TR, milk paint has always captured my interest,so I will look at that. BP: Gosh, at first I thought those were your kitchens, then realized. Nice pics and thought provoking. GD, that is really the issue here, how much yellow would be too much or would it matter, being that high up on the ceiling. PW: love your beadboard island. Oh my gosh, I can see why this forum is addicting and now the choices. Better made with lots of opinions though. Say, most of y'all don't use your real name on this forum yet it doesn't seem "stalker prone", lol. Well, too late now. Interesting though. Thanks, will keep thinking and hoping that others will chime in. Of course, the floor color will make a difference too. Ellie

Blanching destroys the enzymes that make the beans mushy. I blanch for 3 minutes, then plunge in ice water, dry on paper towels, freeze on a jelly roll pan then seal in Foodsaver bag. That reminds me I have to bag the ones I blanched and froze this morning. There is a discussion on Harvest about this from early this year. I have pickled some bigger beans, ran out of vinegar solution had to mix more up so stuck 2 pints in the fridge. We took some to a BBQ only a few days later and they tasted really good. Lemon Spiced Pickled Beans from Small Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp. We don't like canned beans either but these were good (of course they hadn't been processed, I'll let you know how the processed ones are in a few months). I figured they'd be good in 3-bean salad once my limas come in (or with storebought canned chickpeas). Here is a link that might be useful: Freezing beans on Harvest

Well what is the item?? I'll find the instructions for you. I can't help you and find them for you if I don't know what the item is.

If you use MS Office 2003, you should have MS Office Picture Manager. Chose this to open your jpg (photo) file. Once it opens, at the top menu, select "Picture". Depends on how large your photos are, you can either chose "Compress" and/or "Resize" to make the photo smaller size. Then, save it to another name. When I have a 1.5 MB size photos, I normally do both, compress first then, resize. Here's step-by-step instruction: 1) Open file in MS Office Picture Manager 2) Select Picture\Compress 3) Right side menu gives 3 choices: Documents, Web Pages, E-mails. )Chose one and you'll see the size it compress it into. You can do "Edit\undo..." if you don't like it). I normally select Documents, and hit "OK" at the bottom of the menu. 4) Select Picture\Resize 5) Easiest choice is to do a "Percentage". I normally, resize from 60% and up. Again, you can play around with the different percentage to give you some idea and if you don't like it, do Edit\Undo. 6) Save or Save as your photo. This tool also allows you to compress and/or resize multiple photos and Save All at the same time. Select the Thumbnail icon to do multiple photos. Be careful not to Resize too much; otherwise, your photos loses quality. I also use this tool to "crop" the photos. If you use crop, do this before doing compress/resize. I've been busy and haven't check back this forum as often, so e-mail me if you have any questions. Good luck and have fun! Natalie