I see a green tinge in the witches fingers also. Then I kept looking and realized they looked much like one would expect a bread roll to look. If the background were taken away and changed to white, they probably wouldn't look green. Our brains are truly amazing things. We are so used to seeing witches with greenish skin that is how we are assimilating the witches fingers. They are really a great idea nista! Theresa wants to bake them for next Halloweens treats. Thanks! Les

Well, we were the opposite end of the spectrum. We built from 1300 miles away and visited I think 5 or 6 times. Each time we flew down we grouped as many things together as we could. Ours was a custom build, approx. 7000 sf under roof with a pool house and boat dock. Can't say that there is anything that we'd do different. Our next door neighbor is a retired architect and he tells us that he's convinced we have the best built foundation in the neighborhood and was very impressed with our build. That was after the fact. We were incredibly fortunate, thankful and love our home.

zone8 -- I'd say you and your DH are an illustration of living WITHIN your means, not BELOW them. Paycheck to paycheck doesn't qualify for "within" in my book either. I share your dismay at the confusion between needs and wants that can result in that lifestyle. It isn't good for them, and it sure isn't good for those of us who end up paying their share when they go bankrupt or die owning. (Not to demean people whose bare needs are not met by their paychecks.) But...if you CAN afford some "wants" along with your needs, it isn't a virtue to forego them merely to generate some smug self-satisfaction about "living below your means". I feel that the quote celebrates something rather mean and endorses "living small" as a virtue. NEITHER too "small" nor too "large" are good choices IMO. Neither the ant nor the grasshopper was entirely, exclusively correct. The ant had a long, dull life. The grasshopper had a short, joyous one. I'm advocating a blend of industry AND joy, not one OR the other.

I realized I had a problem with books when I looked at renting a larger apartment because I could buy more bookshelves if I moved there . . . . I did a couple of things to winnow out the books collection. Over the past 5 years, I've removed about half the books--I'm down to about 1,000 books now, and a firm one in, one out policy. First, I took all the books in one category, say, children's books. Then I sorted them by "absolutely must keep," "would like to keep" and "can easily get rid of." Because when you look at your books as a whole, you can't think of ever being able to part with a single one. But when you really look at a smaller sub-set of them, you realize there are a few you will always want to keep, some you really like, and others that you are not so attached to. You can set a goal if you like. Weed out 10 per cent of each category, or 15 per cent, or whatever feels right to you. Donate/sell those books that you are comfortable in letting go. Then, in three months, revisit the books and see if you can't let go of 10 per cent more. Or 5 per cent. In my case, I had determined to get rid of two large bookcases, so the books I could keep had to fit in the remaining bookcases. It's good to set some sort of limit on the books--either by number of books, or the space you allow them to take up. Another thing I would do was go to a single bookcase and count the number of shelves in that bookcase. If the bookcase had six shelves, I needed to remove six books from it. Not one book from each shelf, mind you, because there was an entire shelf of Jane Austen novels and books about Miss Austen that aren't going anywhere, just six (or five or three or whatever) books from the entire bookcase. Again, this helps to focus you on which books are life-long keepers, which are nice friends, and which are more like Facebook buddies that you are glad to hear from on occasion. I also had a lot of book series--mystery series, detective series, science fiction series. While I kept a few of these, for most of them I kept just the first book in the series. If I want to re-read the entire series (and I do, on occasion), then I can get the rest from the library. For cookbooks, I determined that a small, two-shelf bookcase was going to be their home. Then I weeded through the collection, picking out the ones I use the most, and all the chocolate cookbooks (because you never know when a chocolate attack will strike and what ingredients you will have on hand at the time) and a few cookbooks I've purchased on my travels as mementos. I did copy a couple of recipes I use a lot, but that were pretty much the only one I ever used from certain cookbooks, and put them in a binder with clipping from newspapers and recipes printed out from the internet.