When you get comments from neighbors and landscape designers such as they have "wall envy", your wall is probably the nicest in the neighborhood, or this was beautifully done, you start to realize how valuable it is. I personally have never seen a prettier wall IRL. The wall is about 15 years old and shows no signs of failing any time soon. We have "dreamed" of the raw land and what we would have done with it and you are spot on, we would have placed the steps directly in line with the back door and embedded the steps into the retaining wall...no question about it. When I was planning out our upper West side, it was exasperation that I "took out" the seemingly misplaced Maple in the plan, that a great plan was found, which incorporated the Maple in it's current home. I get my best ideas from dreaming larger. I think by the time I post anything here, I've already done my thinking outside the box, and I'm trying to have others get me over a hump. The fact though, the wall has been built and we need to get from point A to point B. My DH and I have always been about value when it comes to purchases/decisions. Though I shared a pic of our house, this view is seen by only a few people during the summer. We of course see it up close and personal every time we venture down to the beach. Being up close to the wall, we will rarely see the view that I shared of the entire wall. A 4-6' blip in the wall, I can't imagine being unsightly. We will design the steps to be as transparent as possible. I'm thinking long term, if we end up placing the decking steps down the middle and it ends up functioning just as we dreamed, we might just pony up the bucks to have the wall redone, lose some of the main patio to embedded steps, by cutting somewhat into the concrete. But then again we might just determine, the steps go unnoticed and we keep using the deck steps as is. We find the longer we live here, the more things we THOUGHT we wanted to do for sure, are getting nixed. With the addition of patio, it will change the way we use the backyard a lot!!! Who knows while we wait for the steps to be put in, we may find out that the West entrance onto the beach will work after all. I doubt it, but I'm leaving it as a possibility. I think again I might be missing something, if I have deck steps opposed to embedded stone steps, the only compromise I think we are making is aesthetics. Is there something else?

Good job Karen! I tried to search for the very first segment, but it must be bumped off the site now. So this is only the story of Gomer and Margie, which have had quite the adventures of their own.

It's funny how people misinterpret petite sizing. Although it usually has a height requirement (Talbots is 4'11-5'4) it is all the measurements that make a person a petite. Arm, leg, torso etc. and yes you can be over weight and be a petite. I have friends who are shorter than I am and can wear regular tops. I am 5'1 , and even in a petite size I don't think I could carry off all those stripes. Good for you that it suits you. I find the online for Talbots to not be as frumpy as the store. It annoys me that they no longer have older models in the catalogue. Dayle Haddon used to be featured but no longer. I even wrote to complaint about it.

re the war-time cake recipe. We make a similar 'boiled cake' as Annpan describes but add an egg. Difficult for me to think in terms of cups as we still weigh in oz (or younger folk in metric . . I'm too old to learn). The amount of baking powder does seem generous, but as the book was produced by the Rumford people I suppose they had to make sure their product got used. Yoyo, I so agree about allergies. All these people saying they are gluton intolerant etc. when in reality a very small %age of the population have a 'reaction' to it. I also wonder at peanut etc allergies that are now heard about so often. I'm not saying I don't believe that people or their children can't tolerate these foods but how is it for eg. in my distant childhood (the '50's ) these things were not a problem? Has there been a change in people's physiological make-up? Does it go back to what babies are weaned on?