the dogs outdoors ahead of the rain's arrival. Whew! That was close but we made it. We're supposed to have rain all morning. How deeply into the afternoon the rain lasts is the unknown. I wish it would blow through faster, but it might be a long, rainy day here. We're ready for it and aren't planning on going out in it. I have some amaranth in the garden with huge flowering seed heads I'd hoped to have harvested and drying by now, but the relentless rain has kept me from cutting them. I keep hoping for a warm, sunny, windy day without rain so they can dry out some and then I'll cut them. I think if I cut them while they are so wet, they'll just mildew and look awful. I want the flower heads for autumn flower arrangements, but the rain may ruin that idea. When I planted the amaranth seeds in July, I wasn't expecting record rainfall in September and October. Have a lovely Saturday everyone. I hope those of you that the rain keeps missing will get some of this moisture plume left over from Sergio. The unfortunate thing is that it seems largely to be traveling over areas that already have had too much rain recently, so flash flooding and flooding likely will occur in those areas. The Red River is up and running fast and looked ugly last night, so this rain will just make that worse. I am thinking the winter wheat crop here likely is ruined. Too, too much rain even for seeds to sprout and grow, so it is more likely that if the seeds sprout, then the young plants rot. That's so unfortunate, but that is how life goes here on the southern plains. Dawn

Nancy, We all seem like we have cold symptoms down here, but it is just the standard spring allergy crap we have every year when the trees are pollinating. I'll be so glad when it is over! The funny thing about frost blankets....when I first read about them in Dr. Sam Cotner's book, which I guess was around the mid to late 1980s, I scoffed at the thought of buying any sort of special textile to cover up plants to protect them from the cold. I thought it was a ridiculous idea, and they were so new (and we didn't have the internet for research) that you couldn't find any info about them from people who actually had used them. To be fair, I lived in zone 8 and we really didn't have that much cold weather after February, so late cold weather really wasn't much of an issue. Then we moved here.....and now I think they are essential. Jennifer, A blanket or sheet would be less damaging. Plastic conducts cold to any plant part that touches it, so I'd only use plastic if it was the only option and if I could wrap it around a cage or stakes or something so that no part of it touched the plants. I don't cover up cool-season anything....only warm-season stuff. Rebecca, I'm glad the tax refund will cover the car repairs. Nancy, I saved the plant shopping for tomorrow. Today the wind was blowing so hard down here as and after the cold front rolled through, and the wind chill was in the 30s, which is not conducive to walking around in outside garden centers looking at plants. We ran a bunch of errands and I hated getting out of the vehicle every time we stopped somewhere. I would have plant shopped (and frozen and then regretted it) but Tim said it was too cold and couldn't we just do it tomorrow, so I said OK. Larry, Hang in there. The cold and the wet soil have to clear up eventually, though it is hard to guess when it will happen. Moni, It sounds like you're staying really busy! Jennifer, I only covered up the tomato plants, and did most of that prep work yesterday. Late this afternoon, I went out to the garden, picked up the fence poles that were lying flat on the ground to hold down the row covers, pulled the row covers over the hoops to completely cover the beds, and then laid fence posts on the southern edges of the row covers to hold them down. I attached the row covers to the hoops on the south side of the beds with zip ties so they wouldn't blow away in the strong late afternoon wind. I was so relieved I had gotten the hoops and row covers in place yesterday when there was substantially less wind because it would have been hard to wrestle with those row covers in today's wind. I don't cover up cool-season stuff or any of the perennials....they all have endured much colder weather than the 32 degrees in the forecast for us for tomorrow morning, so I know they can handle it. Most chickens start laying before they are 6 months old, and a lot start at 5 months, so it seems like Stormy actually is a bit late, but blame that on winter and daylength. I doubt this weekend is the last gasp of cold weather and I just want to get through it, get it over with, and get on with planting more warm-season stuff. Warm season volunteers are sprouting in the garden again, so I know our soil is plenty warm---it has been hitting the 70s by about noon every day so technically I can direct-sow any seeds and expect them to sprout pretty quickly. It is annoying to have to cover up anything, but I had it so much worse before I invested in row covers and started using them. I used to have to gather up every bucket, flower pot, basket, box, etc. that I could find and then I'd through old textiles over them....blankets, quilts, sheets, table cloths, curtains, etc. My garden always looked like an odd redneck yard sale was going on by the time I got everything covered up. Now, at least when I have to cover up plants, the row covers go over the low tunnel hoops and it is easy to put those things out, and then to put them away. And, it no longer looks like I am hosting a yard sale in the garden. This year when I was getting out the heavy Dewitt row covers to use, I came across what was left of my Reemay and Agribon from many years ago...old, shredded, literally falling apart in my hands, so I bagged it up for the trash. It all lasted much longer than its stated life but it all was in poor shape and it was time to dispose of it. I won't miss it---the heavier weight stuff is so much stronger and I won't miss that lighter stuff. Our younger granddaughter is at her dad's house this weekend, but the older one is with us, so we took her shopping and out to eat lunch at her favorite restaurant and then tonight we went to see the movie, "Dumbo", which she absolutely adored. She said she can't wait to go back to see it next weekend with her mom and little sister, which means she really did like it a lot. I am not a huge fan of going and seeing a movie again after I just saw it, but some people like watching them multiple times, and she surely does. The bluebonnets are gorgeous in Texas right now and mine are substantially behind them, but that's okay---mine are still early, it is just that theirs were even earlier. I cannot get over how many trees are leafing out. It is happening in the blink of an eye---except for the pecan trees. Mother Nature rarely fools the pecan trees, and this year is no exception. We'll see if they start leafing out after this weekend cold spell ends, or if they're holding out a bit longer. I cannot believe all our fruit trees are done blooming already and it isn't even April yet. I hope all our plants come through tonight and the next two chilly nights with no damage. Dawn