Good morning everyone! Aaahhhh Louie! Where can I begin? Since his arrival he has knocked over just about everything. Eaten 1 of our snakes (now, I can't confirm he killed it, but I did see him munching on it yesterday...can I say eeeewwwwww) And, he has single handedly mowed down almost all the flowers of my floating hearts. I did see him taking down my water celery last night. I want to be upset with him, but, I just can't. He's so little. Maybe a foot long. I told the kids he's like having another toddler running around. You just have to fix everything after he's finished with it. Bunzy (our paint turtle) and her two new paint turtle friends who showed up a few weeks ago, Bubba and Penelope (the kids named them, lol) all seem to be getting along just fine with each other. They were the only one's I was worried about. I'm going to try to get some pictures of him tonight. Last night I was feeding the fish and watching the turtles come up and eat the food. I was to zoned in on watching them that I started to get that weird feeling like I was being watched. I turn my head and there is LOUIE about 2 feet away from my feet munching away in the water. He is NOT afraid of people, lol! Sheri, LOL,I have no clue where he came from? We are close to the Seneca River. I say close, maybe a mile away, and our neighbors have ponds in their pastures. I don't know?? I can't imagine something so little traveling so far? Shirley, our "flying dinosaurs" have been making their nightly appearance as well. The herons aren't afraid of us either! The kids run at them yelling, they just walk to the other side of the pond. I put a couple of shepherds hooks down there with garden flags thinking moving things blowing around might scare them...nope. Hubby got me 2 beautiful heron statues last year for Christmas to scare them away. They stand right next to them, lol. The iris' did have a great spring! I did have some problems with rot afterward. I don't know if it was the crazy cold we had or what? I have a few die off completely. :( The ones that survived are multiplying like crazy. Your daylilies are so gorgeous! How large is Big Bird? I am picturing a very large flower head :) Col :) Yeah! It made it!! So happy!! I hope the Hawaiian Surf made it okay too? Since today is Friday, I've decided to call 2 BINGO WORDS :) THE BINGO WORDS FOR FRIDAY ARE: ALIEN'S STARDUST and OGON WOGON OH MY BINGO WORDS CALLED: 1. FLAMINGO TWISTER 2. DO THE MATH 3. TURTLE TIE DYE 4. TINTINNABULATION 5. ALIEN'S STARDUST 6. OGON WOGON OH MY'ERS: Shirley (brittneysgran) AND Alana (poisondartfrog) SWAP WITH EACH OTHER frankielynn AND Sue (sueguanzon) SWAP WITH EACH OTHER~~~frannkielynn SENT~~~ Kathie (sinbadsmom) AND Jayeanne (pinkiris) SWAP WITH EACH OTHER~~~ Jayeanne (pinkiris) SENT~~~Kathie (sinbadsmom) REC'D~~~ Sheri (panhandle_seed_swap) AND Cinnie0 SWAP WITH EACH OTHER~~~Sheri 1/2 SENT :)~~~~Cinnie0 REC'D~~~ Suzanne(hibiscusfan) SENDS TO Colcol Colcol SENDS TO Vina (flowergirl34) Vina(flowergirl34) SENDS TO Suzanne (hibiscusfan)~~SENT~~ Tomorrow is the last day to mail for our swap. I hope everyone has been in contact with your swap partners. Or if you made arrangements to mail a little later. If you haven't heard from your partner at all please let me know. Have a super Friday! vina ps. Tomorrow is the 50 mile long garage sale around here. It's amazing!! Kids are having a pool party today and tomorrow its all garage sales, lol. Iris: Ambrosia Fool

1. Is it a perennial??? yes (tender above zone 7?) 2. Does it have colorful or unusual foliage? NO (NOT COLORED FOLIAGE) 3. Are there many varieties? No 4. Does it bloom more than once a year? Yes 5. Does it grow taller than 12"? Yes 6. Is it a shrub? No 7. Is this plant valued for it's flowers? Sometimes 8. Is it collectible? YES, not by groups per se 9. Is it considered an Herb? NO 10. Is it a tree ? NO 11. Does it get taller than 36" ? NO 12. Does it bloom in spring? YES 13. Does it grow from a bulb? NO (not a bulb) 14. Can it grow from seed? YES (from what I have read) 15. Does it grow from a tuber? YES 16. Does it bloom all summer? YES 17. Does it come in red colors??? YES (?) Nope Bunny, guess again, I love callas. This is a plant I would LOVE to have too....I know doesn't help much... :) Fran

More cards ! Its been cloudy, rainy, windy and very gloomy here but whats inside my mailbox every evening to greet me is like warm sunshine to the soul ! Thank you to: Amanda/Neohippie for Alyx Little Sun tomato seeds ( gotta look this one up ! Mrs Burns Lemon Basil ... love this one !Emerald Giant Bell pepper ! thank you to RuthZ for Jimmy Nardello pepper ... been wanting to grow this one bad !Parris Island Cos romaine lettuce and Italian Cameo basil ! love it ! thank you to Paula/Paulan70 for Cherry Brandy Rudbeckia ! I just love them and will be wintersowing these ! thank you Jamie/Momsgardens sent Black Beauty zucchini ( one of my top fave squash )Red whirligig zinnia, Vorlon tomato and sweet banana pepper, can't wait till spring ! Thank you also to Jim and Tanya ( jimryder ) who sent lovely packages of Sweet 100 cherry tomato( I grow this one every year ), dark maroon scabiosa, Boothby's blonde, Marketmore and white wonder cucumber,yum ! thank you Mandy / L1oness , she sent me Hahm's Gelbe tomato seeds ! have never grown this one , looking forward to trying a new tomato ! Thank you Margo / Smitties for the Ornamental Kale - very much want to start this from seed ! and Sweet Genovese Basil ! Thank you Diana for the lovely lettuces -Buttercrunch, Bibb, Cherry tomato and dark green Zucchini ! Will have wonderful salads with these !And Thank you to Debby1 for the Smokey fennel and Daylily seeds ! I have had great luck with daylilies the past few years ! Can't wait to statt these ! this has been a wonderful few weeks, finding these wonderful cards and seeds in my mailbox is so much fun and makes the holidays extra special, I am enjoying seeing that the cards and seeds I have sent out are starting to reach their destination ! love it !!! Merry Christmas to you all and especially Santa Kym ! without you we would not have this most wonderful swap ! Iris xoxox

MelissaStar, You're usually the only cook, but occassionally have someone who helps. You live alone, I seem to recollect, or at least there are no kids to accomodate at a family dining area, right? And as I recollect you do some heavy duty cooking and prep, thus the desire for butchering and baking areas and for storage of canning supplies, etc. Right? Your memory is fantastic! When it is used for dinner parties, I see no reason to think it would be any more inconvenient than a similar booth at a restaurant, and they are usually the most desired spots, because they facilitate converation and coziness, My thinking exactly. I certainly prefer a booth in a restaurant to a table - I just find it more comfortable and relaxing. I started the kitchen design process focusing on seating at a peninsula, which changed to seating at various islands, but then through all of the back and forth with everyone on this board, my thinking on my likes and desires sharpened quite a bit and the appeal of the banquette became more obvious to me. I'm designing this kitchen for my enjoyment and my ease of use, not for kids or guests. Taking my morning coffee, reclined in the banquette, feet up on the opposite side, watching the sunrise is a far more enticing prospect than sitting on a stool in front of an island either in the middle of the kitchen or buried deeper in the house. I'd rather watch what's going on outside my windows than turn my focus to what's taking place on my Big Screen TV. I don't have teenagers who need to be glued to the screen during meals, so a good line of sight from meal sitting to TV was a non-factor for me. If I ever develop the habit of desiring to watch the news while I'm having dinner I can always hang a small undercabinet TV right above where the dishwasher is situated. As for the casual guest - they can sit at the banquette and they're completely out of my work flow in the kitchen and with more than a few casual guests, even the messes in the sink are hidden for 2/3 of the span of the banquette. For more formal occasions the dining room is available. And for the rare "house is teeming with guests" events, I can fit 5-7 kids at the banquette, with 3 more kids sitting at chairs while the adults are in the dining room/living room. The banquette works extremely well for me and I had the most miserable time in trying to fit it in. It doesn't really work that well in the middle of the East wall and it doesn't work that well on the South end of the East wall because now it intersects traffic and work zones. Being on the North end of the East wall keeps it out of traffic. I keep thinking there should be a way to either overlap the butchering and baking areas (since they are unlikely to be in use at the same time) That's true. I find that I like hacking up meat close to a sink because it serves double duty - easy to throw waste into and convenient for clean up. Baking doesn't require sink proximity as much, at least the way I work, so I can make do with a smaller sink near where I bake than where I cook and cut meat. This means that if I combine baking and meat cutting, which never go on at the same time, then the big sink is really only used for pot clean-up and the secondary sink is more heavily used and it has to be larger, thus taking up more counter space. I'm just not able to fire on all cylinders here and get the "perfect combination" of all the features. The alternative would be to replace part of the counter between sink and range with butcher block. That would certainly make things simpler, as kateskouros so perceptively noted in the other thread. There's just something about the change of materials in the run of the countertop that unsettles me. Maybe I just need to mull over the idea a bit more - this solution after all just popped into my head last night. A appreciate the picture of your kitchen - it now makes real what I was only imagining. The placement of the prep sink seems awkward to me, in that corner. What about moving it to the other end of the peninsula? There are lots of islands with them at one end. I agree that the sink placement is a bit awkward. I hadn't thought of putting the sink at the end of the peninsula, so I fired up the software and did just that. I looked at it, I rendered a photo and I actually find that more awkward because it cancels out the fridge drop zone, a grocery from garage drop zone, it sits smack in the middle of a walk around zone if I need to work on something from different angles - I have a 180 degree work surface there. I think the question at the moment is whether to keep that sink where it is or move it a tad more towards the inside corner edge, with the attendant trade-off of creating dead space behind the sink. I'm wishy washy on that - I see the pros and cons of both positions. What would you do? Favor more work area or favor easier use of the sink for your baking needs? I would consider rejiggering the oven/refrigerator/storage areas to make the storage facing the banquette less deep and widen your aisle there. Also, as someone who has a "pinch point" with fridge doors opening across from the end of the peninsula, I can tell you it's not good. Can you switch the fridge and oven placement (you'll be opening them much less often than the fridge) and move them a foot or so to the left, losing the small closet? I'm going to play around with that tonight. I had never thought of placing the oven right at the entrance to the kitchen. I recall from past commentary that there was a consensus opinion that having the fridge placed deeper into the kitchen was less than optimal and that it would be better for the fridge to be placed nearer the entrance so that access to the fridge didn't require disrupting cooking/prepping activity. However, because it's just me that I have to worry about your suggestion might bear fruit. I won't know until I try. MrsPete, I adore your seating area. I wanted something similar, but my space just doesn't work. Thank you. I'm starting with a blank slate here so I have more flexibility. I've scrapped so many plans because of kitchen design issues, and even in this latest iteration, due to trying to make that seating area work. I wonder about switching the butchering area with the baking center. I say this because meat goes with basic meal prepping, while baking has a different set of "stuff". You'd have space for baking pans, your big mixer, your canisters over in that separate area. One of the reasons that the baking area is where it is is because just off the bottom of the plan is a wood fired baking oven, hence pizza and bread and when everything comes out of the oven that peninsula is only 6' away to use as a drop zone. Secondly, in terms of baking I'm currently used to working on a large surface - I've never actually done a lot of baking on a 2' wide counter, so I'm going with what I know. Pressure canning supplies -- have you allotted enough space for this? I have two canners and various accessories, and I couldn't fit it into one upper cabinet. How often do you use these things? I currently have a greenhouse, so my growing season is extended, but it's certainly not a year round production chain for items coming from my gardens, however, I do put up non-garden derived food throughout the year and once this house is constructed I intend to focus more effort on that activity. This house is really kitchen-centric. When I embark on a kitchen project it's usually pretty involved, so the design I'm trying to achieve is catering to my extreme uses rather than to my day-to-day uses. I'm faced with two alternatives - design for everyday ordinary needs and then be cursing at the limitations of the design when I need more space or design for big projects and then don't use the kitchen to maximum potential for the following 5 days. That's a huge refrigerator, yet I'm hearing that you have only two people in the house. Is that size really justified? The space for the refrigerator is a placeholder. I come from a science/engineering background and I tinker and design machinery as a hobby and instead of hot-rodding my car I'll be hot-rodding the fridge, amongst other systems in the home. If the design is finalized as it stands now and I kick the bucket or decide to sell, the new owners can close up the fridge space and enlarge the hallway closet if that's to their liking. Secondly, I put a lot of stuff into my fridge. When I'm making cheese, I need ready access to a lot of milk. That has to be stored somewhere. When I'm making salami, I need to store the meat until I need it. So I'm pleased to make your acquaintance but as you see, MelissaStar already got the lowdown on my oddball ways earlier in the year. Your kitchen is soooo large. Everyone keeps saaaaying that! :) But you know what, I've spent a lot of time analyzing how I'm using my current kitchen, which I didn't design, and I'm reflecting on my youth when I worked in restaurants, and I just don't see that the kitchen is to large for how I use my kitchens. I've seen large kitchens showcased on this forum, by which I mean that they're too large for how I would use them for myself, but they're probably just right for the families that use them daily. From fridge door to wall and from sink wall to edge of peninsula counter is 11'6" x 16'9" and that doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Could you move the penninsula "up" towards the sink, making the "main kitchen" smaller and more space-efficient . . . and have sort of a "working pantry" in the are that you're now calling the baking area? It'd be just a small, not so fancy spot for these two activities. I'm going to play around with this idea because it's one that I haven't thought of. Thanks for suggesting it.