I have your floors also. I think they are stunning and I have cats. But I wouldn't complain because it is easy enuf to clean them - easier than keeping wall to wall carpet clean when you have pets. The beautifu floor makse me want to do something really pretty for the curtains. I havn't played with new curtains in years. I don't have your high ceilings and windows. They are outstanding. I hope you keep this look for a long time. You nailed it.

Dh and I have lived in our current house for our entire marriage, 17 years. Truthfully, it was being built when we got married, so we lived in an apt for 2 months, then my parents for a month then it was ready. We live on the outskirts of a waterfront tourist town. We were supposed to be here for 3 years. Dh was in the Navy and this was not supposed to be our forever home as we anticipated being transferred by the Navy. However, dh realized the Navy was not meant to be his career as he didn't want to constantly move once we had kids. We wanted to live close to one of our families, but unfortunately, they live on opposite coasts. He is from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I am from the Wash DC area. Since it was the height of the tech boom at the time dh was getting out of the Navy, and we simply could not afford a home in the Silicon Valley, he got a job here, which fortunately is only 25 minutes from my parents. And here we've stayed. It is NOT my dream home. I don't even really like it. It was small when we moved in, and even smaller after having four kids! We looked around at moving to a different home, but absolutely love our neighbors and our community so finding a home that fit our needs was very difficult. We live in a high COL so home prices made it hard to find something that fit our desires while still being affordable. 10 years ago, we added on and while the space has helped, it hasn't changed the fact that our floorplan isn't desirable to us. We live in a waterfront community with very strict building codes, so we worked within that and have maxed out what we can do w/o completely gutting the house and starting over. With four kids in private school and one off to college in four years, I've pretty much resigned myself that we won't be moving anytime soon, nor can we really afford at this point to do any major changes that would help. I am constantly looking at houses for sale in the area, but the only affordable ones are in tract home subdivisions and that's not type of community we desire. So we make do with what we have. And it's not that my house is bad, but it's not set up well for entertaining, something I'd love to do more often, we had to give up our fabulous screened porch when we added on and cannot add another due to space constraints. I miss that terribly. On the bright side, we have wonderful neighbors, live in a waterfront neighborhood so the kids can fish, swim, kayak, ride their bikes freely (community is a peninsula w/no through traffic), etc. My dream is to move into the historic district in our tourist town where we can walk and bike everywhere. We live 5 miles from there now, but not on bike-friendly roads (though dh is an avid biker and rides them, no way my kids can). There are some really fabulous Arts & Crafts cottages, as well as many other architecturally interesting homes that date back to the 1700s. My hope is to move into one of them some day and have that be our forever home, with a second home in another climate. I wish I could love this home and think of it as my forever home, but it is not ideal for aging. We have three floors, with bedrooms all on the third floor as the garage/rec room are "under" the main living level. My parents still live in the house I grew up - they are going on 50 years there. They will stay until it's too much for them as it's perfect for aging, a rancher. All that said, as much as I want to move, the idea of moving is dreadful to me, which is probably one of the reasons I haven't really pushed for it. The thought of trying to keep my home in "show" condition with four kids, a huge dog that sheds, well, not fun. So perhaps a small part of me continues to find something undesirable about any of the houses I'm always looking at. I figure if I'm going to go through the hassle, the house has to be pretty close to what I want! Love all the interesting stories!

Over 50 years ago, my parents had a cat. Every Christmas, we would find Mehitabel (yes, named for the famous cat in the book, Archie and Mehitabel) sitting on a sturdy branch, right up against the trunk of the tree, staring at us like the Cheshire cat. Now this was a tree with that old-fashioned tinsel put on it, lovingly one or two pieces at a time (it took forever!), and not one strand was out of place. We never saw Mehitabel get up in the tree, nor did we ever witness her descent. She looked quite lovely with her eyes "glowing" from the tree lights! She was quite a character. None of our cats ever got up IN the tree, but they did knock it over during the night one time (nasty old-style Christmas tree stand). We tied it to something from then on and never again heard that unmistakable sound in the middle of the night.

Family, friends and neighbors teased me about being a "prepper" because I raise our own beef and chicken, have a big garden and like to can. They are now oddly quiet about it, LOL. They've also become strangely silent about my "labor intensive" home grown shelled and dried beans. Yeah.... I plan meals around what produce is in the refrigerator that needs to be used, how many eggs the chickens laid today, whether I've unearthed a couple of packages of venison from last year, what I need to cook for my 84 year old Mother, I cook meals and "deliver" them weekly. Tonight I made chicken and noodles for Mother, a batch of cabbage rolls, some deviled eggs, broccoli cheese soup and dark chocolate raspberry muffins. Elery and I had chili and I put every vegetable in the refrigerator that needed to be used in it, as I always do with chili. Tonight it was carrots, celery, onion, butternut squash, corn, two kinds of beans, a couple of quarts of home canned tomatoes and half a jar of salsa from the fridge. I should have made homemade tortillas, but instead I canned chicken stock because I "found" a couple of chicken carcasses from past roast chicken meals. Naturegirl, I have already started the hot peppers and I have my lights set up and seeds and soil ready to go, I'm going to start tomatoes, eggplant, sweet peppers, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli next week sometime. Elery and I are building removable "hoop houses" for the tops of two raised beds that just don't get enough sun for strawberries and I'm going to plant some spinach, lettuces and mizuna, maybe some bok choi, gotta get my head start on gardening before my 100 strawberry plants and 3 sweet cherry trees arrive! I'm sorry your trip was cancelled, though. Annie