funcolors-are you kidding? i definitely value your opinion. Thanks, and actually i am considering the bennington gray as the first choice now. I think it is beautiful too. i find it a "harmonious color scheme". Believe me, between the kitchen that i just finished and my very colorful backyard, i need something a bit toned down. i am working on my backyard too at the moment trying to find something to blend better with my pool water and waterline tiles. the bennington gray goes so well with the fabrics that i am considering for my outdoor furniture, umbrellas, etc... my pool tiles are that greenish-spa color. i am looking at fabrics in the blue/green, browns, and tan tones. i have brick red back there now mixed with the yellow shade that i have on the front of the house now. i did this **i think** to blend with the red brick coping and red accent tiles on my pool. what was i thinking? i had too much going on at the time. you can check out my photobucket if you like. i have lots of pics of the backyard and new kitchen. you will see how much color my life already has in it. the bennington gray will be a nice change on the front exterior and rear exterior. thanks so much for your work. and by the way, i copied my house photos that you did over to my photobucket page. i hope you don't mind. Here is a link that might be useful: teppy's photobucket page

Firsthouse - that is hilarious! That's like a diver that won't go in water. Stacys - I hear you. We felt better about our DIY skills after watching the show. We didn't attempt anything though without going overkill in the research dept, which saves a lot of foolish mistakes. Crabcakes - our cabinets alone were $23K and that was one of the cheapest estimates. Our granite was the super splurge at $8K. It was upper-midrange of the 8 estimates I got. 5K for appliances (I went really cheap with appliances - some of it is even Frigidaire), probably another $6K for hardwood the floor (conservative estimate). I don't know how anyone can do it on $15K. Seriously I have no idea! I priced out particle board Chinese made cabinets and even THEN it was $10K JUST for the cabs! Oh, and we did it all ourselves too. We did pay $1200 for a guy to come and hang, mud, tape, and texture our drywall. Other than that, we did everything.

When I was working and DH wasn't, he would use Hamburger Helper, bought when it went on sale. It was him and me and two teenaged grandsons then. The guys really liked it. And I guess it was OK. Certainly filling. It calls for a pound of hamburger and I thought that was a bit much, so I asked DH if he would add extra noodles or macaroni by about two cups. We didn't notice a difference in taste and one package was enough to feed us two old people and fill up the boys. It's not a horrible choice, it's meat and pasta, although the stuff in the 'flavor pack' might be questionable. Serve a vegetable or a salad with it and you're certainly as well off or better for the meal than if you bought fast food. Now that I'm retired, I cook most of our meals 'from scratch', but I don't see anything wrong with using Hamburger Helper. It's a step in the right direction. I make goulash (we call it 'slumgullion') using 3 cups elbow macaroni, the equivalent of 1 can diced tomatoes and 1 can water (or if you have a quart of home-canned tomatoes, like I do, use that), a chopped green pepper, a chopped onion, salt and pepper, added to a pound of hamburger that has been cooked and drained. I cook my pasta separately and add it after it's cooked, but I imagine you could add more water and cook it all together, like you do the Hamburger Helper. I make hamburger stroganoff using a pound of cooked, drained hamburger, about 4 cups of dry egg noodles, 1/4 C. ketchup, 1 tsp. chili powder, about 1 and 1/2 to 2 cups of homemade cream of mushroom soup (which is nothing but a 6-oz can of mushroom ends and pieces, liquid included, and about a cup of chicken or beef broth to which I've added 2 Tbsp of cornstarch and about 2/3 cup of dry nonfat milk powder). If the kids are grossed out by mushrooms, you can leave them out and increase the broth, or whir them around in a blender with the liquid till they're not recognizable. I generally cook the noodles separately. When all of this is mixed together and hot, turn off the fire and add about a cup of sour cream, kefir, or buttermilk and mix well. Cheeseburger Macaroni is a little harder to make from scratch economically because of the cheese involved. Which is a shame because kids love the taste of cheese. Hamburger Helper and those boxes of macaroni and cheese have powdered cheese, which is cheaper for them to produce. I haven't yet found a powdered cheese that will duplicate the taste. Of course you can make the dish using real cheese or Velveeta, but if you're trying to throw together a low-cost meal, that would put it over the top. (if anybody has a cheap source or a method, chime in!) My grandsons had a little electric sandwich maker and they made a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches with it. They normally eat so much cheese that I buy the 5# package of sliced American cheese at WMT. (Some of those smaller packages are "cheese food", not cheese, anyway. Anytime each slice is wrapped in plastic to keep it from becoming a blob, you've got fake cheese). I open the big package and separate the block into about 4 chunks and then put those in ziplock bags. If it was just the old guy and me, I'd still buy it, and just freeze all but one of the bags. I've frozen it before, when I got a really good deal on it and bought extra, with no loss of texture or flavor. What this comes down to is, you don't want to send your kids to bed hungry. You fill them up however you can. Gourmet cooking is lost on kids and is not inexpensive. It's wonderful if you can afford it but when jobs are being lost and people are living off their savings is not the time to be buying shitake mushrooms and fancy cheeses. All that said, I wouldn't feed my dog stuff out of my pantry as treats. For one thing, you don't want your dog to get a taste for sweet things. Dogs don't really HAVE to have treats. BUT, most of them will do the happy dance while you're popping popcorn. I know one dog that will get excited if you just say the word. Or there are lots of recipes you can use to make home-made treats using simple things. If you save the fat from chicken broth or from frying hamburger and use that in the recipe, it adds extra flavor they love. When I cook a chicken, I cook the fat, skin and bones in water to cover in the crockpot all night after I have removed the chicken from them and poured off the first broth. This makes another good batch of broth and it softens the bones till they crumble between your fingers. After I have drained off this second broth, I put the bones and skin that's left into my food processor and whir it around till it's the consistency of canned dog food. Some of this can be added to the dog biscuit dough, or given as a treat in the food dish by the spoonful.

Bumble - Thanks for posting photos of your room. It's very pretty! I love the red and white bedding and those plates. Hey Rrs! I had a bunch of different bedroom threads over the last few weeks so I'll recap on everything... I kept the last red coverlet. Haven't found a mirror or any art. I moved my nightstand to DH's side and have a round table on mine. Santa is bringing me a burlap tablecloth so I'm excited about that. I still need to get a glass top. Since I lost my storage, I bought a neat basket for under the bed but getting organized seems to be a bit challenging for me. I'll be tackling that head on during the new year. I'm going to paint the room SW Dromedary Camel probably in a few months. No change with curtains. I'm leaning towards something brown and machine washable but I should probably paint first. I now have a larger floral pillow to replace the one that's on the bed but I'd like to get a fluffier insert. Feather maybe? The smaller pillow that was on the bed in the photos above now sits on the web chair in the corner of the room. I was considering moving the chair out and getting a bench for in front of the window but I'm thinking it will take up too much space. I need to do a mock up with something. I'm not sure if I talked about the bathroom in this thread but, just to recap in one spot, I'm still planning on using the floral fabric for the window valance. The shower curtain is on hold until more of the original fabric comes in. So the floral fabric will be on the valance part and the body will be a smaller houndstooth. I decided not to use that calico corner plaid or the one from house fabrics. Both I think would compete too much with the floral and be too busy for me. Didn't paint the bathroom vanity or walls yet. See the original houndstooth plaid pillows with buttons from the inspiration pic? I accidently stumbled across 3/4 yard of that on fabricguru the other day and ordered it. I still much prefer that fabric and, without going into great detail about my poor experience(s) with NH again, I'll probably have mixed emotions when it shows up but one of two things will happen... 1. I'll be able to add a piece of that wonderful fabric to the bed in a pillow or throw or 2. I'll see red and won't be able to stand looking at it on a daily basis. I'm aiming for #1. But please, please don't somebody go and find a bunch of yardage of the large houndstooth now trying to be nice. I don't want to see it because the pillows (all but the solid red) I have stay. I have too much money invested in this. Heck, it may not work at all but we'll see. The fabric should be here in a few days and I'm pretty excited about it. Ha, did you want to know that much? :) Thanks for asking!