Maggie, I think you are on to something..and as FG states, the rate of those diagnosed with Celiac is climbing..Funny that she put the numbers in..very close to the rate of Autism too (and there are some studies on going about the correlation of food related allergies and different degrees and oddities of Autism in children)..I have known for a long time that foods can cause amazing "problems" in an allergic body. Many kids that sport ADD, ADHD symptoms/problems have food allergies and the culprits in many ways are wheat, corn and dairy. The problem I see is, that this wonderful country we live in likes to play with our food supply. Things are tainted that shouldn't be tainted...And next year I will enjoy things that I can't eat right now..because I can grow heirloom varieties organically! and Maggie, I do eat pasta..and serve it to my family. I use brown rice and spelt(spelt is the "ancient" wheat grain) I'm not going gluten free, so I can eat Spelt, because it's a "whole" uncompromised grain.I also eat Oats. I just had a piece of Spelt Toast from TJ's with my homemade Tayberry jam for breakfast. Lastnight I was up alone, hubby was out with the "fellas" and the boys were asleep..I spent hours reading all the Gluten Free Blogs, looking at Gluten Free recipes and sites..There is sooooooo much information! Again, I don't want anyone confused on this subject and as it pertains to me, I'm just learning too...But I can see that in one months time, it's made a considerable difference removing wheat, corn, soy and red meat from my diet (as hard as it is to leave some of those things behind! BEEF!) The pay off is way worth it. I've never felt so commited in my life about something. I've always had the desire to feed my family better, to use as much whole foods as possible, to prepare good foods and treats using the best I could afford. I just never really implemented it as far as I knew I should..Until now..I've made a drastic change, and intend to slowly slip the changes into my families diet as well..They are already sharing in some things with no loss!

Those are beautiful. When I start taking winter closeups like that, I am reminded of how many more words the Eskimos have for snow and ice and winter precipitation. Our language just doesn't do justice to the myriad forms of snow and ice.

Prairie-girl, I know how you feel about not wanting to unpack, because it is easier to maintain a house with breathing room. I'm beginning to realize that if I don't miss it, don't remember I have it, then I can do without it. I never thought of myself as a "collector" or "hoarder" either. But I have a friend who religiously throws out EVERYTHING, and she thinks I keep too much around. It made me self-conscious. So now I box things up and if I cannot remember it, then next time I open the boxes, I weed things out. Most folks could live in one of our smaller homes, and do not need to add on to their home. That was the case with my mother, who added a 20 x 20 building for her craft work, then filled it up and had everything in the house packed too. It sure detracted from her enjoyment of her living spaces. So when I watch DESIGNED TO SELL or the other show with Sabrina Soto on HGTV, the first thing they do is DECLUTTER. But that is to make the home more sellable. It does give a sense of spaciousness. What I'm wanting to achieve is a nice balance between storage and function. I want space enough to store the things that I like to USE, and have them within easy reach. I like to sew but have no good spot to keep projects out unless the house looks ugly. And I like to paint with acrylics and also paint furniture, but you cannot put those things back into a cabinet if you have limited room. When you took the pics of your house and it was cozy and warm, it was probably between projects when everything was put up. Looking nice and working on a project make us all walk a fine line. Hmmmm, I have an idea for a thread, and I'll post it pretty soon. Thanks for giving me the idea, Missy! :)

Breezy - well, we're picking what we can, we've still got a lot of details to work out - our GC is also the cabinet maker...so, we know that we want cherry, Shaker style, dark stain, but the actual stain for the cabinetry is dependent upon the color that we do on our red oak hardwood when it's refinished and we are holding on our hardwood guy to get us colors until we know our start date with the GC. So, while waiting for all this, I went to HD and picked up some of their floor sample swatches and we came up with a color that we want to emulate for our floor and have been using it as our "close-enough" color. We're working out our pulls - I know that we want pulls and not knobs, and I know that we want a transitional/contemporary look to those, so I don't have an exact pull, but we're close. Paint, not under control AT ALL right now. And I'm amazingly relaxed about not knowing that. haha I don't expect to have that decided until the cabinets, granite, and lighting are in place. We're going neutral and lighter. Quite possibly a blue undertone, but not necessarily actually blue. Color in a room changes so much when you have everything in place and our room is changing significantly from what it is currently because we're tearing out a wall and removing a window - light is going to play quite differently once all that happens. So, I have a pile of swatches that I've put next to our bits & pieces of stuff and eliminated a lot and we have a few that we'll wind up getting samples of when it comes time to paint. We've got our faucet, we've got our GD, but I have to purchase the air switch. I need to work out details on plugmold - don't know if I should spring for the angled plugmold from Task or just go with the HD stuff. And, oddly enough, even though I'm a photographer, kitchen lighting is just baffling me. I guess it's that I'm used to seeing light and modifying light - I guess it's really the electrical aspect of it that's confusing to me. marti8a - thanks for the vote of confidence. We're happy about having so many of these decisions made...but now I just want to know when we can get started! Ginny - Thank you! I haven't forgotten about you, I promise. I owe you an email. I've been doing a ton of looking and deciding about stuff. It can be seriously all-consuming - if only I didn't have work work to do also this would be so much easier! Sometimes I wish that I were one of those people who just said, "KD, please create a new kitchen for me." BTW, I'm so glad that you're hanging out here even though your kitchen is done. :)