Oh Boy! You folks are really putting on a feast! Everything sounds so yummy! I copied your recipe TM Diana I so wish we had the extra bucks to outfit a proper kitchen. This one will be CLEAN and functional. Vikki please post what spoon bread is? Annette, the kitchen may be finished next week, I do hope so, I've worked on it for several days and I'd love to have it checked off in the done column. Oh My! We need recipes! Everything sounds so darn yummy! Blackberry Jelly! OH YUM! I'll make some bread as soon as the electric is turned on in the kitchen! Leasa

Olychick, you are right, that is the best explanation for how I feel and how I want to reply to Magglepuss. I am taking the liberty of copying and pasting here. By Janus Adams, Emmy Award-winning journalist, historian and producer When news first broke of Paula Deen's indelicate turns of phrase, I ignored it. C'mon. What American hasn't used the word [the N word]? We teach children the word each time Mark Twain's Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are assigned in class. After the initial headlines, there came anecdotes so salacious that she was a no-show on The Today Show, where she'd been scheduled to give a mea culpa and get on with her life. Through it all, my admiration never waned for her along with Martha Stewart and B. Smith, women who'd turned housework into home-making, built empires and given millions of women immense pride in the work they do for their families. Then, I heard Ms. Deen speak of her great-grandfather's having gone into a barn and shot himself because the Civil War had been lost and "he didn't know how to deal with life with no one to help operate his plantation." "There was 30-something people on his books and the next year's census it's like zero," she told a live audience. "He couldn't deal with those kinds of changes." Never did she mention the price paid by Blacks, pre- and post-change, over centuries of enslavement and segregation. She did say that "Black folks were such an integral part of our lives; they were like family." She even called a Black male employee, Hollis Johnson, "black as a board" onstage. "We can't see you standing against that dark board," she joked. To Matt Lauer on The Today Show, she offered her critics a self-serving monologue and a defiant "I is what I is, and I'm not changing!" Hence, this open letter: Dear Ms. Deen, I know that you're in great pain at this time. Your world -- and everything you've worked for -- has been rocked. Much as it was for your great-grandfather, it must seem that life has brought "terrific changes." I cannot, however, sympathize with the plight of your great-grandfathers who, for centuries, victimized mine. I will not mourn the "way of life" lost to those who joined the Ku Klux Klan, lynch mobs and "picnics" where white families spread blankets, shared baskets and "picked [n-word]" to dangle as "strange fruit" from their hanging-trees. You are suffering because you refuse to understand that lives have been lost to the "I is what I is" mentality in which you take such pride. Given a forum, you gave a diatribe. "Someone evil out there saw what I had worked for and they wanted it." Do you understand that millions of hard-working people only want to hear you say: "I said the things I said. I was wrong. I'm willing to learn and to grow?" Given a lifeline, you chose a lie when you said the only time in 30 years you used the word [n-word] was when a Black man had you at gunpoint in a bank robbery. Playing to stereotypes instead of humility, you sought to justify bigotry. Forget worrying that what some say about you isn't true; it's what you're saying about you that's causing outrage. Do you know what it means to me, a dark-skinned person, to watch a man who looks like me publicly humiliated for his skin tone? His family had to see that. What were you thinking? Should you tolerate being "white as puss?" If you won't, should I sneer at you for being politically correct? Your laugh-line was the work denied me for being "dark enough to offend." "Were you 5' 9" and blonde, I would've hired you in a minute," said one network news executive. Your employee's humiliation was my first day of college. A white dorm mother had me stand for inspection -- as if on an auction block -- to give my assigned white roommate's parents the option of having me removed from "their daughter's room." My family paid the same tuition with no such option. And, do you really think a wedding celebrating the heyday of plantation life is a good idea? No, Ms. Deen, this isn't just about the N-word. It's about the picnics of your youth. It's about your lack of remorse -- or compassion -- today. It's about your timing. You misused your platform for self-pity two days after George Zimmerman's defense attorney opened a murder trial in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, dark-skinned teen, with a knock-knock joke. This is about what you're willing to do for yourself, for the millions of people who've believed in you and the thousands whose livelihoods depend on your "brand." And, it's about your caring enough about them to use your pain to move others toward the healing our nation so desperately needs and rightly deserves. Sincerely, Janus Adams

Wow!!! An incredible story -- and amazing that you have dealt so well with such a mess! Well done indeed! :) 1) Yes -- another vote for the round table and more managable chairs. Pare down the chairs. Put the extras on your local Craigs List! 2) Yes -- another vote to extend the radiator cover. 3) Yes -- another vote to check out options like adding an outdoor screen in front of the window (with a fast cover like ivy that likes less sun) OR adding a covering like stained glass in a modern pattern OR simply adding bamboo blinds 4) Another vote for basic trim that matches the rest of the house. 5) Another vote to add a dash of color with cushions for the chairs (could have a couple of sets that work in different seasons?) and tablecloths. You have many many wonderful ideas -- hope you keep posting updates and photos!! Jan at Rosemary Cottage

Right, your builder should clearly upgrade his lighting ideas to fit his ceiling ideas. In this regard, it would be to his benefit (his learning curve) to bring him back and ask him: here's my chandelier - how do I install it? If you're doing this yourself... what are the limitations of the amount of work you want to do? Do you want to rewire, or are we working just with attaching different fixtures to the existing wiring? And is building anything in the cards? Whether a beam, or a closed box across the peak, that would expand the choices considerably. Is your DR table centered under these lights? You likely want the chandelier centered over the table. One of the options I would play with (and it really depends on the whole room shot) is a linear multi-light fixture, mimicking the idea put forward by lovesummer above of a beam. The bar on the fixture could go along the vault or across it, and the question only becomes where you wire it in and how you do it unobtrusively. KarinL