Small town life sounds good to me. As does living in the country. We had a few acres when I had horses and other animals back in the 60s and 70's. Phoenix is soooo big, too much traffic, and I hate driving even if it didn't cause my leg to go on the warpath. I was born in a small town, in Ala. I don't really going places alone either, and won't go out at night except to family gatherings at one of my kids. I'm waiting the arrival of my toile plates I just bought. Tho heaven knows what I can find to do with them, but will try just because of all the support I've gotten here. Any table settings I do will be just for ONE, maybe two if you're lucky. LOL. I'm going to be a one-trick pony, sorry about that. I just can't do full tables for many reasons. I've been 'planning' my Christmas decor. Really planning this year. Thought it might take some of the load off me being so over-whelmed with it when I go to unpacking a zillion things in the middle of the floor while telling two cats NOT to help me. A zillion times! One sleepless night I started plotting different places to put things this year. I want my newly begun collection of Nutcrackers (started last year) pretty much together. But I think the purple one should go with the Santa. And I have two golf Santas and two golf Nutcrackers that should stay together. Last year they were with my two other special Nutcrackers, a policeman and a fireman. These have a lot of meaning! I'm going to put my Village in the antique china cabinet in my entry hall this time I think, instead of Painted Pony Cabinet in familyroom. Tho I still have to move over a 100 statues from BOTH. I was thinking of putting Xmas horses and reindeer in the pony cabinet. I have quite a few of both now. Anyway, its fun to mentally decorate. It also doesn't wear me out or hurt my body. LOL. I think I'll start my Village next week in fact. First I have to make room for all those dog statues to safely go on closet shelves for the next two months! Ugh. hugs, Karen

I would not trust any artificial sweeteners. I tend to agree with Jack La Lane - fitness guru "If God didn't make it - I don't eat it!" I think he's in his 90's now or pushing 90 and still going strong on fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds and at least 80% raw. I discovered Agave Nectar while visiting my daughter in CO. It is a raw, all natural sweetener that is not as strong flavored as honey and has a low glycemic index making it suitable for diabetics. I like Agave because it is much easier to use than STevia - and blends better requiring no special recipes - just use 1/2 - 2/3 cup where a recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar. Stevia would be my 2nd choice if I couldn't have sugar. I also use natural sugar - turbinado or cane sugar that is usually brown and not the overprocessed white sugar. It is a little more expensive than white sugar, but with lifestyle and dietary changes, we find we do not need to consume as much sugar as we used to when we ate less healthy so it really lasts a lot longer. Once you start cutting down on soft drinks, your taste buds will begin to appreciate the pure natural flavor of foods. We drink mostly steam distilled water, sometimes with a little lemon, or fruit juices whereas we used to drink a lot of pop. I quit drinking soda pop when I learned that the amount of sugar in one can of soda is enough to shut down your immune system for an entire day. Then also the benzene or whatever the stuff they put in it as a preservative is carcinogenic. I have the article somewhere. Anyway it sure made us not want to injest any more of that stuff! I think it is criminal what chemical companies have done to our world. And I too, cringe at the commercials showing children eating splenda or anything with nutrasweet! SHUDDER!!! One does not have to research very far to be horrified at the effects of chemicals on our children - from poisoning them with vaccines [the most suspect in causing Autism] to food additives, pesticides, herbicides + chlorine and fluoride in our water - I could go on and on but I'll let you do your own digging. "It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man". How many times have you see medicine commercials touting their wonders only to find a little further down the road, law offices ads offering aid to those who have been damaged by those same meds?

To be honest Sunny, while I could recommend further on specifics, for better or worse, it sounds like we're down to the "where do I put the towel rack?" stage, you already know pretty much what you want and any more "big idea" discussion would be pointless. And that's entirely ok. More often than not when I do these "pen to paper" exercises I do them for the lurkers rather than the OP anyway. And for the lurkers, at least one of my three points above has been addressed, that of house area. For a house with basically 4 bedrooms and the support spaces here, 2100SF is plenty. That number might represent a challenge to achieve but that's what a good residential designer does. The other two points, that of maximizing views and circulation remain largely untouched. Two bedrooms are looking elsewhere (one onto what I think will be a largely unused covered patio) and parts of the circulation paths look like the white squares in a crossword puzzle. In concluding, let me get back to Sunny....I guess in a larger sense what I was trying to illustrate is your house has no soul. Sure it has all the pieces (place for piano CHECK......screened porch.....CHECK.......pantry.....CHECK......place for hutch.....CHECK.......walk in closet.....CHECK....etc.) but add all those pieces up and the sum does not make for an inspiring whole. And inspiring wholes do not cost a dime more to build than uninspiring wholes. Designing a skyscraper, where there's a lobby floor with 50 identical floors above is in many ways an easier task than coming up with a well designed small house. Let me reference some threads you might find helpful before you spend a healthy six figures of your hard earned money in an endeavor with no "do-overs" (and again, I'm keeping lurkers in mind here). Read up on what makes good design. First here's a great list of book suggestions: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3281434/book-suggestions?n=10 Second, here's a bunch of great suggestions from others here on what makes good design: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3285825/what-makes-a-house-have-good-design?n=39 (And Sunny, if you thought some of my comments above might have been a tough read, note #31 in my post here). And third, get someone local of talent to sit down with you for a highly interactive "brainstorming session" on the design of your house. And this doesn't have to be expensive or time consuming. Just look at the idea I drew above.......which took an hour. I do these all the time and call them "design charrettes". And don't think I have a horse in your race as I only do these locally, face to face, and I'm plenty busy with the locals anyway (some I even reference here!). In lieu of doing another big retype here's a coupla threads that explain those: Not my first post here but the photo heavy one further down. In the charrette photo that's me pen in hand with the builder flanked by the owners (and from the photo you can see I'm a piano player too). http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3178541/question-for-architectrunnerguy-or-others?n=24 And a colleague of mine wrote the process up in his blog http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/design-in-a-day/ And again Sunny, the best of luck with your build.

Hello. Well, for one thing, whether you call it a separation or a divorce, either way the effect is often the same. Blood is blood. Kids fully know who BM is and who dad's GF is, regardless of how long or in what manner bio-dad and BM were hooked up. Again, a lot of what I see above is you being expected to take on all of this family's angst, however it came about, and your big reward is being the family scapegoat vs. given any appreciation. And, sorry, but this how many (not all, but many) SMs, who are married to their husbands and may have been for years can be treated: "I'm the only one experiencing the poor treatment that no one will do anything about." Society tolerates this and even encourages it. They actually think that you are supposed to give up your soul for this other family. Yes, it is actually true! All I know is when I found this out via my own experiences and reading similar on other forums, I was just as shocked as you were. Good SM reading material: Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do [Wednesday Martin Ph.D.]. bossyvossy, alluded to this, but it really is risky for a single woman to take up with a man with children and just live together. I wanted to give you the shadow of a doubt and refer to you as SM vs. caregiver. But, even SMs who are married to their husbands and have been for years, are treated similar to what you are seeing now. It has to do with the way SMs are valued (or I should say undervalued) in our society. And, unfortunately, the only argument some see for SM being treated even remotely like a family member is as dad's wife, and even then, the "wife" part is often forgotten at family events, and without any foreknowledge, dad's wife of 10 years, for example, can go to an event and find out that her husband has been hooked up with BM for the event. Again, without SM's permission nor even her husband's. I used to feel that way too, that GFs or BFs really have little rights at all when it comes to SKs, because they can come and go at a moment's notice, and kids really don't want to deal with all of this, one day dad's GF is in and the next day she's out. BUT, I came to realize that dad's GF of three months is usually treated little differently than a SM of 25 years. So, this has led me to at least somewhat back up GFs living with a man with children, because a) it is becoming more prevalent, and b) I hate to see women get set up for failure by their own man and society, regardless of the living arrangements. But, bossyvossy is still right in the sense that here you are giving up quite a bit for this man and his children, and getting nothing in return, including not even a real commitment. Again, I know you love him, but backup and look at the facts, or at least ask yourself: What am I really getting out of this relationship? I am a SM and have a friend who was much like you, a single woman with no children who went on to marry a man with children. She had no clue what she was getting into. She gave her time, love, heart, and own hard-earned money to these children, and thought, like most, that she'd get some sort of acknowledgement in return. Years later, she's still waiting for it. She told me from her perspective being a SM is like having all of the bad parts (such as cooking, cleaning, disciplining) of being a mom, but with little to nil of the good parts (such as hugs, kisses, eyes filled with love, cards, acknowledgement). Something for all of us to think about.