Used coffee grounds are almost neutral in pH and not helpful in acidifying soil. The above advice is very sound. Without knowing what your soil's pH is to start with, it is not a good idea to search around for amendments to alter the pH. Keep your azaleas well mulched at all times, and you may want to consider one of the fertilizers for iron loving plants once you've ruled out other reasons for off color plants. I much much prefer the organic, slow release benefits of Holly-tone, rather than the soluble Mir-acid.

You're starting a great hobby that should give you lots of enjoyment! Although I am just an amateur hobbyist, I will try to answer your questions: 1) You may mount your photos in a variety of ways. Mounting them on cardstock first is called "matting." You could also mount them directly onto the page. You can use glue stick or photo splits (little 2-sided stickers for the backs of photos) or you could use old-fashioned corner mounts. Most people use a variety of techniques. 2)You can print backgrounds with your computer. 3)Some inkjet ink is acid free, some is not. No one really knows how colorfast they are. 4)Color swatches are okay, but are probably not archival, so you might think twice about them. 5)Everyone is different, but when I do a page, I usually use these steps: Choose photos that are sharp, interesting, and thematically related. No amount of embellishment or paper crafting can compensate for poor photos. Examine the colors and mood of the photos and choose the colors of your papers and other page elements accordingly. Decide if you want a one-page or two-page spread. Set the paper out and start setting the photos on the page to determine placement. Fiddle around for awhile with this. Be sure you have a photo that will dominate the layout and become the focal point. Determine where journaling and page headings will be located. Decide if you are going to crop or edge any of the photos, then do so. Mat any photos that you decide need matting. Begin mounting photos onto page. Stare at the pages (which are bare except for the mounted photos) and decide what embellishments, like stickers or whatever, you need. You may decide not to put on the things you had initially set aside for these pages. Also, make a final decision on what kind of lettering you want to use. Do your lettering and journaling, leaving room for embellishments. Add embellishments last. Place sheet in protective sleeve. Whew!

We just bought one of those expensive foam mattresses. It does have the memory foam on the top and fused to the bottom layer of foam. We have a full size and it was on sale for $549. Free shipping. Thing came all rolled up and stuffed in a box and it was amazing to see it undo itself and settle down. We love it. We also saw them in box at Walmart. Not sure of the quality. There was a sample piece to look at. Was in the $200. price range. WE have had ours for a couple of weeks or so and every night it is a pleasure to get in bed. We are sleeping so much better. Some of the aches and pains are getting better. There is good support and yet it gives to accommodate hips and shoulders. The cover is just a heavy weight fabric with a LONG zipper on one side. I did buy a nice thick cotton mattress pad and that would really be all you needed for a cover. I bought the deep model, our mattress is 8 inch thick. The deeper model mattress pad, About $20.00 pulls under nicely with the elastic so it stays put. I was afraid it would slip around and it does not. So we are very pleased with what we are sleeping on. Chris

NOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOOoooooo! Don't aerate. In fact: 15 yard penalty for withholding information!! Did it just get compacted since you started this topic 4 hours ago??? True compaction is not what you have unless you've been parking the car on it during rainstorms. What you likely have is hard soil. But either way, core aeration will not help solve that anywhere close to what shampoo will do. You can go ahead with the seeding for now or you can do all this simultaneously. Spray the yard with shampoo at the rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Follow that up with 1/2 to 1 inch of water to wash it down in. Shampoo is a surfactant that allows moisture to sink deeper into the soil. When that happens your soil will come alive with beneficial fungi which perform the function of softening your soil. The process takes about 3 weeks and can last forever. If after 3 weeks your soil is not noticeably softer, you can reapply the shampoo again. The more you use the softer it gets. First, though, test how hard the soil is by pushing a screwdriver into it. Hard soil is difficult to penetrate even 1/8 inch. If you can sink the entire screwdriver into the soil easily, you don't need the shampoo. Try the screwdriver test with the soil dry and again after you have watered it. If it is about the same before and after, then you need the shampoo. The soil should be hard before watering and soft after watering. When it is soft you will feel it just walking on it. Core aeration will never (never EVER) accomplish the same results you'll get from the shampoo. You might ask how 100,000 lawn care professionals could be wrong about aeration and I'm right. Well, they are. It will only cost you 50 cents to try it for yourself. Actually the most serious of lawn care professionals, the sports turf professionals, have been using surfactants for decades. Shampoo is just the poor man's option. It really works. Okay I'm powering down now...whew! Otherwise you're out of order with your plan. Dethatch first, then mow with the bag on to collect all the fluff and clippings. Then seed it. THEN, roll it down or walk over all of it to press the seed down onto the soil.