Watching your pics over the seasons I must say; "you really have some gorgeous hosta", and that blue is one of them. Very nice combination. Les

Moni, I love the aroma of pineapple sage. I bet your house smells delicious! i noticed yesterday that we still had lots of different herbs still growing and I hate it that tonight's cold temperatures will kill the ones, like basil, that aren't winter-hardy. I spent most of yesterday harvesting what was left of the garden, which had rebounded nicely from the summer drought conditions with above-average (finally!) rain falling here in October. We still are in drought, but everything had greened up so much that it didn't really look like we still have drought conditions, at least until you noticed the cracks still in the ground beneath the green plants. I spent most of my time harvesting hot and sweet peppers....roughly 15 gallons of them, so I will spend the day, and likely the rest of the week, in the kitchen processing peppers. Many will be blanched and frozen for use in cooking all winter long, but I have a lot of poblano peppers that I'm going to cut up and put in the dehydrator. I'll also be making a lot of pepper jelly, but today I may just wash and chop up the peppers for pepper jelly, and then freeze them and make the jelly on another day. I thought my canning season had ended back in late July or early August, but apparently it hadn't. It might take all day just to get that much of the prep work done, and I think I'll have to buy pectin before I can make jelly because I have only a few packages of it stashed in the pantry. I also harvested dozens of winter squash, but they don't have to be processed quickly like the peppers, so I left them in Rubbermaid storage bins out in the garage. We moved about 35 or 40 molasses feed tubs filled with plants to the greenhouse, and that included some tomato plants with quite a few tomatoes on them. I ran out of time and daylight yesterday before I had harvested any herbs or cut any flowers for bouquets, but will have a chance, I hope, to do that today since we shouldn't have freezing temperatures here until sometime tonight. We had an onslaught of honey bees and ladybugs congregating near the doors to any and every building yesterday afternoon, looking for a warm place to shelter from the cold. We always have ladybugs swarming near the doors right before the first hard freeze, but this is the first time the honeybees have congregated around the back door to the house that way. Every time I came into the house, I had to sort of swat them away from the door because the bees were trying to come inside the house with me. The bees and lady bugs made it into the greenhouse, garage and sunroom, and I hope those places keep them warm during this little cold spell. Some ladybugs may have made it into the house, but if they did, I'll vacuum them up with the hand vac today and release them into the greenhouse. I hate seeing the growing season come to an end when everything was looking so good, but it happens every year, and it is nice to have a bit of a break from all the yard work for a few months. Dawn

So gorgeous!! And her scent really is wonderful. Mine is one of my favorite roses, and it's hard to choose, so that says a lot. I'm so happy to see her with buds already :) Last year the polar vortex during horrible winds nearly killed her, and she had to re-grow everything above ground! She got a few nice canes since then, but this year is when I'll get to enjoy the blooms again :) She's probably hardier than I make her sound, too, y'all. Mine was grafted, not buried, and wasn't protected. This year I had her buried to go ownroot, and I did protect her base all winter. Her canes did great, and we dipped as cold as last winter :)

RappArchitecture - Thanks for commenting. I've made some changes to the layout since the original post. You can see the latest floor plan in my comment posted yesterday. I think the changes I've made address most of your comments. Take a look at the revised floor plan and let me know what you think. I'm still struggling with the kitchen layout and where the appliances should go. Other commenters have made similar suggestions to yours about the master suite but there's a few things keeping me from making changes to that space. One being that my wife especially loves taking baths and I located the bath tub to have a great view of the mountains to the east (foot end of the tub). The window along the north side of the tub offers views into the forest and is a very private part of our property so we won't need to draw the window shade. I aligned the door between the bath area and bed area to be centered with the bed and that window will be a focal point from the bed. We will get some light from that direction too. The space at the foot of the bed is reserved for an area that my wife can use when doing yoga and the big window looks towards our mountain view. Maybe we could have a small window up high next to the bed on the south wall for a little extra light that wouldn't intrude on privacy? Maybe we should also sound proof the wall at the head of the bed since it will share a wall with the kitchen? We will have the TV upstairs in the bonus room.