Just to chime in quickly on a few things...from a mom of now 6 boys... We had 6 beautifully lined up cubbies in our previous home...each with their own charging area...nice thought...waste of time & money in our experience. As the kids get older they charge things everywhere, but there! Even DH, he would say, "I'm on-call and need to be able to hear it." Have to agree about the doors and a large family. Not so much that they won't be abe to use the doors, but more for other reasons. The mud room cubbies take abuse, especially from a bunch of boys. They swing open, push too many things in, can get in each others way...need repaired, need cleaned, etc.!!! Coats and backpacks do not IMHO look messy when hung on hooks at all. I like having a basket/drawer for each to house their hats/gloves and another for little odds and ends (that can look messy). Best wishes on an amazing new home for your family!

Babs, I think you're a better candidate for a Speed Queen top loader than you realize. I wouldn't try to talk you into it. I'm not into product evangelizing, but since you asked for recommendations... The SQ doesn't have a heater, but you can select HOT wash temperature on any cycle. SQ hot is tap hot, meaning no Automatic Temperature Control. It opens up the hot valve and fills directly from your hot water heater supply. You can make it as hot as you want to run your water heater with safety and energy cost limitations, of course. If you plan to run a heater in a HE machine much of the time anyway, you're already foregoing the much of energy savings. SQ washers have a 3.3 cf tub, which seems small compared to some of the gargantuan washers on the market. In practice, the thinner flex vane agitator takes up less room and a decent size load fits (and washes) fine. A king comforter will not fit, however. The REGULAR/HEAVY/HOT cycle is probably the longest on the SQ because of the extended wash period and the slower hot water only fill. I haven't measured the time of that cycle, but I'm convinced you can easily run two of those loads in the time it takes a FL to complete one. Maybe even three when compared to a FL sanitary cycle. Washers with 5.5 cf tubs sure seem like a win for a large family, but consider the weight of 5 cf of wet jeans and the centrifugal force of spinning them at over 1000 rpm. No washer should ever explode, but the damage is not surprising when a defective or poorly designed one lets go. Using a modest tub size and running a few more loads on the busy days will go a long ways toward extending the life of motors, bearings, belts, and everything else that moves in a washer. My kids were also active with sports and other outdoor activities. They've moved on to college and beyond, but I still like bright whites and clean clothes. I've found a combination of plenty of water (hot/warm/cold as appropriate), proper pre-treating, good detergent (properly measured!), bleach or Borax when appropriate and avoiding overloading the machine has produced consistently clean laundry. SQ washers are at the opposite end of many scales compared to the high tech HE washers on the market. They have switches and electromechanical timers instead of a computer board. I have the AWN542 model with the fabric selector switch (DELICATE/KNIT/PERM PRESS/REGULAR) that overrides the agitation/spin speeds of the cycle timer. There is a separate switch for selecting HOT/WARM/COLD water temperature. Used together, you can select any water temperature, any agitation speed, any spin speed (actually, either spin speed as there are only two), and any cycle length for a wash load. Don't bother with plugging it into a surge suppressor. If you live in an area where water is in short supply, it's hard to make an argument against HE machines. Water is readily available where I live and isn't especially expensive. That doesn't mean we should waste it and we don't. The EPA energy guideline sticker on my washer indicated it costs about $43/year to operate the SQ deep fill top loader, $26/year if you have a gas water heater. I have gas. They are hardly energy hogs. The SQ washer has a 3-year "bumper to bumper" warranty. It also has 5 years on the motor and 10 years on the transmission. It's built in the US for lots of cycles and I've never had a musty smell from it.

My question is when you come in from the garage, do you have a place for your purse? Is one of those cubbies for your use or just for the kids/pets? If the cubbies are for the kids, I would think you would want the small counter space. If one of those cubbies is dedicated to you, then you most likely wouldn't need the counter. While I am not usually a big fan of the open shelving because the clutter shows, I think doors in my mudroom might be a pain. While the kids are trying to put on their shoes, they sit, then if the cubby is open, they reach behind them and pack their backpack or search for their umbrella, etc. If the door is on the cubby, won't the open doors be hitting the person seated next to them? I do see why you want the junk contained and hidden, but most likely the only people seeing it might be you--and maybe that's one too many :), but in this case I might choose function over form. I chose cubbies for the kids and a counter for me. But, our office is right next door to this room so I can see the mail, etc being dumped just two steps further. From Menlo Farmhouse Your first floor looks wonderful! So nice to hear that you are progressing and your kitchen will be in May 16....my wood floors go in starting tomorrow and I am just crazed to get everything done. Hopefully done by June 15 or so--a belated Mother's Day present!

Mertie, the garden is far from perfect, I just don't usually photograph the parts that aren't! I try not to stress out about the less than perfect parts, knowing that the eye candy gardens in magazines and books have been groomed within an inch of their lives prior to photos being taken. I garden for the joy of seeing beauty and spending time out-of-doors. I also feel blessed to have the advantage of plenty of room to play since I live on an old farm with several garden areas and I'm a bit of a plant nerd, so I read a lot and visit the few good nurseries in the area several times a season along with botanical gardens and arboretums whenever I travel to get ideas. The dark purple shrub is one I learned about here on GW; a ninebark, Physocarpus Coppertina, which is a bit of a suckering monster, but ornamental enough that I give it room. It has nice white late-spring flowers, reddish ornamental seed pods for much of the summer, and the foliage color is nice all growing season. A densely twiggy mound in the winter, and a good bird nesting site during the breeding season. There are a couple of dark-leafed ones like Tiny Wine that stay smaller. Like yours, my arborvitae had some damage last winter from wet, heavy snow, so I may spiral wrap/tie some of them loosely this winter so they are less likely to splay open (thanks for the reminder.) I have deer, but they don't bother my gardens; instead I battle voles. This year I had at least a dozen plants, including a couple of favorites, that died due to having every root eaten and the voles do a number on the dogwoods I have in this bed. I've pulled out two of the original four dogwoods because they died. "foresight years ago" - It's not been that long with this garden, which was planted in the fall of 2009, mostly with very small plants (the evergreens being the exception, as most of them were about 3' tall when planted.) I would say that the bed started being quite ornamental after only a couple of years and if I'd wanted to put in more short-lived plants the first couple of years it would have been even nicer right away. If you are interested in seeing a bit of the process, there's a post in this thread with more photos over time and some description of my design process which was fairly loose. As the saying goes, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." For shrubs, I think the best time should be 3 years ago, or even last year if you put in larger ones, but it's amazing how quickly they fill in. If I had realized how much I love the H. paniculatas, I would have planted a couple more, but now I am out of room in this bed. I'm currently ripping out some plants in another bed so that I have room for another one.