Looks like a good time was had by all and small town at it's best. Reminds me of my small hometown in Germany. Most things were a community effort and no matter how long you had lived somewhere else, you get back and you are included as if you had never left.

I don't own any clothing that is rosey except for a faded pair of pajamas. Won't be wearing them. There will be people in all sorts of clothing from bizarre to natty, but most will simply dress in a casual and weather-appropriate style. It is as others said, informal. But if you own an interesting hat or indeed other garment with rose motif, this is definitely the place to wear it and be admired. Do remember the sunblock. It's hot today (90-ish) and expected to start cooling off by tomorrow. It will probably be in the 60's in El Cerrito by Mother's Day. Who knows what it will be like a week later for the Celebration? I'll be wandering around. Stop me and say Hi. It would be fun to meet. I've made so many wonderful friends over the years on this forum, and some o them will be there. I have red hair, freckles, and sometimes glasses. No idea what clothes I will wear, but probably either green or yellow. Rosefolly

This reminded me of an event that I still laugh about...about 8 years ago (and Madonna was "in") I went to a "outdoor barbeque's show" . One woman in line for the meal really got a lot of attention, and apparently it upset her. In fact she was right, people were talking about her. She turned around to people already seated in the benches with their dinner and said,"why are you all talking about me?" (she was in her I'd say early 40.s) I couldn't stand it any longer, so I told her, "if you didn't want all this attention you shouldn't have worn your bra on the outside of your tank top-so you must want the attention." True story. Now the tank and bra were both pastels...top blue, bra pink. Plus both were lacy...but it seems so strange for someone to get upset about what should be "common sense" to me...Any way she settled herself down. Just had to share.

judiegal, your husband is wrong on two counts. First, there are square-edged prefinished hardwoods available. There is one problem with the square edge - you can get something often called "sock-catchers" if the subfloor is not perfectly flat. There are many different depths of bevel available nowadays. We had the microbevel in our previous house to avoid "sock-catchers" and it did not collect debris. I could get the floors completely clean with a microfiber dustmop. (My current house has 107yo heart-pine floors, and I am getting all too familiar with catching debris because it has gaps over 1/4" wide between many boards. Maddening.) It peeves the living daylights out of me to hear people refer to engineered hardwood flooring as not "real" wood. It is just as much "real wood" as solid wood. Call solids solids if that's what you mean. We chose an ashwood engineered flooring for our previous house because NH has massive swings in humidity (we did not have central AC - it would have cost well over $12,000 to install) which can create problems with cupping, buckling, or gapping, and were extremely pleased with it. I cannot TELL you how many dealers and installers tried to bully us into site-finished flooring, even though we could not afford to vacate our house for a week plus, and there was no way we could stay and try to work around the construction and finishing (I would have almost surely been very sick from the stain and finish odors, and let's not even talk about trying to keep the cat and dog hair out of the finish.) Here in New England, the attitude of "we've done it this way for 100 years, we're not going to change now" is rampant! We did not have any problems with the floor delaminating from cat barf, spilled beverages, tracked-in snow, that sort of thing, and the aluminum oxide finish was very durable. The manufacturer, Robbins, did NOT recommend putting any additional finish on after installation. They were nailed down, not glued (the installers checked with Robbins to make sure they could be nailed instead of stapled). The reason why johnatemp thinks she can always spot engineered flooring is because CHEAP engineered floors use a rotary-cut veneer, which looks like plywood; better-quality engineereds have sliced and even quartsawn/riftsawn veneer layers. Another frequent myth about solid wood flooring - it cannot be refinished as many times as people are led to believe. You can only sand them down to the level of the tongue, which is usually less than a third of the thickness of the board. Old (50+ years) floorboards can often be flipped and reused if very carefully pulled up, but that is quite rare in modern flooring. Our floors were warranted for three full refinishings; the veneer layer was a third of the thickness of the board. However, you don't need to completely refinish a hardwood floor unless you have deep gouges or want to change the color. These days, if you want to refresh the finish and remove small scratches and scuffs, you just do something called a screen and recoat. It costs a LOT less than a full refinishing, too. Here are a couple of pictures. The floors are, as I said, from Robbins; style is and color is Tigra.