Hi Jane, Oh yes, what a mess it was! Oh no, not to worry, don't feel bad Jane. It's really my own fault. Even if I didn't get a response on this forum yet, I'm sure I would have used the first recipe anyway. From what you said, I used a ton more veggie oil than I should have and should have known better then to use soooo much. I used 1 cup in a spay bottle, mixed with 2 c of water, some dish soap and I threw in a decent gulp of rubbing alcohol, then shook it up real good. The bottle had to be constantly shaken while spraying because the oil kept separating. It was a very DUMB move on my part! I then hung the plants down in the basement (no carpet) so they had a place to drip and they did, just s little. Anyway, everything is all better know, plants are washed down, and the sprayer, well, that took a little more cleaning but, it's clean. I don't think anything on the plants survived all that oil. It was like the gulf oil spill and the valdez all over again in my sink! lol. First oil mix attemp... Live and learn! Billy Rae

Here is a DIY webiste with how to make a home made welder out of two microwave ovens. Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.instructables.com

That's awesome, thank you all! Fortunately I'm not going to deal with any glass and won't need to cut any tile, though we might do a couple triangles for detail. We're going to try to do 2 colors (light and dark) or 3 if we can swing it and contrast looks good. jess yours came out nice, I hope mine comes out as straight! cpartist very interesting. Using powerpoint I was able to get very close (all my blocks are .005 inches off so I can't follow the template exactly) and was planning to tape that to a cardboard box and then lay down mesh and glue tiles. Is that similar to what you did with the gator board or did that have another purpose? Never worked with it before. That's awesome though, yours came out really nice too. I wish I could just draw on the wall for mine too but these tiles are pretty small! Really appreciate all the feedback. Here's the design, will post pics in a few weeks when we actually make it!

Sour Orange or Bitter Orange or Seville Orange is Citrus x aurantium (subsp. amara according to some, amara meaning bitter). They are the same citrus and the extent to which the different varieties may differ is similar to the difference between Washington and Valencia sweet oranges for example. Different cultivars of course exist but they are the same citrus tree. All of them produce bitter-sour round fruit, with more or less coarse rind which becomes deep orange in maturity (at least when grown in a med type climate). and pale yellow--greenish pulp. The leaves have a pronounced elongated petiole and the tree usually carries some long thorns on the more vigorous shoots. Bitterness is extremely pronounced so the name 'sour orange' is kind of a misnomer. Yes they are sour but most of all they are bitter. The fruit is inedible when raw regardless of the level of maturity. They have a distinctive perfume both in the rind and in the leaves which cannot be confused for other citrus. This is what has been used for rootstock for centuries and for English 'Orange' Marmalade. I don't know what might be called sour orange in the Americas but if it is not what I have described it is not Sour Orange. Not every sour tasting 'orange' is a Sour Orange. The name 'Seville Orange' is of course an old name the English importers gave it a long time ago and may now be a legally protected name. But this is just a commercial issue. In Greek the name for the tree 'nerantzia' has the same roots as naranja and aurantium. The trees were introduced in the Med region before sweet orange was. Bergamot is really a different citrus, most probably a cross between SO and a limetta (which gave it its distinctive flavour). In the East Med we grow sour limettas which carry the same perfume as Bergamot orange but look like lemons or citron.