Nathan Thank you for comment on 'then & now' thread. I know that many are able to grow succulents much better & faster. That's why I read every post, and post some of mine-to compare & learn. I kept them in cold room for 'practical' reason - have a new place, but didn't move in yet, just 90% of my plants. So in order not to have to pay astronomical $$$ to heat 2 houses, I had to keep temps down. I did have the supplemental lighting set up for few hrs/day. I am sure it could have been more, but again-had to watch $$$ too. Temps were set @49F, and plants did very well. Besides succulents, I have there f. Benjamina, 4 pots of figs (kept those in bsmt. in order to keep dormant - now they are leafing out), boston ferns, 6 olives, 7 angels trumpets (Brugmansia) and few other. I do have some casualties: 3 of my euphorbias are gone, and Meyer lemon. I think (not sure) that they were just too cold, or maybe should been watered even less in col temps. I know that soil is good, very well draining. But I noticed that many plants actually look great, some better than when I had them in warmer house - definitely less water (I tend to water too much) was great for them. I watered approx. every second 'visit' & that would be approx. 3weeks. Few grew very leggy, but that's to be expected if not enough sun. So those will get their 'heads chopped off' as soon as it get warm. Yay, more plants. BTW, I have at least 20 pots of jades, all of them grown from cuttings or fallen leaves. Few of them are very unruly and there is going to be lots more cuttings. Even if there were occasional shrivelled leaves (just few), I am sure it was still better than rotted roots. Photo of few in Nov. 2013 (have to update!) Rina ...sheesh, that's long read....sorry! This post was edited by rina_ on Wed, Mar 19, 14 at 13:35

Sheesh I don't have time now, as I should already be in bed, but the easiest way to do the fake fold over pillow is to make one length of the pillow enough longer to make the fake flap. If you want the flap to be one inch then add two inches to that side. Fold the pillow with wrong sides together and sew a line down one inch from fold. When open you'll have your fake flap. I did this on a child size apron I made awhile back so the flaps could be unstitched as the child grew taller. This post was edited by justgotabme on Thu, Nov 28, 13 at 0:16

Just bumping this up. There's great info here, thanks to Bestlawn and others. Any new tips? Maybe someone knows how to get a thread once it's dropped off p.67? Linda

You can see my picture of the Maltese puppy above. I continued to play with it, by adding spruce, gifts and snow picture tubes. When I was finished, I saved it to jpeg. It wasn't until I tried to email the picture to my sister that I realized the file size had grown to 612kb, with the additional picture tubes. Is this normal for a file size to increase with the addition of picture tubes or is there a step I missed? Until just recently, I used PSP 8 only for editing my pictures and knew little about the programs other functions such as layers, masks etc., so I hope my question doensn't sound too ridiculous. Judy