LOL..I am loving these stories! It's True Confession time. :-) As a young bride I decided to try to make gazpacho as one of the courses for a small family dinner party we were having. I thought a clove of garlic was the whole bulb. You can probably guess the rest. LOL The worst part was watching our family choking down the soup and pretending it was good so as not to hurt my feelings. As soon as I took the first sip, I stood up and removed every bowl. ACK! The second story came from a friend, also a young bride at the time, who was cooking dinner for her new in-laws. The recipe called for chopped green peppers. She kept slicing bell peppers and then tossing them into the garbage. Her MIL came over and asked what was wrong. My friend said, "There's something wrong with these peppers. I keep slicing them and there's nothing inside, just some seeds. I think they are rotten.". :-) Somehow her MIL kept a straight face through this conversation. LOL Marilyn

Looking at RR's bottle tree, loving it and thinking that perhaps it's all in the artistic talent and eye of the maker.....and of course placement and lack of resin gnomes and frogs that make is pretty. When he retired, my uncle started "making things" He had seen a wind chime made from various cut off bottles, with a hole drilled and carefully arranged so they all didn't clang together at once. So he took to glomming on to every empty bottle he could find, cutting it and stringing it up and giving it away. His next project was wind chimes made from forks and spoons strung on a bent coat hanger. They clanked in a breeze. Then there was another man who took up rug hooking when he retired. He bought kits and tied knots like mad. Their house was covered with furry rugs, hanging on benches, on the back of the sofa, on floors and piled in a corner. Another person took up needle point and in 5 or 6 years all available space was covered with needle point renditions of someone else's art. We had Pinky, Blue Boy, The Mona Lisa and even Van Gogh's sunflowers. A beautiful home was turned into a display of kitsch....but it kept them off the streets! LOL! I have seen some very lovely "art" made from broken pottery....but I have also seen some stuff that is pretty much broken dishes glued to something. The line between art and craft is fine.....and the line between craft and junk perhaps even finer....and some don't seem to see it. As an example, I made a trip to New York several years ago to see Christo's Gates. I found it moving, exilerating and endlessly fascinating. I posted on another forum what I had done and how wonderful I thought it was.....and was booed and hooted at ridiculed for bothering to view something quite as silly as that. Art doesn't need the approval of others to be "art". Van Gogh died penniless with a stash of things like whirling suns and swirling clouds and flowers beneath his bed. Pollock also died broke. Frieda Kahlo's work never sold until after her death when Madonna started collecting. I have seen several gardens that were full of "repurposed" items, the toilet planter, the shoe planter, the frog under the hosta and the elf sitting on a rock. Some were lovely and charming, while a few others were a collection of junk. What makes the difference? I guess it's the skill of the person putting it all together. Scuse the ramble, I guess it always boils down to "To each his own" or "chacon a son gout", but I never understand why someone feels the need to defend their own taste, or feel insulted if someone else doesn't like what you like. Why would anyone feel threatened because I don't like plastic gnomes in my yard, nor Robert Kincade (however he spells his name) on my walls nor canned soup in my casseroles? It's your house, do what you like. Linda C

Yes, it is! The niches in all three of our bathrooms are lined with marble from the same supplier (K&K Marble on Long Island). We used it for the niche shelves, and for the smaller trim pieces in the MB. They cut and polished the pieces for the niches, but I don't remember if they, or our tile guys cut the pieces for the trim (I am thinking our tile guys did that on-site, during the installation). I know we needed a specific marble tile thickness/size, when did our guest bathroom niche (the first bathroom we did), and I remember making a gazillion frantic phone calls to tile places before I left for work on a Friday morning. I kept striking out until our tile guy mentioned K&K--whew! DH drove out to LI to pick up the tile we needed very early the next morning in order to beat a major snowstorm that was predicted!

I see you picked the Dijon - good choice! I had not seen it before and think its beautiful. (I did not like the Citron) Just for comments - l I think Cobalt blue is a classic sort of kitchen accessory color because over the years country kitchens, white cabs etc. come back into style and blue looks really wonderful with that. Also "yellow" sunny walls are popular in kitchens and blue looks good with that. I have the Flame and occasionally think I'd like to switch, but then change my mind. Its classic in its own right as one of the original colors of a pretty old name in French cookware - now too trendy for being copied by Rachael Ray, Mario Batali etc. but I like the sense of tradition it gives me and I believe orange is supposed to induce hunger? (not that I need any more of that:)