I visited Germany and fell in love with the Reutter miniatures. I bought a bakery room box and a few individual pieces (gardening), thinking I would make my own potting shed roombox one day. Then, last week I found a sewing shop diy kit online and purchased it. I will have to build all of it from the supplies in the box. I think I will enjoy making this because it is sewing related, besides the store front (its mostly precut wooden pieces) I'll be making ribbon spools, and bolts of fabric. Looks like a lot of fun. Anyone who has done this, could you tell me what kind (s) of glues I should be using? I was hoping to use something simple like (Aleens ?) Tacky glue. Thanks, tish

Wonderful!. I wish I had a real house just like that doll house.

LynnNM -- great photos, thank you! I love seeing the screens in context and they look great :-) I pinkmountain -- I will have to keep that in mind! Part of the problem is that many things we did in the first couple years were the result of poor (or none) planning. If something is functional then, to him, it's fine. I love that he is very practical, but it came with a lack of caring for aesthetics. dyhgarden -- I've been thinking a LOT about that link you posted sharing ideas for unused fireplaces. Given that we aren't supposed to burn often in CA (and our fireplace really doesn't do a good job of warming the house anyway), I think re-purposing it is a very functional and practical way to go. Since we're re-doing the room in a year (or two?) maybe DH will be open to an alternative use for the space. crl_ -- That's a lovely inspiration photo! I'm going to have to start collecting inspiration pics as well; as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. It will be a lot easier to explain to DH if I can just show pics!

Dave's Garden has a nice section on edible palm fruits at http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3242/ Here's a quote: "If you want to be absolutely accurate, almost all palm fruits are edible, though I would not really recommend eating most of them. Some are toxic however, and have high levels of oxalates in them so these are palm fruits that definitely should be avoided" unfortunately, the king palm isn't listed there one way or the other. http://www.junglemusic.net/Palm_Seeds_and_Fruit/Palm_Tree_Seeds_and_Fruit.html has a list of edible palm seeds near the end of the page, but also doesn't list the King Palm. They point out that some edible palms produce "fruit" where you eat the fleshy seed coating, like dates; others produce "nuts" where you eat the inside of the seed, like coconut. http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/edible-palms.html lists edible hardy palm fruits, but doesn't mention King palm. So, not sure if they're edible. I would guess that they're probably neither pleasant nor toxic to eat, or there would be more info about them.