Thanks for all your kind words. I am just getting into this and love it. My imagination runs wild all day thinking of projects to do.....just not enough time in a day (or experience yet) as far as staining, painting and texturing, that is coming soon. I have decided to do a project that might take a little while, new pictures posted on my site (webshots). I am thinking of a big basin with a molting volcano in the middle with water bubbling out of the center and red led lights to give it a real volcano look. So far I have started on the volcano. I will start on the basin next week. The whole thing should be about 25" wide by 25" tall. Hope it works as planned. Here is a link that might be useful: See new pics

For a couple of years I had a garden spot away from my house, with no water supply available so if I wanted to supplement rainfall I had to haul gallon jugs of water. To make my watering efficient, when I planted my peppers & tomatoes in the spring, I dug down and buried empty gallon plastic jugs, one between each plant. I had poked 4-5 holes in the bottom of each, of course, and left the caps on until later in the summer. Once the weather warmed, and after a good soaking rain, I mulched the beds 4-6" deep with chopped leaves, being sure to cover the tops of the (so far empty and still capped) bottles to protect them from the sun since I had found that the plastic degrades and becomes brittle when exposed to the sun. (In previous years, just cultivating around the bottles inevitably resulted in my breaking the tops off by midsummer.) When the weather reached a point where I actually needed to water, I cleared the mulch away for the moment and poured a gallon of water into each buried bottle. I set the cap loosely back atop each bottle to keep the leaf debris from falling in and clogging the exit holes in the bottom, then pulled the mulch back up to protect the plastic. I did not care about how long it took for the bottle to empty-- it seemed like a gallon or two a week per plant was sufficient, and the best part is that by burying the bottles the water went right down to the root zone where it was most effective. As for using wall-o-waters, since I had gotten some free from a friend, I tried them last year with 3 really early tomato plants I started specifically to experiment with. While they survived a good bit of frosty weather, in the end the plants I had started weeks later and planted out a month after the first ones when the weather had warmed quickly caught up to the wall-o-water ones and all the tomatoes pretty much bloomed & set fruit at the same time & rate. So my conclusion is that it was satisfying to my eager gardener's soul to be out planting early, but it really made no difference in overall plant performance. I have found the same to be true with early plantings of such things as peas and salad crops, too. Early plantings may survive, but later plantings quickly catch up and may even surpass earlier ones that have been stressed by the weather.

Yes, I do think it would be fine for valances. In fact, I have used another Kaufmann print called 'Ottomani' with elephants on it for valances in my bedroom that is the same scale. I typically use 1 to 1 1/4 yards for each valance. The 54" width is perfect for your windows. You will need to order extra for matching the repeat from window to window, as well as for your pillows. If you look on Fabric Guru at the picture of the fabric with the ruler on it, you'll see that the pheasant print alternates with another of two different birds. You don't know where their 'cut' will start, so since it's so reasonable there, I'd personally order a minimum of 5 yards, since you need 3.75 for your valances, and you'll need extra for that to match prints, and then extra for your pillows. Sitting here looking at the fabric 'in person', and your stripe choices, to my eye, your first stripe fabric is the one I would use, given those choices.

We were posting at the same time. Barbie clothes??? I have trouble enough working with big pieces of fabric, don't think I can work with something that tiny LOL! I have a couple of black zippers I inherited along with my mom's sewing box, they're 22" so could do a couple of chairs maybe, though the Velcro piece I used was 30" and I had no problem getting the foam in. I think I'll just order more Velcro from Joann's (50% coupon) unless I can find it locally - I got the initial 15ft at BJ's in RI years ago, I had used some so I need about 5ft more - or I could use snaps on the settee, I have lots of snaps but I'm afraid they'll rust. Isn't clothesline really thick?