I have a vision board. I bought a sheet of foam core board from Staples. Then I covered it with some printed wrapping tissue I like (just wrapped the front and taped it on the back. Since I don't have lots of magazines, I copied and pasted pictures, saying and items of things that I'd like to do, earn, have, be, places I'd like to go, etc onto printer paper like a collage. Then I glued the sheets on the board and filled in the blanks with some magazine cut outs. There is plenty of space to add more things. I keep it where I can see it off and on throughout the day. It's very cheerful & makes me happy to see it. It helps me stay focused. I fully expect these dreams to come true! A vision board should inspire you. I've heard it's a good idea to put it out of sight when others who might laugh or ridicule it are around. Only supportive people should be allowed to see it.

I would think you could find a wallpaper with the look of rattan. I've seen wicker and other woven-look textured wallpapers. A couple samples should be plenty big enough. Then head to the nearest craft store and buy a small round wood plaque. Of if you are at Lowes, you might find one in there millwork department. Paint the plaque black, center and glue a smaller round piece of the wallpaper sample onto it then drill a hole in the middle the size you'll need to attach the glass knob.

-Prep sink. This may be useful in a multi-cook household or a huge kitchen, but I hardly ever used the one I had and it was just once more thing to clean. -Garbage disposal. My worms do a much better job, don't take up electricity and never smell or require cleaning. -Fancy multi-function toaster, oven, rotisserie, pizza, etc. Does nothing well. -Trash can with a motion sensor. Everyone I know who has one has them break in under a year. Mine only took 4 months to break. A foot pedal is much more reliable and a lot cheaper to replace. -Stainless steel sink. What a pain to clean. You can call it patina, butafter a while they don't look clean no matter what you do. (The one in my apartment right now looks positively foul no matter how much Barkeeper's Friend you use.) Of course cast iron will eventually chip and I don't know if the granite composite sinks will stand the test of time -Range-top grill. Only pay for these if you have a bodacious vent system and no way to have an outdoor grill. They are better than the George Foreman-like grills but not a patch on a decent outdoor gas grill or charcoal. ---- As for sink tip-outs... since discovering them I have knocked the front panel off every sink in every home I've rented or owned and installed these. In the bathroom they are perfect for the tweezers and nail files and such. In the kitchen, the sponges, scrubbers, stoppers and the toothbrush you use for cleaning around the faucet plate are neatly hidden away but close at hand. Love 'em!

Xentar, yes I will definitely be doing some vertical gardening, in fact, at the northenmost end of the garden, right past the patio area, I'm going to put up 6 ft high trellises of beans and cucumbers to shade the patio, which is in full sun all day, which really makes it hard to enjoy. The sun comes from the South, so that tall trellis won't shade anything important. I'll have other trellises against the wall that gets all the afternoon sun, probably beans, since they do well with less direct sunlight. I can plant pole beans with bush beans at the bottom in 2 feet of space. That's a lot of beans! I'm also going to trellis tomatoes and squash to save space. I trellised tomatoes all the time in SC -- just put up a strip of hog wire and tied them right up. They did so well like that, and I was able to grow a lot of radishes in front of them. In the summer, I'll replace the cucumbers and beans with malabar spinach and lima beans, or I may grow sweet potatoes and trellis their vines to use the leaves too. I've seen people do that on YouTube. On the shady west side, I'm thinking of putting up those PVC growing towers for lettuce, if I can get someone to help me build them. I want to eventually plant berries on the sunny wall, but that's a future dream. Of course, none of this will be started until fall, because I have too much to do until then to get things ready. My courtyard is a disaster right now, and I don't have time to do anything about it, so I'll be torturing myself this summer trying to get it done.