Oh my gosh I was just looking at the dish we junked up at our place. My husband hauls scrap iron, or at least he used to and we have a pretty good "junk" pile. Today he said, "let's go to the junk pile so I can find a piece of metal". I got very excited but didn't find anything but an old hinge and a bundt pan. hmmm? On the way out, I saw that satellite dish and was trying to think of what I could do with it. What materials do you use to affix the mosaics? I have some broken dishes that I got from ebay I could use. I didn't buy them broken, but 90% of them came that way. It was such a hassle to send them back and all that I asked the seller if I could just keep them. And now they have a purpose! :-)

Here's a recipe I tried once for dandelion wine. It turned out okay, a little syrupy, but fine. No one could really get over the ick factor of drinking something that had been sitting out on the counter for months, though. Dandelion Blossom Wine The late Edna Lewis was a Southern-cooking legend. She grew up in a small farming community in Virginia. In The Taste of Country Cooking (Alfred A. Knopf 1990), she wrote that in the very early spring, she would see her neighbors picking dandelions. For winemaking, she wrote, they had to be picked before noon. After that, the blossoms would close up tight. The wine was drunk at breakfast. This is adapted from her recipe. 1 gallon open dandelion blossoms 5 quarts boiling, noncarbonated water 3 1/2 pounds sugar Pick dandelion blossoms far away from polluted areas, in clear, open fields. Have at hand a good, clean stone crock or Pyrex container, because you will be pouring boiling water over the blossoms and a glass jar will crack and spoil your blossoms. Pick over the blossoms. See to it that there are no spiders or bugs in them. Rinse. Drop the blossoms into the crock and pour the boiling water over them. Cover with a clean white napkin and let stand for three days where it's not too cold. Strain through a thin, clean, odor-free cloth into a clean glass jar. Add the sugar and stir until the sugar dissolves. Cover again with a clean cloth and leave in the kitchen in a warm, draft-free place for three weeks. Then strain into clean, dry jars, filling up to the top. Tie a clean cloth over the mouth of each jar and leave to finish fermenting, which will take about four months, or until the wine stops being effervescent. Then strain carefully into clean bottles, leaving behind any sediment that settles on the bottom. Fill the bottles nearly full and cork tightly. Store in a dry, dark place.

I wish I had an answer for you. I'm looking for a product to do something similar but it may not be possible in my case. That got me thinking about issues you'd have to contend with should you decide to apply a product to the grout. If the grout has a coat of sealer on it then that would have to be removed first. Aqua-mix needs last more than a year if it would be worth the while. Applying a colorant to a vertical surface could be difficult, if it's anything like watery sealer it will dribble all over the tile. Just as long as it doesn't adhere to tile while it's soaking into the grout. I was considering doing the same thing only in reverse, I have tan grout with white tile (that was popular in 1991 but now it's a dated look). I want to change the color to an off white so it won't stand out like it does now. And then I'll use a grout sealer. Can I bleach it? Or is the only real solution to scrape out the grout and re-grout?

Christine, well done!! Congratulations! And congratulations to everyone else, for doing one heck of a great job! I picked up quite a few ideas from all of you wonderful OBFERS! And thank you again Sheri, for a very fun and creative swap!!!!! Happy weekend to all! Annie