Greetings! I've been browsing the net for tips on just this subject and your thread has answered a lot of questions - thank you! I just have one more inquiry - do you know of a way to make the end product of one-part self curing silicones (after curing) softer and stretchier (lets say more like human skin, goal hardness is 10-30 shore A)? The reason I'm asking: I am a resident in heart surgery and I'm trying to make practice models of parts of the human heart and tissue to use for training outside the operating room. As you said the platinum cure silicones are used for this purpose but the price difference is tenfold and they're a bit too expensive for us.

"Its" not "it's". Thank you for your answer. I asked another friend and she said she has some that has retained its color also.

I wish I had the patience, time, and yes, courage - ha! - to make black garlic, dcarch. I love trying new things, and the descriptions I've read of it sound wonderful to me (big garlic fan). Alas. DH, a bacon lover, made a horrible face and pronounced a stern 'no' when I suggested making a bourbon brown-sugar bacon ice cream this weekend. He's just not adventurous and I couldn't eat it all alone : ( I think it's fantastic how you are always trying such interesting foods (tripe, black garlic ice cream, hostas). Bravo for you - one never knows what will entice us. I did make bacon jam one year, incredibly sweet. DH put it on his steak (not for me, I don't like sweet steaks, I guess) but I found it good on crostinis. Which has nothing to do with black garlic... Edie, it's got to be hard for you, having such serious allergies. My mom was also seriously allergic to shellfish. She loved it too... her allergies hit her around her mid-50's as I recall. And yes, people get that mentality of "a little won't hurt". They don't know. amylou, I will have to agree, that's a pet-peeve of mine: When random people tell me what they don't like of something I've prepared, in a rude manner. One year I made a large holiday feast, and for one who disliked (not allergic to) onions, I told her which of the dishes had onions and which didn't (I tailored alternates for her). She ignored me, and ate Ina Garten's recipe for cream spinach. She raved. And raved. Took seconds. Then I reminded her, there are onions in that. She clattered her fork back onto my good dishes, made a horrific face, and went on for 3 minutes about how awful onions were and how much she hated them. Really?

I use Blick Gallery frames for the art in my husbands office. These open easily in the back. I use thick ones, so cut pieces of foam board to take up the excess space and use an acid free mat. I also use a thin piece of acid free foam board behind the print. They are very economical and very simple in style. They might be too simple compared with the frames you have now, but that may work with your new home style and give you time to slowly reframe your art. If your art is mostly framed prints, opening the back and changing out the mat is not difficult in many cases.