Good to know I'm not alone. Annie, the coconut ones are just meant to be eaten like candy, but I've also made plain and chocolate coated plain ones and cut them smaller for cocoa. December's Fine Cooking magazine has a cake on the cover that is topped with homemade marshmallows cut in tiny cubes. On another forum, someone is packaging homemade marshmallows along with a cube of chocolate (molded in an ice cube tray) speared on a candy cane stick. The idea is to heat a cup of milk, then stir with the chocolate cube/peppermint stick to melt the chocolate into the milk and top with the marshmallows - upscale cocoa. I'm going to try to remember that idea for next year. I'll take pictures! LOL Jane

This was a perfect time for your bench post to resurface. After I read it originally, I went to Toscano's website and saw this chest and ordered it for my foyer or dining room if it doesn't look good in the foyer. The other pic is of the craigslist coffee table that picked up last week which will go in the living room right off the entry. It's got a black marble top, hardwood and was on the same sale that you orderd from. Most of their other chests were too ornate for me. Just got a postcard from them saying that because of high demand, it will take longer for them to ship than originally thought. I can either opt out of the order or wait a bit longer. Sooo, any thoughts yea or nay? I got it for $350+ $50 shipping(I think, I'm still out of town and don't have myrecords).

I am probably not going to be posting many pics when asking questions any more because I find that too many people are only looking at the pictures, NOT reading the text, and thus their responses are either directly contrary to something I've said in the text (for instance "get rid of XYZ" or "the color of ABC is wrong" when I've already said in the accompanying that I love XYZ so it's not going anywhere or that the color of ABC is really more toward mauve when it shows up as puce in the picture) or have nothing at all to do with what I'm asking. I find that intensely frustrating. I have almost no pictures of my current house because it's still in "whatta dump" stage. No paint (walls need a TON of work), short on furniture, dreadfully designed kitchen that's a perpetual mess because there's nowhere to put things... and forget outside pictures, a few weeks ago we ripped out almost every trace of vegetation outside (and will not be replacing it until next year, probably fall '09 to get the end-of-season sales) due to a honeysuckle invasion that I swear was growing by feet per day and was starting to attack the porch. I'll happily post pictures of my previous house because I think I did a pretty decent job with it. We're not on Google Maps but we're kinda-sorta on Google Earth - but the best you can get is a fuzzy whitish blob in the midst of a bunch of other fuzzy whitish blobs on a fuzzy grayish stripe. No closeups. Our town is clearly not a high priority as far as Google is concerned! WRT security - we live in a somewhat iffy neighborhood so I am one HECK of a lot more worried about the people a dozen houses down the street breaking in looking for meth money than I am about someone trying to track me down via the Internet (I Googlebate every so often just to see what's out there re: me) from half a dozen states away. I've been email-stalked and -harassed a bunch of times in my 18 years online because of my outspoken ;-) opinions and my ISPs have always been helpful in dealing with it. However, I've had meet-ups with a whole slew of people I've met online over the years, twice flying nearly cross-country to do so, and it's been grand fun.

I found another thread by you on the 2nd page of the forum. Here is a link that might be useful: trying to pick paint colors....prairie style home - tans?