I know the purpose of this topic and forum is to find frugal ways of doing things. But sometimes frugal is more work and/or less than satisfactory. Several years ago, I bit the bullet and bought a Brother P-Touch labeler. They have several products and some are reasonably priced. But I went "whole hog" and bought the most expensive one which cost me $100 at the time. The current similar model is much cheaper now - around $50, I think. You might try eBay. I bought it to make labels for my perennials. Everything else I have tried which have been mentioned here have to be redone frequently and each time time you lose much of the original plant info. The beauty of this printer is that it hooks up to your computer! I make the labels on the computer, same the label to a file on my computer, then print them out. These labels stay perfect in any weather and sun Forever! If you lose the label, you can look up the label in the computer and print out another one anytime. So you never lose all the original info for your plant. I know this isn't a frugal idea but our time is valuable too and saving time is as important as saving money. I still use mini-blinds but when you break them or your chickens run off with them, its so easy and quick to print up another one. You can make the type size as large or small as you want which is great for me now that I am older and I can't read the old labels with the smaller type size so make another and enlarge the type. Its an investment just like all your other good garden tools and worth it in the long run. Its handy to make labels for everything and they even have iron-on labels. Think about it, Barbara

Hey, what a fun thread! I have only been visiting this forum for about 3 months or so, originally getting into Garden Web through the Canning forum. My name really is Rachel, and Ellen is my middle name. I am 47, married for a year and a half...my husband is 47 as well, and it is the first marriage for us both. Slow starters. ;D No kids. At the moment we have 2 cats, an old grumpus of a male and a sprightly, mischievous kitten (almost cat), having lost my 21 year old Suzu Badcat last winter. We have also recently acquired Outdoorcat, whom I started feeding when someone moved away and left him. I can't bring him in because the old grumpus would have a fit having another male cat in the house...so I'm currently looking for a home for him. I have been cooking since I could manage pouring things into a bowl. My mother was a truly horrible cook, but I bless her for teaching me the basics so that I was at least not intimidated by cooking. I moved in with a Chinese family for about 6 months when I was 17, and that started my life long love for and fascination with ethnic foods. I am an eclectic cook...my husband never really knows what I might put in front of him, luckily he's wonderfully open minded and willing to try new things. I learned the basics of Chinese cooking from that family and kept going from there. I had many Japanese friends as a teen and learned a bit from their mothers, and then worked in a Japanese restaurant for 8 years and learned a lot more. I was born in Southern Maine, but lived most of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area. When I decided that I would like to some day move to a more rural area, I realized that what I'd miss most was the variety of foods available. So, I started to teach myself to cook the foods of India, and have gained sufficiency enough to slake my desire for dals and curries and their lovely vegetable salads and sambhars when the mood strikes as I now do live in the Central valley...many Mexican restaurants, a few Chinese, and lots of burgers. My latest project is to learn Thai, but I've just started that. In addition, I dabble with various African and European cuisines, and of course, there is always good old American food! I bake for other people (I don't care for sweets as a general rule) can lots of jams,marmalades, relishes, and pickles. I have a real passion for vegetables, but am too much a carnivore to give up meat...though if I had to make a choice I'd rather do without the meat than do without the vegetables. I was in the restaurant business most of my adult life, going from waitress to head waitress to manager in a foo-foo fancy restaurant (after the Japanese place) where the chef often hit me up for menu ideas...the menu changed every month, and he got tired of thinking up new things. We'd toss ideas around and get into arguments about what was feasible and what would sell, but we had fun and he was always good about giving me credit when he used my ideas or recipes. Now I'm in business with my husband, and mostly just cook for us. When my cabinets got filled with all my spices, various grains, legumes, flours, rices etc., my sweet husband built me a whole pantry worth of shelves in the garage...which are now full...dunno what the heck we'll do now. :O The problem with multi-ethnic cooking is that you have to have SO MANY ingredients on hand! I love this forum because very few of my friends even know how to cook, let alone have a passion for it, and I can see that many here do. I am also very impressed by how positive, encouraging and helpful all the posters are. With cooking, there is always more to learn and no matter how accomplished you are, there is always someone who can teach you something. And, no matter how experienced a cook or how inexperienced, burnt carrots are burnt carrots and cursing under your breath at the botched mess in a pan before you throw it out and make sandwiches for dinner is sometimes really therapeutic lol. One of my biggest cooking problems is that I very rarely follow a recipe exactly...in fact, I generally use them as sort of an "outline" to what I end up doing. Or, I do a lot of just throwing things together because they sound good. So when someone asks me for a recipe, I'm at a loss. Also, we have a running joke, my husband and I, that if he really loves a dish I make, he'd better savor every bite as it will never taste exactly the same again! Lately, I have started trying to write down what I'm doing as I do it with mixed success. Anyhow, nice to meet y'all!

Whew. I thought you were talking only about me. The only photos I have posted of the kitchen are the ones that the photographer took when shooting the backsplash. And now, I have to find all of my photos (from my old blackberry and the old computer and get them uploaded, again, to Photobucket. The Kitchen Folder I had on PB disappeared. I guess I'm guilty of wanting it to be really done. How's this? I keep moving the punch list from place to place as we work on other projects. It was on the doors to the laundry room closet, then the back door and then I found it folded in 1/2 on the washer. Well, last night I grabbed it and taped it up to the inside of the closet in the laundry room (look closely at the photo below of the closet, you can see it). You have to understand...the laundry room ONLY has a Washer & Dryer in it....the walls have been painted, the doors are MIA, the floor has been ripped up....all in anticipation of getting that gorgeous floor that WE won. Want a sneak pic of how it's coming along? I've placed some tiles on the floor with a piece of trim, so here you go. And I promise to post finished kitchen pictures too, soon. I mean I guess you won't notice if the backdraft thingy is in the venting or not, right? (Oh and we've been working on the basement and I redecorated my 20 yo dd's room--been kinda crazy.) So, some quick photos of the laundry room just so you know what's happening around here:

Oh no! That's not fun. You don't need DH to fix it, you can do it! Leaks are often just degraded O-rings, which do eventually happen as they are rubber. I bet if you call Kohler support they can walk you through taking the handle off and finding the problem. It's not hard, and there are only so many parts in there. They may even send the part free. You can get a new sprayer on Amazon for like $22 or something. Should be a snap to replace if they won't send you a new one free. I did read a lot of reports of the plastic snapping like that eventually, but I decided it was an easy enough thing to swap out if I ever needed to, and it's not unusual for something used that much to give like that. Not sure about the hose not retracting, but I'd take a peak underneath and see if the weight is in the right place. It may just need to be adjusted. Mine looks like a plastic tie off keeps it from going too low, my guess is over time that may wiggle it's way too low. Kohler support could probably help with these pretty quickly. Needed to add: if you need to lubricate anything in this process, use it sparingly. I learned the hard way that more lubricant doesn't help. We had a lever that wouldn't stay put for weeks after I went overboard with the lubricant, and I was too lazy to take it all back apart to wipe it off. This post was edited by williamsem on Thu, Jul 4, 13 at 10:52