Neely, your photos are lovely, and I think it was about time for a break from all that moving/packing/unpacking. Have fun! Sleevendog, your taco night looks fresh and good. Cookebook, now that's how I remember a seafood boil should be, yum! Jasdip, I'll bet that cast iron pan made some nicely crunchy pizza crust. As for eating leftover chicken, well, we must be in sync somehow, because I had leftover chicken. Elery and I were cutting trees from along the pond bank today and so we had a crockpot full of beans cooking. I decided to make chicken enchiladas to go with the beans. Leftover chicken, a chopped zucchini and some seasonings, rolled up in a low carb tortilla and covered with AnnT's green sauce from her Stacked Enchilada recipe. That sauce can make anything better, even those oddly stretchy low carb tortillas! A spoonful of guacamole on the side: Of course, nothing makes supper taste better than a good appetite and hauling wood all day kind of helps that along, LOL. 65F and sunny, it was perfect. Annie

Cute cake, olychick, and decorating with the grandkids is just a double bonus, at least for me. Lyban, I also think the melts will work fine. If you want perfect flat dots, just put the wafer on the cake upside down, with that flat bottom up. Perfectly flat dots, just like that. My grandkids gobble those melts up. I don't think they're all that, but the kids love them, the more sugar the better... Annie

I think you can, yes. We splurged on custom cabinets(small space, U-shape, wanted maximum efficiency)-but saved on appliances (hunted open box etc). We also had another cabinetmaker that we knew already from another project and that would do same job for cheaper, but our GC insisted on going with his guy-not that I regretted it, he was an amazing cabinetmaker. Just echoing that it's possible to get somebody good and pay not a lot more than for IKEA,when all said and done. IKEA can be quite nice too. A friend went for IKEA with Semihandmade doors(not that cheap either really, but then they DIY ed everything, all the house)-her kitchen could be in a magazine, both in terms of style and function. She's a great cook, pro level. They also made it much bigger footprint and completely redid the layout. I think that them DIY-ing everything helped a lot, a lot with the budget. But not with timelines, obviously. I think our kitchen was around 30K , I'd say it's a bit smaller than yours. But that not including electrical, plumbing and paint-the kitchen was a part of a much bigger remodel, so it's hard to separate the costs. That's if I put together cabinets, countertops, backsplash tiles, sink, faucet and appliances-in short materials only. We're in So Cal, I have another friend who remodeled several years ago in Milwaukee and from what she told then about remodel, seemed very cheap, surprizingly so. I don't know details though, and several years ago might be a different story.

This is why, as a first step, I always recommend collecting photos in an ideabook. None of the photos would be the exact depiction of what your room would be, but after collecting, hone in on a few that really speak to you. This brings both ideas and clarity to your process. Love your guest room! By the way, since the plants take up a good deal of space on the nightstands, could you use different night stands and add plants elsewhere? Back to maybe rearranging the room.