By the way, when you take exit 130 in Bham toward Atlanta, get into the LEFT lane on the exit ramp. The right lane becomes an exit ramp for First Ave North and that is not a good area to get lost in. It might be safer for you to go straight through Birmingham on I-65 South (toward Montgomery) until you get to Exit 250 and take I-459 NORTH toward Atlanta-Gadsden. Use the left lane on the Exit 250 ramp. Go 16 miles and take Exit 29 to I-20 toward Atlanta to Exit 173 then follow your or my directions from there. It will add 20 minutes but you are less likely to get lost in a bad neighborhood. From Exit 173 my directions and your directions vary. Take exit 173 toward County Rd-5/Eastaboga Rd 0.2 mi Turn right at County Rd-5/Eastaboga Rd (signs for Talladega) 0.1 mi Sharp left at Curry Station Rd 5.9 mi Turn right at Cedar Springs Rd Destination will be on the left 0.2 mi 1568 Cedar Springs Rd We usually start around 10-10:30 am. We'll see you there. Send me a private email and I'll send you my phone number if you have any questions about the trip or anything else. I'll be home all afternoon on Friday except between 4:30-6 pm.

I had this exact same issue when I started designing my kitchen a few months back. My island will also be 6.5' long, and I ended up drawing the setup in autocad with the dimensions I was interested in. I ended up settling on the configuration in the image I attached. The island is 6.5 long, and the pendants are 14" in width. I think ultimately there's no right answer in a vacuum, depends on the other elements in your kitchen. Our island sits prominently in the middle of the kitchen and is the focal point when you first walk in. Our cabinets are also very simple, done purposefully so we could go a bit more extravagant on the finishing details including islanding lighting, hardware, and faucets. We played around with lights bigger than these and it didn't look right. We also played around with 2 light setups and it felt off to me. Good luck with what you choose!

I presume there's a reason why this child is in fulltime daycare? You and your husband both work? Any chance one of you could change their schedule so the need for putting your child in daycare would be reduced? I'm all for children socializing with others, but truly, NO ONE teaches or cares for a child like a parent does. You're seeing that now. Children of that age do need a lot of time with their parents. As to naptime--your child must need the sleep or he wouldn't be napping so long. You say bedtime is a challenge. As a parent, and a family living teacher, I have to ask--do you know what the most common reason for difficult bedtimes is? It's that the child is OVERtired. what a lot of young parents don't understand is how a child's body works. When we get tired, we wind down and get sleepy. When toddlers get tired, their bodies release loads and loads of extra adrenalin--hence you have a hyper child who is too wired to go to sleep. There has even been a very reputable study that shows that many (not all, mind you, but about half) the cases of ADHD in children are NOT legitimate ADHD, but simply lack of adequate sleep. Does your child get a full 12 hours of sleep daily (adding up the naptime and bedtime?) Even if he is, it's possible he's one of those who truly does need a little more sleep than 'average'. However, what you're describing about the daycare is totally unacceptable. You're describing a facility where the workers don't care about the child or parents, where they're there just putting in time to collect a paycheck, where they're happy doing as little as possible (a sleeping child is one they don't have to: care for, amuse, watch, etc). The problems you've noticed all come down to the same thing--the daycare workers DO NOT WANT to do their job. I wouldn't allow someone with that attitude to dogsit my pet, let alone care for the most precious thing in my life. It may be time to look into other alternatives--as I suggested, perhaps a schedule change at work. Or maybe there's a family member you trust who would be glad to watch your child for the same $$$ you're paying the daycare. Or you may have to go further afield and find a different daycare center (even if you have to drive some to get there) or a retired person in your neighborhood who is more responsible than the place you're currently using. Good luck! You mentioned your husband--if you are both working, I urge you to sit down and crunch the numbers. Unless you're a really high-end executive, or in some other high paying job, you may find, when you do the math, that you're going to work for just a few cents an hour. Add up: the cost of daycare, the higher taxes you pay, the cost of transportation, the cost of going to work (clothes, union dues, buying lunches out, work parties, gifts for coworkers, etc), the cost of being out of the house hours a day (buying more takeout/prepared foods, hiring others to do stuff around the house like yard work, painting, repairs, etc). When I got pregnant, we did the calculations--and we figured that I'd be going to work for $2000/year or less. Add to that, the fact that you're turning the care and raising of your child over to strangers--it wasn't worth it to us. It made sense financially for me to stay home. It made even more sense to use for me to be the one caring for our daughter, teaching her academically, being the one to educate her in morals and ethics--no one does all that like a fulltime mom. There's a reason why this country is having a lot of the problems it is (crime, irresponsibility, unwed parents, abusive relationships), and IMO, a big part of that is that children are NOT being raised by their parents, the way they have been in the past. Good luck

Kellie--Some of that bigger stuff can go in the pantry, but not all of it can. I want all my food stuffs in the pantry first and foremost. I hate walking out to the garage every day to get that cans, etc. There will be left over room in there for non-food items. But remember, I have a LOT of non-food items, many huge and awkward, to store too. Blfenton--I don't mind the cabs in some places. I will store the stuff I hardly ever use (like the huge commercial stock pot on the kitchen side and the punch bowl on the DR side) in the back of the cabs. They don't fit well in drawers. I don't care about digging to the back the two times a year I need those items. I'm sorry if I confused you about the drawers. I was thinking 3 shallow drawers across the top at 16.6" wide each. Then a doored cabinet under the two closest to the fireplace. The cavity inside the two doors would be all open to allow me to store bigger, wider things and move them around as my inventory changes. Then, under the right of those 3 drawers would be 2 deeper drawers, which makes a 3-drawer stack. Does that make sense? Frankly, right now I don't have everything at hand to measure. Nor do I have the time to lay every single item I have out to obsess over what will fit in what size of drawer and how deep that drawer should be. I have so many other decisions I need to make for the house that are holding us up from making progress. Island will be my prep area. I don't have enough storage there for all my prep stuff, so it will overflow back to the drawers flanking the rangetop and share space with my cooking supplies. The drawers to the right of the rangetop will also be cooking items and baking items as I moved the baking zone to the right of the range. Garbage is in a pullout at the north end of the island so it's usable for prep and cleanup chores. Here's my initial cabinet layout before the peninsula shrunk. I also decided on 4-drawer stacks flanking the rangetop instead of 3-drawer stacks. Thanks for the words about my uncle. He wanted to die, but that doesn't make it any easier for those of us left missing him.