When I first became interested in growing hoyas,it was strictly for the flowers. After about a year I fell in love with the foliage and that is now how I pick and choose which hoyas to add to my collection,the flowers are now just and extra bonus when they bloom!! Pug, I gave lil bit that name because he was such a runt for so long. As a kitten he was just rather short legged and stumpy looking and I didn't think he'd ever fill out to be the size of an average cat. And even now he's still on the smallish size for a male cat. His head is smaller than a normal male cat as well. His mother was a smoky grey short hair with a very petite frame and he sort of took after her.

yes, eastautumn, I was sure hoping the blood wouldn't be so..blood. It can be mistaken for something else. I was hoping, because of that, that even though the story is very recognizable, it's also not in your face so to say. Enough to make you look longer. Not enough to make people highly disturbed. Sheeisback, it's Judith. From the Book of Judith. nosoccermom, my DD who's in college and comes for weekends sometimes, and breaks, told me to treat her room like my own. "don't you want your own special space, Mommy?" -You're silly girl, I told her. My happiness is for her having her room whenever she needs it. Also, while she, after some rebel teenage years, asks me to design her room for her, says she trusts me completely, and loves art(even though she's more into modern art)I'm not sure she'd appreciate the painting hanging there. She's very sensitive. It's pretty big too. It will be very pronounced even in our living..her bedroom is small. Everything you'll see will be the painting. It will turn her room into mine. I don't want that. We payed two mortgages for two years and poured so much into that idiotic general remodel, precisely for everyone to have their own room, and feel like it's their own. The room already has a small wall sculpture (graduation present from us) and a portrait of a little girl that remind me my DD when she was about three or four..the resemblance is striking. that was a gift for one of her birthdays. I feel like I'm imposing with art that I choose..even out of the best intentions, and when she loves it. Fori, no..he's not like that:) I've decided to wait..both of us didn't say a word about the portrait since then. I wait. She waits. Maybe he waits too. He's an incredible person, my husband. It's often that we discuss ..it's rarely that we don't. I can't take other portraits away..first, I love them too. Second, he'll be offended rather than rejoiced. we usually buy art together. He got sad even when I wanted to take a figurative painting into the guest room. I wanted to take it there since it reminded me of one of my friends-we were very close once but got estranged, and it became harder for me to give it central spot. I explained why, and it didn't help. That the painting reminded me more of my estranged friend than of the happy sunny day we bought it together. Luckily we got two paintings then..by the same artist. So having one of them still central balances out my desire to put the other one on a back burner so too say. I think. Olychik, yes..growing experience. It's good..not every experience can be called growing . Here, I should have listened to my head though. My head told me not to do that:) My heart was: he'll understand. My husband spoiled me into becoming somebody else..frankly, somebody better. It's because of him that I became a person who can handle a dark portrait, because the inside is not that dark anymore. I've tried to tell him that. When he saw the box. I told him: -it's a portrait, and I'm not sure you'll like it, since it's not a happy one, but it's because of our marriage that I could dare to get it. I don't know whether he remembered it..he was in a hurry then. I could have opened that old photo album of mine, and share what I feel and why..which i understood thanks to you guys actually..thanks to this conversation. But I feel it's too early to do so. Maybe he'll ask himself.."why do you want her so, what do you see in her?" Then I'll tell hem what. I thought for a moment to cut it by the way. With a knife. The portrait. But I can't even tear somebody's printed face out of newspaper..:) I've no right to do so. I'm not the artist. And I don't want to kill her. Then I thought to send it back..to sell it..I don't know. But I can't bring myself to do that. I talk to stupid Roomba..reprimanded it now for knocking something off the floor..:) If Roomba is tiny bit alive to me-you can imagine what happens when I look at the portrait. I really really want her to stay. The more she stays the more I understand why I got her. We'll work it out, for sure. I don't know how, at this point. Just to add something non-related-gosh I'm so so envious of you all that you can express your thoughts in a more or less normal length posts, you know?

mtnrdredeux, I adore that raspberry/gold Limoges And it's perfect with the Herend Chinese Bouquet Raspberry! SO very pretty... I'm always amazed at how pretty and how different Chinese Bouquet looks in its various colorways. Can't say I'm at all fond of the new "black" and "dark sapphire", but I guess they felt they had to appeal to the young who appear to think that black dishes are very edgy and hip. It's a pattern one will never tire of and that will always look good. Herend is now the only china being completely hand-painted. Even the venerable Royal Crown Derby no longer is, but at least it's still totally made in England, all the rest of the potteries long gone to the far east. No one wants to learn how to do these skills any longer. There is no longer any company in England that can hand block print fabric. The traditional patterns have been outsourced to the far east, and the difference in the quality is noticeable (not as good) even though the prices have soared into the stratosphere. I wonder how much longer Hermes bags (at least the Birkin and Kelly) will continue to be all hand-cut and hand-stitched in France. It's no surprise that the prices of such continue to soar to unheard of heights.

nickel, my MIL used to have huge crockpots full of whole heads of fermenting cabbages. The whole house and beyond smelled of it. When I make them, my husband always asks “Is someone getting married?” as they are a staple at the Ukrainian weddings here. LOL, the smell definitely puts my husband in the polka mood.