No, I mean the corn vegetable, not flower. I've seen a picture of a corn plant with little purple flowers around the top of the ear or on the taseel. It could have been the tassel that was purple, I've read of 6 ears of corn growing where one ear grows. Several people on this board mentioned it, but not sure of the variety, or if I have my facts right. It was more recent posts. I had thought they rip them out and replant, but most information on corn is that you can only plant in May or it won't produce as much or in the time period. So, early growers are what you aim for to replant. I also read an article, just asking an odd question about grasses, is that if you lean the grass type stalk, it will produce more seeds. If the corn were slanted on a trelis, would they produce more sideshoots/ears of corn? Thought I would ask.

Cheri, unfortunately i'm in the process of moving to Austin from San Diego, and not thinking I would need it, packed the plug-in cord to my camera. The couple of 'firsts' I made are also packed away in one out of 160 boxes! Yes, I have stuff!!! I'm a 'visual' also, and like to 'see' something while it's being made if possible. I started saving those darn lids and knew I could do something with them. After awhile I started saving the bottles too. They're kind of decorative, and i'm still holding onto them...in a box, somewhere in the garage!hahahahaha I'm the re-cycling 'queen'~rinse off aluminun foil and reuse it~something my Mom did, but never thought there would come a day I would turn into my Mom~God bless her. I know you're creative, so I think you could probably make the tassels very easily. Got any perfume tops?? ;o)

Old River Cabinets is a custom company like Geppetto is with pricing about the same. Old river does not have a book and is a pain to price on the fly because you have to know every little upcharge that is based in their computer system they only have. Geppetto on the other hand has a book with cabinets every 3" with countless modifcation charges that I can apply to any cabinet to make it what ever size I want as I stated in the original post of modifying depth width or height in any combination. If they do not have a cabinet I can start with I have to fax in what I want and wait for a quote back. 3" increments just gives you an easier way to arrive at an exact cost. I can stack them verticaly, I can join them horizontaly up to 8' long for a custom look when they are installed. I can change the doors add a drawer anything you can think of. I can custom color match the fireplace which we are doing. I can custom color match the door sample which has the perfect color wood she wants which she has looked for 2 years to find. She is very picky when it comes to color. Geppetto will make anything I can dream. They are custom just in a manner that is easier to price as a designer who is not a employee of theirs. My overhead excluding gas is $3,000 a month. This business is about competing with the prices of the next guy. Lowes and Home Depot who's cabinet companies they represent sell approx half of all the cabinets in the US are the largest competition. 50% markups on semi custom products are about what you have to do to compete on price but then you can not compete on being as established as as they are when you are self employed per say. A typical set of semi custom cabinets cost the dealer 4-6k so a mark up would be 2-3k per transaction. Now since most people want to go with the established to big to fail company they will only buy with you if you give them a deal they can not turn down. So you drop your margin to do it if it is possible. Or you have contractors that want to work with you where the end price to customer is close in price to Lowes and Home Depot but they want money the owner is not aware of which makes you cut your margin in half and share it with the contractor. So either way you slice it I sell cabinets for the average kitchen that are all plywood dove tail full overlay soft close full extension for 6k most of the time and make $1,200 if you are lucky! So a custom kitchen which takes about twice as much time to figure out as there are many more ways you can layout the kitchen so you do multiple layouts before you find the perfect one for the customer has 400% more profit in it then the semi custom prices of the big box stores. And according to multiple posts on here the competition in supposed "custom" is 50k and up! Where I would be a total price of half that! I was not trying to make this about me I was more agreeing with the title of the thread of sticker shock shock. I have other people who buy fix and sell condo's and town houses here in the dc area where the cabinets cost me 900 - 1200 and I mark it up the same 50% to stay competitive. That translates to 450 profit. But wait.... that customer comes from a granite company that wants money for referring the business. So when you give them a 15% discount the profit on those kitchens goes to less then 200 including in home delivery costs. The industry forces you to work on percent markups. You spend as much time on a small job like that as you do on a semi custom kitchen which pays 1,200 or a custom one which takes a little longer that I doubled the price like other companies do I would make 25-50k on one kitchen? And people want to say that is the way you stay in business because you have overhead? Sticker Shock Shock. I agree. I must be to practical. I just wanted to give some context to the prices and point out that the orignial poster was correct to be shocked in my opinion and state some facts as to why it is true. Antss is right that it does take money to sustain a showroom. But you do not have to rip off your customer to do it by doubling the price of custom cabinets. How much money do you need to make on one job to stay in business when you are talking about profits upwards of 35k per transaction?

What do I think of the actual horse photo? Since the quality of the work cannot be assessed from an online photo, that will not enter into it. Perhaps it does for others but for me it won't. The content of the actual photo is disturbing to me as it is a photo of feral horses who live out their days as wild animals and I cannot romanticize that. Anyone who has owned horses, as I have, will know that horses often require care and intervention for problems. These wild horses do not have that so it's survival of the fittest. Of course this is the same for any wild animals but should not be forgotten. I looked at the photographer's website and saw pics of wild stallions fighting. The results of this are bite or hoof wounds to both animals. Wild mares will foal without assistance and if there are problems there will be suffering and perhaps death for both the mare and the unfortunate foal. These horses are not treated for parasites and while that may not be a large problem in a wild horse population it may cause problems. I know many people do not want to think about such problems as they do not want anything to get in the way of their appreciation of 'art' but I prefer the art on my walls to not depict something I dislike even thinking about as I cannot do anything about it. I have a collection (more than a dozen) of original landscape oil paintings some of which we bought in Europe decades ago and paid less than $1000. for the most expensive. Other paintings I've bought in yard sales for next to nothing. Some of these paintings are amateurish but still have a quality I like. Others are IMO quite well done and likely cost the original purchaser much more than the few dollars I paid. Neither the price nor the artistic 'quality' enters into my appreciation of the art. The fact that someone spent hours or days painting a picture of a scene they enjoyed is more important and I enjoy the fruits of their labor. Art is very personal and I don't think has to cost $12,000. to be valuable. There are many photographers who take pics of horses, if you search and compare prices you will perhaps find something less expensive you will like as much. I like your idea of taking pics of images to spell your last name. That's a very meaningful type of art IMO.