Chelone, you can slam things around. That is what I do when I am having a crabby day. It must be something going around. I got up this morning just plain angry! And I don't recall having a bad dream that brought on the anger either. Saucy, I sure know what you mean about "getting the furniture presentable" before taking pics of anything. I have an additional problem....most of it is so surrounded by other items that I cannot get a clear view to take pics. I have several pices of furnishing I would like to add to that thread, if it were not for the above drawbacks. It will be fun hearing the name of the new member of Marie's family. One of the couples in our congregation have a very large family, and new great grandbabys arriving frequently. The latest is a boy, and I cannot remember the unusual name that the poor child will be living with. I am seeing a nickname in his future. Oh my! Mary, what a bummer. My sister is prone to having Strep throat almost with every cold. I do not recall ever being diagnosed with it, although it used to be thought a forerunner of Rheumatic Fever, and I 'was' diagnosed with that. Sister was not, so who knows? Thank goodness there are great antibiotics now that nip it in the bud. I hope you are already feeling better. I hope Scarlet Fever is not going around. Our Tim was telling me about a bout that he had with a "blazing red face", etc., just a week or so ago. LOL, V ! An Agave preparing to devour you! It does look rather menacing. :-) Ah, taxes...that is one perk of being in the financial condition that we are in. Filing a tax report has been a thing of the past for many years now. I certainly do not miss attempting to make out Nolon's self employment taxes. I would literally get sick every year that I did it. He was very bad at not keeping good records of any of his work and income. I always feared we would be audited and I would be hard put to come up with proof. I was very careful to err on underestimating our deductions and depreciations. After putting out extra bucks (only once) to pay for the filing, a good friend (my former employer) taught me how to do it myself. Julie, my mom was the neatness freak. If she saw us so much as to pick a piece of link off our clothing and drop it on the floor she would admonish us to " Pick that up and put it in the coal bucket"! Her house was never dust and debris covered like mine has become. :-( Part of mine is the hair clusters (like Chelone frequently speaks about). :-) And then there is all the residue from the wood stove, not to mention plant debris, and tracked in stuff from both of our shoes. I must sign off and tote in the firewood for the day, before getting ready for my Tuesday's trip to town. Marian

Well, we bought a house in the next neighborhood because I happened upon it one spring day when we were trying to decide whether to remodel our current home and it made more sense than remodeling, financially and in terms of what the house gave us. But I didn't change schools for the kids (that was a big one for us) and we weren't making a lifestyle change. Looks like they are both great neighborhoods, so you just need to decide which one fits you best now and for the coming years. Based on dream house and dream neighborhood, I was ready to say I'd take another look at the house to figure a few things out and then probably make an offer before someone else snaps it up. BUT, it sounds like you aren't sure whether you want to trade neighborhoods or make the city/not-so-city (hard to tell what just outside downtown means) and you say having to buy a car is a big drawback. I think that is at the heart of your decision, and in spite of your saying it's not a real scenario, you say DH loves the house and you sure seem to be twisting your hair over this, so to speak. If you want to make the change, I think you have to see the house and make sure you agree, and the two of you, possibly with a contractor in tow, need to go look at the house with a serious "does it really work for us and will it add to our lives together" attitude. The contractor would be there to tell you whether muct move walls are load bearing, help you figure out the mystery jog, spot major obstacles to ideas you might have or help you spot possibilities you might not see. Keep in mind that contractor being there doesn't mean you have to do anything before you move. Our realtor suggested we move in and live with the kitchen 6 months to a year before we did anything to make sure of how it really worked for us. We did, and life took over, so 5 months turned to 4 years, but instead of replacing counters and appliances, we went to the studs and redid cabinets and all. I wouldn't not have been willing to do that had we not waited. We also put money aside while we thought about it and took care of other things, so it was easier to do what we wanted when we figured it out. Time and planning are valuable assets when doing a kitchen. I think there are possibilities there, but from the limited photos, you can't develop anything more that rough ideas and a list of questions. Finding out what is behind the mystery jog would be key to any plans taking shape, but even if that can't change, you could stack a W/D or possibly relocate them and gain a lot of space. I'd also look at moving the patio door over to the right and putting a pantry and fridge on the wall where the door to the laundry is now -- a walk-in if the laundry can be moved, cabinet depth of not. All the sudden, you could be looking at a U-shape with a modest island in the same space. I don't think you need an addition, just better space planning. For me, this is definitely just looking. I can't even look or kick the tire. But what are you thinking?

I have a couple pictures I posted on Gardenweb that constantly get views. One here at the KT was posted in 2008. It still gets several hits a week... This past week it had 15 views. The original thread was dated May 14, 2008. At the time it had 16 replies - but still FOUR YEARS LATER it is still getting views. It is probably off of Google searches that lead to it, but that gives you an idea of how many people are looking at things here - not just the "KT Family" that you may think of. The 2,000 hits the photographer got is a good indication of how many people are lurking... I know that my pictures are getting those views by going to Photobucket and looking at my stats.

This is quite timely for me as I also recently inherited many boxes of photos, we had two professional photographers in two different branches of the family back in the early 1900’s. So photos galore from them as well as other photos both earlier and later in time. Plan to archive the photos. Looking to find a way to display a number of the photos without them taking over my house and decor. Great suggestions here. I also, wanted to share my experience on exactly how delicate these photos can be. I left a photo out of it’s box for less than a day, in that short time the sun and heat faded the photo significantly and it went from flat to curled edges. The photo was on a table in a sunny room, although not directly in the sun. Lesson learned, thankfully we have other similiar photos.