An amazingly stuffed full priority mail bubble envelope arrived yesterday, so after dinner I sat down to dig in & giggled with delight as I pulled out so many fun things that Vina had creatively packed up & sent. She must know my mind or something because everything was perfect! _Butterfly card lavishly decorated in gold, 3 dimensions, & colorful along with friendly sentiments and a happy face! _2 recent Garden Gate magazines that make flower gardening looks so lovely & easy. I flipped through & will definitely use that tip to scarify seeds by putting them in a jar with sandpaper & shake, shake, shake! Perfect for those Sweet Peas. _an entire package of Godiva dark chocolates in an assortment of flavors. I won't tell how many I've eaten already. There's still some left. He, he. _Grow Ums Herb Garden that contained 8 coco pellets & labels along with 4 types of seeds (basil, cilantro, oregano, & parsley). Looks like fun to start them this way & I have lots of pots to make a nice display. There are 20 seeds in each packet, so there will have plenty for several pots and I can share with my daughter because she also loves the fresh herbs. _12 packets of seeds from her garden all labeled & sealed in tiny ziplocks. Not one stray seed! She sent me just what we'd love to try here. My hubby loves all the daisy type flowers like blanket flower or especially coneflowers that are big, bright or bicolored. The generous 12 she sent me were: 1. bee balm Marshall's Delight 2. Clematis Jackmani (I have several empty trellis here & just received two cedar ones from a friend who is moving in 3 weeks.) 3. Clematis Arctic Queen 4. Coreopsis Jethro Tull 5. Coneflower Ruby Giant 6. Coneflower Milkshake 7. Dianthus Siberian Blues 8. Nigella Love in a Mist all blue (I want to plant these along the row of raspberries provided they survived the storm as the trellis is down & there are tree tops & limbs on them.) 9. Gaillardia Fanfare 10. Rudbeckia Indian summer 11. Sweet Pea, everlasting (by the way someone told me these are great for improving the soil like other legumes, so plant away in new garden spaces to make way for vegetables or other perennials) 12. Yarrow Cerise Queen If all of this germinates & grows I'll have lots of plants to fill in the holes left by the storm! Thank YOU Vina for welcoming me in to the group & sending such a generous package that definitely brought me some winter cheer! Here's one of my favorite shasta daisy pics from a few years ago. Grandma gave this chicken on a stick to our daughter when she was young & she liked to surprise me with it by moving it around. She had said she tried to make the chicken look like it was standing on the daisy flower. Corrine

Martinca, as my screenname implies, I have four kids. My belly has not seen the light of day in years. I too am not overweight but do have a tummy bulge sag as a result. I don't wear low rise anything but I do wear mid-rise pants, etc. it's a bit of a quandary b/c I need to make sure my tummy is covered while at the same time, make sure my butt isnt overextended like it would be in mom jeans that are high waisted. This skirt is not low waisted. I just put this skirt on to be sure (and golddust, I was wrong - I don't have the charcoal color but rather the gray one and a tan one) and it sits much higher in me than in the photo, about an inch below my belly button. For my own body type, I've found that pants,etc that hit me sort of in the middle of my tummy actually look best. Anything that goes higher then creates kind of a bubble effect where my belly is by cinching where I'm smaller - so rather than suck me it, it makes it jut out, if that makes sense. This is especially true in skirts that zip and button on the front. They don't hold me in if the button is higher and above my belly fat. Hard to explain but it just works for me but I'm for sure not exposing myself like in the photos above! And I have the hardest time with bathing suits! I love tankinis in theory but it is so hard to find styles where the top actually comes over the top of the bottoms rather than meeting at the top. One move and my belly is showing! I love the designs of the Athleta suits but unfortunately nearly all their suits have the "meet and greet" rather than full coverage. And now bathing suit is nearing...ugh!

I will be thinking about you ruthie! More power to you. My sister looked so good with her hair shaved, but she didn't like it. If my work would have let me, I wanted to shave mine along with her, but I was told it wasn't a good idea. I am still mad about that. It will look much better shaved, than having the "here and there" hair. Make the best of it if you can! I will be wearing red tomorrow for all of the girls. Trin

Oh my gosh, I'm so surprised. Thank you. I really thought I'd be criticized for ravaging my brand new rug - so glad you like it. Linelle, I got these colors from e-bay and they come in small plastic bottles. For the most part I didn't water anything down, although I did water down the lighter green color a little bit. However, having used these same products in my last rug, some of them may have been watered down at the time and I've forgotten. I put down practice patches of paint on white paper and then decide whether the consistency and color are right. It's good if you can work on a small, not so precious project for practice before you go on to more costly items. peaches, I understand why you would feel that way because our tastes are so different, and my husband generally doesn't like pale carpets. I'm happy with what I have now but still plan on purchasing another rug more along the lines of what you envision. In fact I saw one on overstock that was paler and we both liked, but I'm almost afraid of ordering from them because their description will say "brown and green" and all I can see is gray and beige. That makes it seem like a crap shoot and they really charge a lot when your return a rug. On erugsale their colors are very true to life on my laptop so it's not me. There's no hurry, but by summer I want to have the lighter-colored one in hand.