Hi there. That would be hydrangea paniculata. Here is a link that might be helpful. FYI - you can usually buy these already pruned to tree form which saves lots of effort. I have a Tardiva and Pink Diamond tree that I purchased at the local garden center that were already pruned this way. Here is a link that might be useful: hydrangea link

Welcome Purplemoon, how wonderful to have another enthusist here! Your stacking plates are cute! If you want it "fuller" maybe you could add a few round sparkly Xmas ornis to it, and add some larger red roses, those slightly bigger things help add height and weight to the design. Your DIL did wonderful on her plates too, it is so cool that you two could do this together! I'm sure the dish manufactors in certain areas are wondering why the rush on the cake plates, they're probably thinking everyone is doing some "cookin" LOLOLO The easter plates should be pretty easy to do for everyone, since so much is available out there compaired to V-Day.

I have pavers with no sand problem and I like them a *lot*...much more than concrete and there wasn't a great price differential...Shop around pricing-wise. I purchased the pavers at Ackerstone in Corona (just north of Riverside, if I'm not mistaken)where they sell overruns to the public at greatly reduced rates on Friday morings (other than that, they only sell to contractors). I had my landscaper install them. I ended up sealing them a year after they were installed. I didn't have sand problems either before or after they were sealed. My only regret is that I should have gone with a lighter color as they get hot (less so than similarly-colored concrete, but more than my light cantera coping).

I had VG in my last house and loved it! It went nicely with my cherry cabinetry and didn't show crumbs or anything at all!! We have since moved and my new neighbor has NVG (slightly lighter than the original VG) on cream cabinets and it looks wonderful with that combo too, so I agree that it's a very versatile granite that looks good with lots of different cabinet colors. Since you might eventually paint your cabinets in the future, I would stick with the NVG which might look better with painted cabinets, especially if you are thinking about cream. Also, the darker the granite, the more dust it shows. At least that has been my experience, so the NVG is a great middle ground and won't be a headache with showing stuff the way a darker granite might. Good luck!