That turned out lovely! You should be proud of it. I was going to ask same thing as Jeanne did, did you hit save after you rotated it? I've never had a problem with Photobucket and used it for years. Sometimes when I rotate one there, in my album it still looks sideways till the NEXT time I open it. But its been rotated fine. I actually hit "replace original" instead of "save a copy", not that it matters. So, are you planning your next totem? The darn things are like potato chips. LOL. hugs, Karen

Ladyvixen, we were in our 30's in 1985 when we bought our 1898 house. Looking back, we were very young. Neither my husband nor I had any skills or knowledge at all about how to work on houses. All we knew was that our house was nearly intact, was very inexpensive, and that we loved it. I had always wanted an old house, and had been buying things such as light fixtures, hardware, etc., for years before we bought the house. We bought the house "as is". Fortunately we were both employed and had no children. We had to hire almost everything done, and it needed a lot of work. We did not take a vacation for years. Then came a time of around a year or two that my husband was either unemployed or underemployed. During that time, the house just didn't get worked on. We didn't care that we lived in an unfinished house; in fact, I thought it was beautiful from day one. We have a corner in the dining room where all the little balls the cats play with end up, but you don't notice the slope otherwise. It has taken us over 25 years, and we are almost finished, but still have some work to do. We should have it finished by now, but are in our 60's now and do like to take a vacation now and then. Also we sometimes didn't have work done even when we had the money, because we were tired of the mess of having things torn up. We lived with a practically non-existent kitchen until about 2004. I said all along that this house was my dream house. People would look at me funny, but it was and still is my dream house. Don't let others talk you out of your dream. Make the decision based on what you want and what you think you can handle. If you think you can live with an unfinished house for years, go for it. If you have to have everything finished and perfect, you shouldn't buy an old house. I have the ablility to not even see the unfinished stuff until we get ready to do something about it. I meant this to be an encouragement to you, but reading back on it, maybe this will scare you because it has taken us so long. Don't let that scare you--you can do it faster than we did! I will try to attach some pictures if I can.

Teardrops - sure hope you have a wheeled nipper to start with, but you just nip your tiles into any shape you want them w/the nippers. Some people have good luck w/regular tile nippers, so try that. If you feel better about drawing a teardrop, use a marker and just nip away. If I were mosaicing a stepping stone, I would NOT use beads nor wood. You could cover them in resin, but why start out w/something so complicated? Your stepping stone won't be slippery once mosaiced w/shards of tiles. As PEA says, the texture after grouting w/prevent that. Your half moon stone sounds like a wonderful first project, but IF I were giving advice, which I'm NOT - just telling you what I'd do - I'd say, break your tiles, use a nipper to shape the teardrops and use mortar to put them onto your stone, and then grout. Boom - your first mosaic project. Hope you get started today, and shoot us some pics of WIP.

Hi Caligal, Thanks for sharing your beautiful kitchen with us! I am admiring your pendant ceiling lighting - may I ask the brand and where you purchased it? I've searched the web and haven't stumbled on anything similar.. I'm currently planning my own IKEA Kitchen and the photos of your kitchen have really inspired me. Thanks so much!