Let me chime in here, if I may(you know I love to talk). You don't have to build all of it in the first year. You can use your native soil and then build it from there as you have material available at little or no cost. Results can still be very good without spending a lot of money. When you start by spading you raise the level by about 2 to 3 inches, depending on the soil. Then throw in a little more soil from the path areas of your garden, where you may want to lay down some pavers or flat stones or mulch to walk on. Then add some ucg's, leaves, dried grass clippings, steer or other manure...well you get the idea as to how fast it can build up. Of course, every year it will settle and a certain amount of the organic material will actually disappear into thin air, but you will be adding more and more all the time cause by the end of the first year you will probably become a compost wacko, like a lot of us here are. Then you will get all excited about When you score anything, from anywhere, to add to your soil and compost. Then people start to look at you strangely as you carry around used coffee grounds and other peoples garbage and little childrens used jack'olanterns. Its not always a pretty sight..steve

I really like having my own cookbook. I have a cookbook collection but often I can't remember which one has the recipe I I want to use. I use Word and I do it very similar to one of the contributors of the thread that's linked to the post a few post up from this one. I use a separate document for each category and I've run into a few snags. Some dishes can fit into more than one category so it's a judgment call as to where to put them. Do you, for instance, put a pasta salad in "Salads" or in "Pasta Dishes"? Do you put Chicken and Noodles in "Pasta Dishes" or in "Poultry" or in "Casseroles"?. On my computer, I created a main folder called "Cookbook", in which I keep each category as a separate document. I also have a document entitled "Recipes to Try". This is where I copy and paste recipes that sound good but must be tested before they can be included in my cookbook. Any recipe on the Internet can be copied into a Word document. You just highlight the recipe, choose "copy", then go to your Word document and after you have chosen "paste", take the option that is called "Unformatted Text". You may have to delete several junk lines, but it's better than filling your document with HTML text, text boxes, and whatever special formatting that was on the Internet page you copied. Each document is formatted to have two columns on each page. The pages are numbered and each document has a cover page. Each recipe, after the title, in bold, has a comments section directly below it, it small italics. This is used to tell a story about Aunt Evelyn and how meticulous she was with her Denver Biscuits, or maybe just to note how many it serves. If I got the recipe from here or from Allrecipes.com or wherever, I note that and then if I or a reviewer has modified it in a way that has made it better, I note that there, as well. Then the recipe. Some things, like Yeast Breads or Pie and Pastry, have a page after the title page with tips and tricks about how to make the product better, tools that help, etc. I do have some trouble keeping things grouped within each document. I like recipes for waffles, pancakes, french toast, doughnuts, and coffee cake to be grouped together, because they're all breakfast recipes. I also like a new recipe to start at the start of every column. So that's a challenge when I find a great new recipe. I have found that Word has some limitations where pictures are concerned. If you don't resize your pictures prior to inserting them into the document, and then you try to print the document, sometimes the pictures in the document won't all print because the document's too darned big. There's just a blank place where the pic should be. Inserting a picture directly from your camera without reducing the size makes the document huge. I use my Photoshop to resize. Also when you insert a picture into Word, if you click on it so that the squares appear at each corner of the picture, you can then format it to "tight" so that you can move it anywhere in the document and it will stay, and the printing will arrange itself around the picture. In some versions of Word, there is a way to specify that any picture imported is automatically formatted in any way you pick, the same way each time. Also, if you don't have Word, you can download Open Office for free and it is compatible with Word. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles Word has but it will do in a pinch. There's also a free download called PDF Redirect that you can use to make an Adobe Acrobat document from your typed document. This is nice because once you convert your document to a .pdf format, if you save it to CD, no one can go in there and modify it or accidentally delete a recipe unless they have Adobe Acrobat software. The software is so terribly expensive that most people don't buy it. You, on the other hand, still have the document in Word format, so you can modify it when needed and then convert it to a .pdf document again when you want to share it. That also has the advantage of being compatible with whatever people have on their computers because the Adobe Acrobat reader is also a free download. When the recipe pages are printed, I 3-hole punch them and keep them in a binder. There's a page divider for each category. I do prefer recipe cards, but they are hard to print on my printer. Avery and others make the recipe cards that are several to an 8x11 sheet and are perforated but they are expensive. I suppose I could buy 8x11 card stock and cut the cards with my paper cutter, but many times I can't get a recipe on just one card without printing so small I can barely read it. So it just gets more complicated from there. I've played with trying to print a card front-and-back, and with making folded cards. Recipe cards have the benefit of being right at your fingertips, easy to carry to the kitchen and clip on the refrigerator, then they can go right back into the box when I'm finished. If you get a new recipe, there's no juggling of the others on the page around it. When I had recipe cards I bought some of that clear contac paper and covered them with that. But it makes them thicker and fewer will fit in the box. Ink jet printer ink will run if it gets wet. If you have a laser printer, however, a little moisture doesn't hurt it. But most laser printers will only print in black so if you have pictures they'd have to be in black and white, too. I like the idea of giving people a CD with the recipes on it so they can print one page of recipes or the whole collection. What with the cost of paper, printer ink and postage, a cookbook can get quite expensive even if you print it yourself.

For learning SketchUp there's a pretty decent series of books called "Google SketchUp for Interior Design and Space Planning" or some such. I bought them last winter when I was first learning it. The books ended up being a bit too basic for me, since I learn computer stuff quickly -- it's what I do for a living. By the time the books arrived I'd already learned most of what was in them. But for someone who's just starting out I think they'd be good. The series has 3 books. They're all pretty thin and fairly inexpensive. I bought them on Amazon. I agree that graph paper is a good place to start, though. Or go buy a cheap architects' ruler at Office Depot. I think I got one for $5 or so. Laura still annoyed that Google got rid of SketchUp

These are what I made to keep my potted plants on. I made them from a 2"x6" piece of cedar. They cost about $1.50 a stand. They go together very fast. They aren't on rollers but I have a dolly that sits about 4" off the ground and is 18" x 24"so if I need to move one it is relatively easy to set them on the dolly.