We're getting our first 'real' rain since May here on the coast this morning. There's been some heavy drizzle a few times, but not the sustained drops I've been hearing on my skylights for the last 45 min now. Great for my lawn, and maybe I'll even get some inside cleaning done while everything outdoors is getting a much needed drink...I've been picking wild blackberries evenings and the woods have been tinder box dry.

I-chic, I think you're right. Mixing finishes will probably date the kitchen so you just exorcised that particular demon for me. Thank you so much! I'm not going to use painted cabinets though, as beautiful as they are, because I'm just too hard on my stuff and I know I'll ding the heck out of them. I love how white quarter sawn oak can have a victorian feel to it, which I think will fit in nicely with the rest of the house. What I have in mind: Astidh, the prep sink is actually pictured bigger than it will be in reality. There's 4 ft of space on each side of the cooktop, and I was thinking a 13" prep sink installed only a few inches from the wall. I have been waffling between the layout above and the one below (which wouldn't need a prep sink). I would still find myself working where I do now which is to the left of the range, away from the corner, but that's not really a hardship. L-shaped kitchen So, where am I now? Thanks to igloo (btw, are you still in bed?) I know what I'm doing with the cabinets, but the question that remains is which layout is best. Pros of layout 1 No corners well defined zones with no one getting in each others way I love the symmetry on the cooktop wall I LOVE how open it feels it's not so run of the mill Cons of layout 1 gives up some storage space gives up some counter space but I think what you lose with the corner is gained by having 4 ft of straight run Pros of layout 2 more storage space sink isn't totally visible from dining room no prep sink needed Cons of layout 2 A corner I know I won't work in (but DH will) 4 ft of rather unusable space to the right of sink Can't do a farm sink (I guess I could move the sink down to where it is in layout 1 and keep the prep sink, hmmm) It would look like this: L-shaped layout with sink moved down (opens another can of worms...should the sink be centered in the run or with the opening to the dining room?) I'm beginning to believe there is no hope for me and that I will remain hopelessly indecisive. I'm really leaning toward layout 1, possibly without the prep sink (I could put a refuse receptacle there instead) but am not sure I should give up the storage/counter space of layout 2/3 (my cd player currently resides there). How am I ever going to make up my mind? Can anyone see any obvious reasons why one of these layouts would be superior to the others? All comments, even those which answer questions that weren't asked are deeply appreciated. TIA, again.

Thank you Fran1523.....We plan to price it right to sell (and quickly I hope). We will be moving about 400 miles away. DH wants to rent a UHaul truck and do it all ourselves. But, We are in our 60s and I have five herniated disks in my back. SO I cannot do a lot of lifting. Can I ask how you did your move? Did you hire movers? I am wondering how the price of a moving company compares to do-it-yourself, (when we will have to hire someone to help with the heavy lifting and loading etc). And also have to factor in the price of gasoline for the truck. Unloading in SC is going to be easier, SIL will be there with his friends to help unload the truck. It is just on this end that I am concerned. Moving a four bedroom house, garage, with all that stuff that goes along with it.... mowers, washer/dryer, etc. heavy stuff!

Larry, That is a beautiful and awesomely tall example of variegated reed grass! Maybe yours is going to get head high to the Jolly Green Giant? Jacob, If I didn't have the 8' tall deer fence all around both garden plots, the deer and I would not be friends. I think Bambi lost her mother, perhaps to a hunter. We have tons and tons of fawns this year---it seems that most does had at least twins this year and one that comes regularly has triplets. I love seeing them. If only the fawns could stay little, cute and adorable forever. People who hunt the property due west of us (it is the buffer that sits between us and the river, so they get a ton of wildlife) are getting pretty large bucks every year....say they sit on their property and wait for the bucks to come off our property. I rarely see the bucks because they feed at night, but I know they are there because every now and then late at night when we are out late, we spot them as we are arriving home. I tried for the first 8 or 10 years to have nice landscaping around the house/yard, which my husband stubbornly refuses to fence off with an 8' fence. The deer ate every single thing I planted, so I finally gave up. Now we just have trees, shrubs, trumpet creeper vines (because apparently the deer don't eat those), grass and some four o'clocks. Everything else? Hostas, hydrangeas, roses, perennial salvias, any annual flowers I planted for color, day lilies, etc......all deer chow. They even would eat the tough, prickly leaves of the hollies in drought periods, but finally the hollies are so big and old and tough that they don't bother those any more. If I ever convince Tim to surround our house and yard with a big ugly fence to keep the deer out, I will plant everything I've ever wanted around the house. I think his desire to not have a fence is much stronger than my longing for one. Where he grew up in Pennsylvania surrounded by woodland, nobody had fences so you could look out and feel like you owned hundreds of acres of forest as all the back yards and farms just sort of flowed together. So, he remains anti-fencing based on fond childhood memories from the 1960s and 1970s.....even though, if you go back there to his childhood neighborhood now, everybody has fencing and the farms and woodlands mostly are housing subdivisions with lots of fencing. I still think that someday I'll at least have a fenced back yard I can landscape. We'll see! Nancy, I am so sorry about your mom's passing. I know I don't "have to" comment, but I want to. Tim and I send you and your family our deepest and most sincere condolences. What an incredible, long life she lived, and you did everything you could to move her to the place that was best for her to live out her final stage of her life. You were a great daughter and I suspect it is because you were reared by an amazing mom. When y'all do travel to Buffalo in a few weeks, I wish you a safe journey. I do think Tiny Dude needs to travel with you so he can enchant and delight your friends and family who see his photos on Facebook and undoubtedly want to meet him in real life. Many cats travel well in a cat crate. Do they microchip cats like they do dogs? If they do, I'd get him microchipped in case he escapes from the vehicle, or at least get him a collar with a tag so you could put your cell phone number on the tag. Being close to the interstate where wrecks are frequent, we get lots of requests to watch for/search for pets that escape from a vehicle (not necessarily a wrecked vehicle---pets can bolt from a broken down vehicle when someone gets out to check and see why the engine is acting up or to change a tire or just when their owners stop at a gas station or fast food place). Sometimes you can find the pet, even weeks later, but it is hard by then to figure out which traveler passing through was searching for that pet if they aren't tagged. In my meager 20 years of living here, an early winter almost always equates to a bad winter. Or, for snow-starved southern OK, a really good winter. But, we don't get the ice storms that folks further north get in bad winters so what a lot of you might view as a bad winter, I might think of as a delightfully cold and snowy winter....if we get snow. If we don't get snow, then who cares? All winter without snow means is that we are cold and wet. I don't like being cold and wet, but I love snow. Not that I've had much snow to love. Our county does sometimes get the ice storms that bring down trees and power lines, but so far, that sort of weather never has come as far south as our house---it has made it down to maybe 3 or 4 miles north of us though. The bad thing is that if we get cold enough for ice and snow, then we get cold enough to lose Zone 8 plants that I planted here in order to see if they would survive here. They will survive here for a few years until we get an extra cold winter and snow. So, I sort of hope for snow, and sort of don't. I rarely plant Zone 8 plants here any more, although I planted a couple this past year.....which pretty much guarantees a cold winter is coming so it can wipe them out. I haven't seen a hummingbird since a week ago Thursday, but left the feeders up in case any were going to ride down on the big cold fronts. I haven't seen any, but will leave the feeders up until Monday or Tuesday, just in case, and then take them down. We ended up with the oldest granddaughter coming to stay with us for the weekend after her plans to spend the weekend with her dad fell through at the absolute last minute. We are always excited to have her come visit for a weekend, even if it wasn't planned. So, we ate dinner out with her, her mom and Chris last night, and then they headed home to get sleep before the busy work weekend with long shifts scheduled at work. We went to Wal-mart after dinner and bought everything we needed to stay home indoors and out of the rain today. We're going to carve pumpkins, which she has been dying to do....but I wanted to wait for cooler weather so the heat wouldn't ruin the Jack-o-lanterns. I think the heat isn't an issue any more. We're going to decorate Halloween Jack-o-lantern cookies (pre-baked and sold with a decorating kit). She has a long list of Halloween crafts she wants to make, including the Halloween version of a gingerbread house (we'll see about that one), so we'll work out way through that list as much as we can. I awakened at six and saw on the radar that the rain was almost here so rushed to get the dogs outdoors ahead of the rain's arrival. Whew! That was close but we made it. We're supposed to have rain all morning. How deeply into the afternoon the rain lasts is the unknown. I wish it would blow through faster, but it might be a long, rainy day here. We're ready for it and aren't planning on going out in it. I have some amaranth in the garden with huge flowering seed heads I'd hoped to have harvested and drying by now, but the relentless rain has kept me from cutting them. I keep hoping for a warm, sunny, windy day without rain so they can dry out some and then I'll cut them. I think if I cut them while they are so wet, they'll just mildew and look awful. I want the flower heads for autumn flower arrangements, but the rain may ruin that idea. When I planted the amaranth seeds in July, I wasn't expecting record rainfall in September and October. Have a lovely Saturday everyone. I hope those of you that the rain keeps missing will get some of this moisture plume left over from Sergio. The unfortunate thing is that it seems largely to be traveling over areas that already have had too much rain recently, so flash flooding and flooding likely will occur in those areas. The Red River is up and running fast and looked ugly last night, so this rain will just make that worse. I am thinking the winter wheat crop here likely is ruined. Too, too much rain even for seeds to sprout and grow, so it is more likely that if the seeds sprout, then the young plants rot. That's so unfortunate, but that is how life goes here on the southern plains. Dawn