your brother had the same graduation date as my younger brother... you must still miss him... first ideas that came to my mind was also a birdhouse... mosaiced, with a few keys in places, with local little pebbles, from the river, moss from your backyard trees... little branches and any found things from your property.. if possible, his car license plate for the roof of the bird house.... second idea was to get several 6" tiles, from like Home Depot or Lowes...and make a frame around the door of one of doors at your house/cabin...in a Spanish idea they could be attached with some ready mixed grout/adhesive, with things attached to the tiles, in a mosaic idea but not necessarily grouted.. just bits and pieces, again, with the keys and found articles from the area, where you live.. tiles will be available in either white or an antiqued color..I've been painting the ones I have and firing them, so one day I can either do the door frame, like I mentioned or the back splash along the kitchen counter.. I love anything PNW, in art work...shells, rocks, glass, rust, ...I would do my entire house on the outside, if I had the stamina to do it...lol Becky....Olympia

You guys are the greatest. What a wonderful, helpful community (and frankly, just what I needed after a very tough week of people being difficult, unhelpful and irresponsible). Thanks. I love the tutorials for Audacity - and will probably want to play around with that some. But before I got those responses, I did some more searching and found a very simple program called MP3 Key Changer. It allows you to save up to 3 versions for free - so that will suffice for my daughter's purposes of creating one higher pitched and one lower pitched version. The free version may also save only a portion of the song - but my daughter only needs a few bars, not the whole song. The full software costs $45. So if we want further transposing, I think we'll learn Audacity. In case anyone finds this thread and is interested, this free download trial from CNET can be found here: http://download.cnet.com/MP3-Key-Changer/3000-2139_4-10463799.html My daughter loves singing, though. And I can imagine her learning audacity to change the background tracks so she can sing any song she wants in her own key. Bob - your links were great places to start learning Audacity. And Chugger - your screen shots are worth a thousand words. My daughter is 13 - and not quite at the stage of intuitively figuring her way around software. Thanks everyone. Lynn.

We live on the beach in the middle Atlantic area. We have had hardwoods in an open floor plan involving dining room,kitchen and living room. Originally the hardwood floor held up pretty well. We had the hardwoods redone as we added it in other areas but unfortunately when they were redone a water based covering was used and it really did not do the job. We have had problems with water getting onto the floor with some of the most severe storms so am worried with warping, scratching with sand etc. when we redo the kitchen. We are shooting for a Italian villa look so should we go with stone or tile throughout rather than redoing the hardwood floor?

I have given the artisan bread book to so many friends as gifts... pretty cool, huh? Do you guys have a special container to keep the dough in in the fridge? I bought one of the ones they recommended, but there's no convenient way to keep the lid ajar. I would love to see other people's solutions! I have not made the bread since we moved into this house (Halloween) because the fridge was so small. I am a little nervous that my new CD FD Jenn Air won't have enough room, either! (Never had a CD fridge before.)