Hi Spiderwoman, I just looked up where you are located and I could come for them if they would fit in the back of my Jeep (with the seats laid flat). If I need the pick up truck, I'd have to wait until my DH gets back from a trip, because the brakes are acting up and I'm afraid of it right now. I'd love to see your other goodies, also. I have been working on a woodland setting for the last three years. Maybe you can let me know when is a good time for you. I can come on the weekend or on Monday? Would that work? Thanks!

My husband was just reading over my shoulder and said, "These women are all full of crop!" Can you believe it? He was being silly, of course. (Read his statement carefully- there are no typos.) It was a pun, a joke, a hehe-haha kind of thing- please don't write me nasty letters! LOL Anyway, Carla, you are right. As a beginner, I was thrilled to hear all these responses from the seasoned professionals. Boy, oh boy, Mar, are YOU a professional or what?! :) I think the best suggestion is getting double prints of all your pictures, then label the envelopes and save them in tact. That way, you have a set to keep all those other "background object" memories and focus your scrapbooking on the focal points of the photots. You could even indicate on the envelopes which scrapbook page(s) used that particular set of pictures. So if you screw up when cutting, or want several copies of the picture on one page, or want to do a whole page over, you can just pull out the right pack of pictures, grab the negative, get a copy made for a quarter (that's all it costs at my grocery store) and voila! Easy organization, too, for when you want to see ALL the pictures from Christmas '99 for example, not just the few you selected for the pages. I love reading these posts. I just went to a craft store and spent *ahem* dollars on supplies. I haven't completed a full page yet and I'm addicted already! I think I'm in big trouble, don't you? Thanks for all the wonderful input so far- can't wait to read the new stuff, too!

I have a vintage O'Keefe & Merritt stove, built in 1948. It has 5 pilot lights on it and I do not have to manually light any of them. I bought my stove in LA in 1982, from a used furniture store that also had tons and tons of vintage stoves, mainly O'Keefe & Merritt. All had been steam cleaned inside and out. All had new piping for the gas. I have had one service call since then and it was a minor one. Whether the stove in which you are interested would be a good choice, would greatly depend on the brand. I doubt it is an O'Keefe & Merritt as they were mainly sold only west of the Rocky Mountains (stoves traveled by train in those days, so there were "east" brands, and "west" brands). O'Keefe & Merritt were a luxury stove when new and are now considered highly desirable.

I dont think that it is regional. I think it is more societal. I live in a area of high income, high education and a high level of sophistication and have been here for almost 40 years. It is not as if these experiences take place in some social backwater that is stuck in the 50's. Lars, I dont understand why you question my experiences when you have had some parallel ones. One thing that I have found is that HD has hired a lot of women in the last decade. Sure there must be some reason for that, probably many reasons. But, the profile of the store staff has definetly changed at my local store. HD was to have employed a customer service experience that was built so that the customer who had a question about a product or needed to know where it was in the store could digitally access a reference in some place like India, for instance, where a customer service rep could answer your questions. Sound familiar? I read about it in some consumer news but never saw it implimented in my local store. That did not sound like a good strategy for this kind of business. Maybe the corp realized it. I have no idea. But, I do know that HD has made an effort to be more self serve in the recent past. I dont know how much, if any, training is given to new hires, but unless there is some familiarity with the tools of the trade, how can these new hires be of much use for reference? I dont see that just knowing where things are in the store is the same as having product knowledge. It seems that product knowledge would be quite complicated for so many of these things. I suppose that there are reasons why someone from the trades would want to work retail, but they are never going to make near the income advising customers about plumbing fittings as they would if you were paying them to do work in your home. The abosulte best was an older guy who used to work with the plumbing parts. He was a font of knowledge. He was bit of a no nonsense kind of a guy, but the was very helpful. He has been gone for a long time. The other day I saw an older guy working in the store and he looked like what he was doing was physically difficult for him to do. It was rather sad and I wondered if this was his choice or a neccessity for him. if you,as a woman, have never encountered attitude when shopping for plumbing parts or small fittings, count yourself fortunate. I never thought that I could do anything that a man can do. I never had the upper body strength that many men have. I cant hold a power saw as steady as a man and I cant handle tall ladders like a strong man can. I also dont have a slew of buddies to come and help that bring all their own tools. As a woman, I have had to improvise and invent and do things a bit differently, usually all by myself. Right now my hand has a pulled muscle from the other day when I had to put some serious downward pressure on a screw head to keep from stripping the screw., and from an awkward angle. Now, I cant knit! It hurts to hold my knitting needles. I really like Leah from See Jane Drill. She doesnt talk down to you and she explains things so well. I am going to try her method for coping a piece of trim. It just looks like a nice skill to have and I love to learn technique.