Depending on whether the plant is warm, intermediate or cool growing, will kind of dictate when you should bring the plants in. A warm growing plant generally does not want to go below 65°F at night. While the plant can probably take temps lower than this, those lower temps are likely to drastically slow the plant's growth and/or flowering and may bring things to a complete halt for quite a while. Mike D, from Ontario, just posted in the H. sigillatis thread about minimum temps for the different categories of plants. It's interesting reading, so be sure to check it out. Mike

here are two books that may be useful: 1) A Field Guide to American Houses, by Virginia and Lee McAlester. It is the standard, and it has pictures of houses similar to yours under 'Prairie'. It also shows porch posts that come from the period which you might enjoy. 2) House Styles in America, by James Massey and Shirley Maxwell. They write for The Old House Journal. This is in color and will give you ideas of how the houses in the first book might look with different colors. Your house is stucco which would have been earth-colored (red, brown, tan, even green - all muddy feeling, muted) or white, sometimes gray, with the window and porch trim and roof verge board and rafters as accent. You have white window sash. If you can't paint them, you should always add that color into your mix when you are trying swatches. Contrast is fine, but the colors are less sharp, not like a Colonial (which could be white with blue trim - what you have now). The windows would be all within one color so that they read as one thing, not each piece emphasized. Also see if you can pick a color from your roof. It isn't particularly visible, but you want everything you have to add to the image. The square lattice at your porch is a good choice - more Arts and Crafts, 4-square, Prairie, than diagonal lattice which tends to look more Victorian. Changing your porch posts and railing system to something less generic and more period inspired would really change the feel of the house. The colors you show in your swatches are going in the right direction. The question is where to put what! Look at Massey and Maxwell's book and see what makes your heart go pitter-pat! Then copy and adapt. And try out your colors on the back of the house!

Hi to all. I know you can do wonders as I read and look at so many beautiful transitions. My house currently looks like a giant scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream without the chocolate ... just the chipping paint! There is blue trim topped with burgundy. We have lived here nearly 3 years and ... it's time to move on from the previous owners palette! For pics please go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucidcolour/ I have tried to Photoshop this myself (on more than one occasion), but I am seriously unable to do it. It ends up looking way worse than it does now! I could really use some help. I went to Lowes today and picked 3 colors Base color Smoky Olive 6001 2B Inside window and accent color as well as porch under roof Bamboo Leaves 3009-4 Window trim, porch floor and posts Tropical Nut 2003-5A We are going for earthy and like to stray a little from the mainstream ... however I have a tendency to go a little too far off the beaten path and would like to IMPROVE this home. Any thoughts? Suggestions? Photoshop help? Thanks in advance :) Please don't notice the trash ... or the weeds ... or the ... we have been working pretty hard :) http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucidcolour/

Ricky, those look really good. How strong is the orange flavor with just that one orange in there? I know it's supposed to be subtle, but I still like to taste it. Let's see, drizzle that with some orange glaze, LOL, add some more sugar. (grin) OK, now I'm going to try to post the other two pictures and see how that goes. First the peanut butter cookies, with all the additions. Because that isn't quite enough sugar, between the cookies, the mini M&Ms, the Reese's Pieces and the Reese's peanut buttter cups, The Princess gave them a dusting of "snow" in the form of sugar. Yeah... And the cut out sugar cookies, 5 dozen of them. One dozen for each of the grandkids to decorate and take home and the other dozen for my house. Everyone from the mail delivery person to the UPS driver gets offered a cookie. Outside, of course. You know, I have a plastic tub full of cookie cutters, but the kids always want to make the same shapes every year. I can never convince them to add the camel because no one wants to frost anything brown, LOL. I even suggested chocolate, but no go. And I have one of those old copper Mirro cookie presses, Grandma used to make Spritz with colored sugar sprinkles every year, but no one likes those either. Pffft, they are NO fun. Now The Princess is coming today to make more cookies, so we'll have Christmas Cookies, Round Two! Plus cinnamon rolls today for those nice neighbors. Annie