Luckygal, where in the world are you? Somewhere near a beach obviously--but which one. Sorry no good luck on the TS shopping, do keep trying! Jeanne, I have two baker's racks outside, one is a corner unit--but neither look nearly as cute as yours with your collections and vignettes. I need to work on mine I think. That is so neat that you do the Farmer's market too. Candy, I'm another one who does tablescapes for my "imaginary" friends. DH will only eat at the table when we have company--rest of the time he prefers to eat in front of the tv. Karen, I didn't do a table, but I did glue a little cheese tray and glass dome on a pedestal and decorate it--can I get any points for that? ;o) Kathleen, the rooster napkins like in your photo that you shared with me are some of my favs. We don't do sit down breakfast often, but I like to just sit the table and display them on the plates because they look so cute.

First time poster on this thread. I'm imagining a little video montage of the kitchen remodel and big reveal, sprinkled with some of the posts here...it would make a great memory book! GO MORTARMIXER! :-) Btw, we have a 3-can lazy susan trash cabinet. No smell if we do as above posters recommend - empty regularly. Often, after I empty, I leave the door open to air out overnight. On trash and recycle day, I take out all 3 bins and wipe up the bottom, sides, underside of counter with the h2o / alcohol spray and paper towel. Easy Peezy.

FD, They are only including me in their plans to the extent that includes babysitting the grandkids. The real deal I now know is that the mothers day that this is being engineered for is their grandmother, BMs mother and BM. There is yet another gathering of "the family" this time at their grandmothers vs aunt. I can truthfully say that not only do I not have a problem with this but that is the right thing to do as BMs mother, Skids grandmother, is well in to her 90's and every day is a gift. They should rally around her and celebrate her and even I can step back for that to happen. Just don't push me down to do it. I am going to the social club brunch for Mother's Day. DS7 may come with me or may have some other plans. I think them wanting to celebrate their elderly grandmother is right, I think them riding roughshod over me is wrong. I won't bore you with how I was to be used to facilitate the gathering at grandma's for Mother's Day. To make those plans happen, they need babysitting and a chauffer service to drive the stepgrandkids home. Here's the usual kicker, SS30 won't even be there! This is his elderly grandmother too! He is taking this as a personal weekend, no wife (working), no kids shipped to SD36 and me, everyone wrapped in Mother's Day so he going to the casino with his buddies. Meanwhile, SD text messaged me to heat the swimming pool "for the kids." The noive!

My mother was an awful cook. She fried almost everything, yet she was slender as were my sister and I. She had a 5-6 dish rotation: smothered steak (fried round steak cooked in brown gravy until tender-ish); fried pork chops; fried chicken; fried frozen shrimp on Friday nights (we are Protestant but she served fish on Friday); over-cooked, shoe-leather tough roast on Sunday; and at some point every couple of weeks, the worst spaghetti you’ve ever tasted. There was no such thing as a casserole. Green salads were rare to non-existent. I never could understand the penchant people had for mac and cheese when I was growing up. Here is Mother’s recipe: Cook elbow macaroni until it is flabby. Drain and put in a rectangular baking dish. Beat 2 eggs. Add milk. Pour over macaroni. Top with a few slices of very mild cheddar cheese. Bake until the macaroni is hard again. We had an abundance of vegetables because we had a huge garden (couple of acres) that we shared with the people who worked for Daddy. Mother did not can food, but she froze a lot of vegetables. I ate a lot of fresh tomatoes growing up. We had them for every meal, including breakfast, when they were in season. I would sneak into the garden, find a good one and eat it like an apple! Then there was fried okra; fried field corn (corn cut off the cob and cooked in a skillet with butter or bacon drippings); pole beans; yellow squash; cucumbers, butter beans (harvested when they were tiny) and crowder peas. For such a lousy cook, Mother had very high standards. Vegetables had to be small and tender. Tomatoes had to be vine-ripened unless they were being used for fried green tomatoes, in which case they had to be truly green and hard. Fruit had to be unblemished. We had no processed foods ever. I didn’t know what American cheese was until I was 23. It wasn’t that Mother was purposefully a healthy eater. She just didn’t like the taste processed foods. Mother never baked a cake from scratch, except a coconut cake at Christmas. The coconut had to be fresh (as in ”first you buy a coconut…”) and finely grated by her own hand. Her pie crusts were always from scratch and always flaky and tender. She had 2 pies she made, lemon meringue and chocolate. Biscuits and cornbread were made without a recipe and were always perfect. Mother’s best dishes were her potato salad and her cornbread dressing. I can’t make either one to save my soul. My sister comes really close on the cornbread dressing. Mother was over 90 when she died. She was living by herself in her own home, doing her own housework and cooking her own meals (still nothing processed). She did the light portions of her own yardwork but hired a really good-looking, very buff young man to do the heavy lifting and mowing. We teased her that she found things that needed doing just to get him to come to the house! I suppose my ”rebellion” is not cooking like Mother did. But I wouldn’t mind having her yard man mow my grass. 😉 ETA: My sister just sent me these pictures of Mom. She may have been a lousy cook, but she went some interesting places!