There's nothing quite as cool-looking(temperaturewise) as BLUE flowers. I grew Phacelia a few years ago, best blue i ever saw, next to cornflowers. The bell-shaped blue flowers with icy-white anthers were beautiful, and stirred up images of cooler weather. They do have a short bloom time, hot weather just about stops the show, cutting back helps somewhat. Give 'em a try, i believe there are 2 or 3 varieties. Good luck, and enjoy.

I love the lines of the Carlisle, and I would have bought it but its proportions are unusually large and did not work for the room I was furnishing. Compare the dimensions to other chairs and you may find the same. As for off white washable slipcovers, I love them and have been a devotee for years. When we had our first nursery, we had a slipcovered RH sofa in our son's nursery, and later on an armchair and ottoman in a girls room. Now we have a huge L in our great room that is washable off white duck, and a sleeper sofa in our little stonehouse/playhouse. In our experience, the slipcovers wash very well. You can even shout out stains. It is kind of hard work getting them off and putting them back on, but now that I am used to it I almost think upholstered stuff I can't wash is kind of yucky, if YKWIM. It is better to take the slips out when damp, they go on easier that way. I never had the PB ones, mine were either RH or MGBW. But my bet is they are all made in one big factory somewhere anyway! Goodluck.

Wow, tons of great ideas and different ways to go with this. I really appreciate you all brain storming this with me and your ideas. Please keep them coming! I think a long narrow table could work, but I think it would kind of make the space feel kind of tight. I'm a just touch claustrophobic, so if the space is tight, I'm apt not to use it. I know you're thinking well a booth can be a little 'squished' too, honestly I'd sit on chair side and leave the booth to the kids if we went that way. *LOL* Les, I really like the idea of a drop leaf table for the space, dropping one side and pushing against the short sink wall unless we needed the extra seating. I wonder how hard it would be to find a 8', possibly 9' long drop leaf type of harvest table like that. The island sounds great, especially from a serving point of view, but this will be our primary eating area so I'd like to have the option of a table I think. I like the small upper windows idea too, I'm going to bring that up with my DH. See what we did was flip flop part of the downstairs area to make the space work better for us. The kitchen and formal dining room were on the other side of the house. The thing is the dining room in this old house was built too tight to really comfortably accommodate more than a few people .. can you tell I don't like to feel crowded. *LOL* So it really wasn't a good use of space, the kitchen had too many door and window issues to have a good flow. Now on this side, this back eating area was chopped into two cramped rooms. One being a dark bathroom, the other just kind of a no mans land of wasted space back entry area .. this opened to the deck which made no sense. Where the kitchen we are building is, was dark bedroom, since that side of the house is North facing. So it made sense to open this area all to one space, put in the doors leading to the deck to let in natural light and make this a brighter, more useable space. The eating area is not ideal, but neither was the other arraignment and it was in the interior of the house, so cramped *and* dark. At least over here you can open the doors, people can be on the deck, people can be inside and you have an illusion of space. Now next on the hit list is taking the old kitchen and dining area and reworking that space into a master suite. At that point we actually have three rooms to open up. An old library that we'll be using for our sitting, office area, there is a double sided fireplace in the middle of that room and the dining room, so by opening on both sides of that it will open the spaces to each other, yet leave them intact as a different space. The dining area and part of the kitchen becomes a nice sized master bedroom, what's left of the kitchen our bathroom.

There is a Five Guys here in town right next to where I usually get my hair cut, that people had been raving about. Twice while trying to kill time until the hair cut, I went into Five Guys, waited in line for about 5 minutes, and got so turned off by the slow line, the peanut shells littering the grease-slickened floor, and the sign atop the menu declaring "All of our burgers are cooked to well-done" that I ended up leaving without ordering anything. A third time I was determined to try the food, and was not at all impressed. The burger made up for the fact that it was overcooked by being very greasy, the bun was soggy and flavorless, the lettuce was wilted from being steamed while the burger was wrapped in foil. The fries were far, far too many, and way too salty, and were mushy and greasy, and they went from too hot to eat, to too cold and greasy, seemingly without ever passing through the "just right" temperature. I went to a local hot-dog restaurant that seemed to be aiming for "like Five Guys, but with hot dogs instead of burgers" and their fries were some of the best I'd ever had. Maybe that's how Five Guys was when it first started out, and its merely that the local franchisee is not doing such a great job, but I'll certainly not be back.