Hi, My Sunday School class is having their Christmas Potluck/Party this Thursday night, and I'm in charge of decorating the tables for the event. Another lady is bringing table cloths, and my centerpieces are going to be pretty and pretty inexpensive. I will be cutting fresh greenery from my pine trees and laying boughs of it beside the floating candle centerpiece. You can use most any clear glass dish, candle holder, etc. for it. I'm going to fill it halfway with water, add small pieces of greenery and fresh cranberries....put in one white or cream floating candle....and you've got your centerpiece. I've used this before, and it is so simple and and festive. Hope this idea helps. Rosie

I lived in a ballroom for five years. It was part of an 1820 addition to a 1770's coaching inn in New England. The ballroom was 40' long by 20' wide, with a 16' high barrel vaulted ceiling. Lots of windows. Gorgeous honey-brown hemlock floor. Narrow kitchen and bath tucked in on one long side. Massive crown molding where the walls started to curve into the ceiling--made a ledge that my cats would perch on. Fireplace at each end. I loved living there. Watching the sunlight come in the windows at the east end in the morning and stretch all the way to the far wall 40' away, lighting up the floorboards. The mellow old brick wall at one end--originally the exterior of the inn, until the addition was put on. The space. The light. The openness. I'll admit, the first night in such a large space with the ceiling so high overhead was a bit odd. I felt sort of unprotected. But that feeling vanished very quickly. The building was brick, so not drafty. The landlord had put in modern, energy efficient windows and added a ton of insulation to the ceiling, as well as putting in a special energy efficient heating system, so it was not as bad to heat as I was afraid it would be. The big problem was the floor, which was, back in it's early days, some kind of special "sprung" flooring, with a bit of give for dancing. By the time I lived there, it creaked. Everywhere. Even when my cats walked on it. I put down area rugs everywhere, mostly to define living spaces, but also for the benefit of the tenants below me. Not that the rugs helped much. The other apartments were much more chopped up into little rooms, that would have been bedrooms and dining rooms and parlors in the original inn. One had the original kitchen fireplace, big enough for people to stand in, with bread ovens on the side. One had a cute little corner chimney, with shelves built-in over the fireplace. The building was L-shaped, with a kind of a courtyard in the back, where you could barely hear the traffic noise. Coming home after a hectic day's work, it was like entering a quieter time and place. I had always thought that I didn't like open-plan houses. What that apartment taught me was that I did like open-plan living spaces. What I don't like are open-plan kitchens. I loved the fact that the kitchen was in its own room, not visible from the rest of the space. I could leave dishes in the sink without feeling like I had to jump up and clean them. Cooking smells didn't permeate the entire space. I left there when I finished grad school and moved back closer to family. But I still miss it.

Our contractor uses decore-ative specialties door and draw fronts. We are refacing. Any opinions pro or con.

When I was young, somewhere around 5 - 8 or so, I was doing something in church, maybe squirming, that displeased Dad, so he reached over and gave the lobe of my ear a substantial tweak. I made a sound of protest, rather loudly. Wrong move. Dad led me out of the church, across the lot to the church shed, built when we had horses drawing buggies, with concrete walls and a high, metal roof. I think that he took me to the far end of the shed and ministered to my legs and rear end with his belt. On the conclusion of the exercise, we were headed back into church, with my hand in Dad's, and I, embarrassed, said that I wasn't going back in there. Dad gave me a choice - back into church ... or a return to the shed. I chose to return to church (as the least unpalatable of two evils, possibly?). It was mid-June, with all of the windows in church open, and after church, Dad asked the man of the family that occupied the next pew for many years whether they'd heard any of the operation. "Every crack ... and every yell", was the reply. Ole joyful ... who made the mistake, a couple of years later, of leaning over and advising younger brother, when he began doing a similar activity in church, that he'd better stop ... or Dad would take him out to the church shed