Oh man, went to bed early last night.. lol.. where to start - First off, Debbie.. be very very careful.. that damn movie is addicting.. lol I am 49 and a guy and that still popped in my head ;) 1 - Dog food area, well.. hard to do as my dadgum dog grabs a piece of food and hauls it to the freaking bedroom, eats it, then comes back for more.. lol.. so we are locating it in the laundry room and get him closer and out of the traffic.. heh. It is like dodging a bullet when he is on an eating run :P 2 - I totally agree with you guys on keeping the island the same color. I was thinking the same thing, it might be too much contrast. Here is the entire house layout: (ignore the red spots.. that was the water heater location picture.. lol) The fireplace is a mosaic of this: (picture the mosaic shown but in a flat tile like the second one) The walls will just be normal white walls, for now. We have not selected a paint. So, yea, we were thinking just leave the island the same color. Now, the outside of the house is a gray with white trim, but we are painting the front door a distressed Redwood Sequioia color, so the guy had an idea of "bring the outside in" and match the island, sorta like this: That was where his idea came from....but, not sure I am "feeling it" anymore.. was our original idea too.. heh.. but when we had lighter floors. @blf - I was thinking the same thing.. adding more drawers. I figured to wait till I see the current drawings, then add 2 more sections for drawers. I need some good large ones for my woks anyway. I also need a really large cabinet for my chili/stew pots. @Debbie - all appliances are stainless. We have the Capital Culinarisn 48" with a 54" hood (they ordered the hood yesterday.. heh) and we have a double fridge/freezer like this one (Frigidaire): And we upgraded the dual dishwashers to Bosch 500 series ones.. I have a friend that called a tech out two times thinking his was broken it was so quiet.. lol Let's see, what did I miss? Oh, sorry.. @desertsteph - We debated the sink on the island, and for most folks that is a thing, but for me.. I am very CDO (not ocd.. cdo.. because that is the order they go in...heh) and I generally get my stuff out and prep on the island, but have all the washing done beforehand. Counter space is my thing. Want to see me go nuts? When I wash pots and pans... in this apartment.. I have nowhere to set them so have to wash one, dry it wash another dry it.. I go nuts! lol.. I have to have space to wash wash wash and then dry, so I do not mess up my groove.. heh, so I opted not to get the sink. Oh.. the space by the sink. Here's a funny story.. who here loves "Everyone Loves Raymond". My grandmother and I were very close and before she passed away, she left me two things, no-one else would have ever wanted.. a wooden fork and spoon set and a "Last Supper" pewter framed picture she had that she gad gotten in South America in the 60's. To me, they were what I remembered from her home, and they are the corner piece of mine now. BUT.. this is funny..: So there is room on each side of the kitchen window for the fork and spoon ;) Russ

Amy, Thanksgiving usually is in Texas, as it was last year, because all my sister's kids and grandkids live down there and have to try to visit two (or more) families on Thanksgiving, so we go down there instead of all of them coming up here. In our early years here, we hosted all the holidays here, but then when my nieces and nephews started having kids, it became more convenient for us to travel down there instead of all of them traveling up here. I'm okay with that. I don't mind not doing all the tons of work involved in hosting a holiday. I'm glad you like the machine. I love, love, love mine. There is no way on this earth I would make all the salsa and other tomato products that I do if I didn't have it. When I made tomato sauce this week, I used it for that, taking great care to use the apple/sauce screen because I didn't want the sauce chunky like salsa, and I'm so used to using the salsa screen that my hand automatically brings it out of the cabinet and hooks it up....and then I stare at it and think "that's wrong, I'm making sauce". lol. I'm glad your latest gadget arrived. (grin) I purged so many gadgety things last year when we redid the kitchen and I do not want for them to come back. Every single thing I kept has one specific place it belongs, and nobody puts it in the wrong place or they face the wrath of She Who Must Be Obeyed. : ) Once you're used to putting things where they belong, they are always there when you need them. The hard part was training Tim and Chris to put things back in the right place, but once they understood the organizational system, they became better at using it and now they like it. I also love not having a drawer (or a cabinet) full of gadgets that I do not remember buying, do not remember using, and often....don't even know what they are supposed to do. I especially adore having one cabinet and one drawer for nothing but canning supplies. This is the first time I've ever had that and it is nice to not have to go from cabinet to cabinet pulling out canning supplies that were tucked away in all spots wherever I could cram them in. Both screens remove the peel. You just get bigger chunks with the salsa screen (which is important for safety reasons as it keeps the ingredients in the right density needed for proper heat penetration) and you get seeds with the salsa screen. With the sauce screen, the seeds are screened out along with the peel and a lot of the flesh. I run the 'waste' through several times when using the sauce screen in order to minimize waste. If I want a chunkier tomato sauce for fresh cooking for dinner I just use the salsa screen. Since I don't like seeds in spaghetti sauce, what I'll do is cut open the tomatoes and scoop out as much of the seeds/gel as I can into a bowl of waste destined for the compost pile. That will remove most but not all seeds. It also means you generally end up wearing some of those seeds. The kitchen and I are a wreck after an afternoon of tomato processing. I do the same scooping out of seeds/gel when making salsa. Some seeds remain, but I get most of them out, and this produces a slightly less runny salsa. I'm glad you got rain. We had a nice rain shower tantalizingly close to us....it missed us by about a quarter-mile. There are big puddles where and it looks like at last a half-inch fell, until you turn onto our road and there's just nothing. When I looked at the radar-indicated rainfall map, you'd think the blue blob was right on top of us, but it isn't/wasn't. There's the blue blob where the rain fell in our neighborhood on the map, then a tiny white area about the width of a human hair where no rain fell and then the river. We are in the tiny white area...literally our house, a handful of maybe 3 or 4 of our nearest neighbors, and no one else. Maybe 100-200 acres missed the rain. We are within that tiny 100-200 acres that was passed over. Everyone else got rain. If we hadn't had 3" of rain in the last week, being missed today would have left me wanting to cry.....but, we know that big girls don't cry and also there's no crying in gardening. So, I laughed at the way the rain fell on everyone but us. Laughing is better than crying. Tim says we are cursed. Some other areas that got rain (not our neighborhood or the area next to it where rain fell) also got fires probably caused by lightning but we didn't, so at least there's that. Something in the air has made me sneeze all day. Maybe some sort of grass pollen. I'm allergic to everything. I need a nap so I can stay awake later tonight and sleep in tomorrow since Tim's alarm clock won't be going off, but if I take a nap now, I won't be able to fall sleep later. I fed the deer squash last night. I should feed them more right now. Every squash I slice up and feed them is one less I have to cook or freeze. Hmmm. I believe I'll get off the computer, slice up some squash and throw it on the compost pile for the deer. Dawn

It has been a VERY long time since I have been here - I think of everyone often; I am sure Dottie isn't the only one I missed. Just read the bathcapade story and got the biggest laugh. I can truly empathize with that story. Yes, I remember a lot of the good laughs, and hugs and friendships, at the Kitchn Table. Hi to all!

Well, today marks the 475th gloomy day this month! My Lacanosa decided that since there's no sun it's not worth blooming, so the flowers haven't opened. I suspect they will most likely drop off soon. I am so tired of these dreary days here in PA. The multiflora is blooming however. Several of the buds did fall off, but that's normal for this plant. The majority of them are open, at least on one of the peduncles. I've read that this plant is fragrant, but I can't smell anything from it. Lacanosa is also supposed to be fragrant but I fear both these plants are perfume challenged! I got nutten! Maybe in a few years when the sun decides to come our again and temps warm up some, I can get to finally see the lacanosa bloom and smell its fragrance. Until then I'll just keep complaining!