I have two girls: 2 and 4-1/2. My 4yo has been helping me in the garden since she was 1 year or so...I planted a cherry tomato bush for her and she loved loved to pick them and eat them one after another. She always liked to hold the hose. By the time she was two she had learned to dig for worms, and we talked a lot about being gentle with them, holding them only for a minute, and then putting them back into the ground and covering them with dirt. She likes to help dig, sprinkle seeds, use the hose, and this year we started two worm bins. Both kids really enjoyed shredding/dipping/wringing/fluffing the newspaper and gathering leaves to make a home for the worms. The double-watering-can idea is a great one - we have lots of scuffles over the hose, and the older one likes to water the younger one with it, which rarely ends well. Tomorrow we're getting watering cans! Last year I planted a sunflower house with all greystripe sunflowers. It produced over a hundred awesome flowers, but I wish I had planted them closer together (more than 1 per foot) because the leaves never got close enough to make thick walls. So this year I went crazy with seed catalogs and bought 10+ varieties of sunflowers in all colors, sizes, heights, etc. There's one called "American Giant" which is supposed to be 16+ feet tall. I'm going to try to make a better house, and they can help me dig and sprinkle. My 2yo now demands that we dig for worms whenever we set food in the back yard, and if she finds one, the other one comes running. If she finds a slug, she picks it up and says, "Nasty slug get me!" (trans. "Nasty slug tried to get me." Today she found a small rock and thought it was a slug. When I told her it was a rock, she said, "Dirty rock get me!" Two years ago we planted strawberries given to us by a friend with a surplus of plants, so we've talked about how flowers turn to fruit, and how the bees and such do their part. In the summer the girls beg to go and check for strawberries and raspberries every day. These have never made it back to the house. :-) The thing I struggle with the most is when they spill something valuable - like when the two year old poured the bucket of organic fertilizer I had mixed into the grass. And last year when I had my back turned for a few minutes turning soil over, they opened every package of beans (probably about 2+ cups total) and mixed them into their tiny bucket with dirt. 0_o So we just sprinkled them all over and had a mixed bean jungle later that year. I constantly remind them to please not step onto the dirt that I have just planted things in (esp. the potato bed!!) and of course they do so I just try to remind myself that kids who love being outdoors and learn that gardening is fun are more important that a reduced potato yield. (Duh!) They love looking at seed racks, and so I usually let my 4yo pick out a package of flower seeds. There's an old cement double-basin sink in our backyard that we filled with dirt and last year she put in anemones and nasturtiums. This year she picked out sweet peas. We got a flower-seed catalog, so just for kicks and giggles I gave them a packet of sticky notes and they used up the whole package marking what they would like to plant in the garden. Most days they end up completely soaked and/or muddy, and I've learned to send them out barefoot. As of right now there are no fewer than 7 pairs of shoes drying on the back porch. We're still working on helping me weed, since they can't (yet) tell the difference between a weed and a plant that we want to keep. They do have their own buckets and shovels, but even today they eschewed those for the "real" tools. My 2yo grabbed the 6-ft shovel and my 4yo grabbed the rake and they went to town on the newly planted bed of kale and chard. I've discovered that unless the sprinkler is on, they usually just want to do what I'm doing, and the hardest part is keeping up with them (i.e. digging a hole fast enough for the seeds they're dropping). Gardening with kids is an adventure for me and them!

Hi again, Lilia. Sears outlet is a wonderful resource. I bought a great Samsung fridge with a teeny dent, yeah in the front, for my daughter, for a terrific price. Sears may be the largest appliance retailer in the world, and their outlet stores are the way they get rid of, or put back into circulation, the dents and scratches or reconditioned items. I had no qualms. Getting a 30" was easy for me as we did a gut reno, with all new custom cabinetry. But, keep in mind that a lot of the fancy, expensive stoves/ranges (not cooktops necessarily) have smallish ovens. Those buyers adore huge flames on their cooktops, and pay little mind to the size or functionality of their ovens(in my opinion). They lust after the searing capability of their stovetops and don't give a hoot about ovens. Tons of expensive ranges/stoves have ovens that are way smaller than 27" wall ovens. Cj47 who posted here is a particular hero of mine, and a respected cook and baker. She modestly gave her opinion and said,' oh, contact me'. Cj has, as I recall, 3 hungry teens. She has a Miele induction cooktop-I have a Bosch induction cooktop. Her cooktop is $800 more. My kids have long flown the coop. She cooks and bakes daily. I am an empty nester, with an anorexic husband(he really hates to eat!) and don't cook much anymore. Yes, my accumulated cooking time amounts to something, but not like Cj. I bake bread as a new hobby, she bakes for real. When Cj says something about cooking or her appliances, I listen, a lot. So maybe a 27" oven is less than your existing oven in interior dimensions but will function just fine with 2 or 3 sheet pans. think of bluestar, capital, aga, etc., owners with much smaller ovens-who have self smug faces because they have 15 foot high flames! Ask Cj, a real cook, who feeds her family well.

I love Smiling's idea of having this mounted in an easel-back frame. I hadn't even thought of going that route! My only problem is that there really is no place to prop it up there in our family room, which would be the ideal place for it. What looks like a credenza under the other framed artifacts is actually a tv lift cabinet. Our very large tv comes up out of the top of it. There is no place there to safely prop up a frame. Our kiva fireplace has a very narrow mantel. It's also used a lot, so the heat from it might be a negative. And, the TV tower that holds all the components is now topped with my DH's reconditioned turntable, which looks like heck. Perhaps on the real credenza behind our sofa in there. I've pretty much decided on an 8x10" custom-made shadowbox frame with 2 cutouts: one for the spearhead and one below it for an information card. I loved the idea of using some sort of map (topographical, geological, a map of migrations during the Early Archaic Period, but haven't found one that shows what I want. I've literally spent hours hunting for something on the internet (argh!). I will have my framer add an envelope onto the back to hold a copy of my COA. I'll keep the original in our safe deposit box. BTW, the estimated value of this one spearhead is a minimum of $600 and could climb up to $1,200! That blows me away, although I'm not selling it.

I am so gracious for all of these comments and feedback. You guys are really helping me to target my objective here. While I could spend more on a total remodel, it really is "unnecessary". I realize that the decent sized formal dining room is a plus. Also, optimally, at some point down the line, I'd like to extend the back of my home by five feet and add a floor (giving me a larger kitchen and enlarging the size of the bedroom above it, which is the same size). At that point, a total remodel would make the most sense. So perhaps for now, the NON PERMIT route might be the best path to take to get some modernity in the home while keeping the expenses low. I've been looking at homes in towns near me which have kitchens with similar square footage, yet sell for $200K+ more than my home. Here is an example. Their kitchen is 12x7. They have their refrigerator in an adjacent pantry (this home is over $200K more than my own!) A NON PERMIT route with "storage tricks" (i.e. slide out spice racks, smaller fridge, ceiling cabinets) sounds like the right path. I get to save on not having to move plumbing/gas/electrical. @mama goose_gw zn6OH and @mnmamax3 I see your point about the off-putting feeling of coming out of the powder room into the dining room/kitchen area. While this might be the cheapest way to get a powder room because of the existing closet door, since I'd need a permit to construct a powder room anyway, perhaps a better entrance would be a new door constructed along the door of the hallway, sealing off the existing closet door, or turning that existing closet into a shallower closet. I believe the wall down the hallway is load bearing. This could be the modified floor plan which puts the entrance to the powder room in the hallway. Would it be a 100% NO to put a 24" refrigerator where my drop leaf table pot rack and radiator are? If I were to put it in that spot, there would be 3" between the fridge and radiator. On the other hand, if I went with the 24" refrigerator in the place of where the 30" one is now, I'd get 18" of counter space between it and the 30" oven instead of the 8" I have now!