Preach it, sister!

I'm so glad you discovered Margo's site and posted it here. She used to post on Garden Junk a long while ago. I miss her! I love her site! INSPIRING! You can see a simple screen door trellis I made which she posted on her door page. :o) Bear Hugs! Kirk Here is a link that might be useful: Trellis

The serving pieces are really lovely. Lucky you to have such a talented sister. (Mine's a golf pro and I HATE golf!) Opening the dish soap was a hoot. Does that count as a dreaded 4th item? I'll have to look for that wine book. A great title! A great package.

Les, totally agreed: all you need are some testimonials from people here and a rockin' website, and you'd be off. And in the Chicago area, you could probably charge $50/hour instead of $20, and people'd still count themselves lucky to have you! And the other talented people here, too: I love the idea of redoing one person's room/house each month. Thanks for these nice messages, everyone! Alas... DH has both our cameras and he's out of town, so I can't even take pics, let alone post them! I'll try to get a friend to take some, because I really do want to share them. THe part I most like about it all is this. My LR/DR/kitchen is one big long rectangular box, basically. We'd laid it out so that all the furniture was on verticals and horizontals, echoing the room's geometry and making it feel even boxier. Decorator Tom broke that up. My DR table is now on a diagonal, and so is the too-big sofa, but no traffic patterns are blocked, and the rooms are still very usable. (although my sons complained that now they can't do capoeira in the living room...) Also, he rearranged all the pictures, plates, etc so that wherever you stand in the three rooms, your eye falls on something pretty. I'm not quite sure how he managed that. Parma, my house is so dim, and I crave light... we had one wall dark in my MBR and it drove me mad. In another house, in my friends' houses, I love color, and here in mine I love deeply colored pillows, art, textiles... but I need the ambient light reflected by pale walls or I go off the deep end. Pam14, thanks for your sweet note. DS is OK now, thank goodness (I've posted to that thread). One more comment: Tom travels a bit, so if anyone in Phoenix, Albuquerque, or Denver wants his info, I'll pass it on. (: