I don't know anything about prices in NJ, but in Michigan I spend between $85-130 week on groceries for a family of 4, but my budget isn't as tight as theirs is right now. I buy lots of expensive things such as cereals, granola bars, extra lean beef . . . I do shop sales and use coupons for cereal and granola bars, but if I were in a money crisis, I could certainly make due with less pre-packaged junk food and focus on nutrition vs. convenience. BTW, I was talking with a friend from out of state who in the same conversation told me about her husband losing his job and her new $32 haircut that she wasn't happy with! Some people just don't get it! When she visited this summer, she wanted to stop at the convenience store for a soda when she had some at the house and we were only 2 minutes from home! Silly and wasteful habits!

I think you need to eat at the table every night as a family, IMHO. How you achieve that in a particular house is different for each house/family. The children need to sit up straight in their chairs, learn to set the table properly, learn to have conversations at the table while eating with "table manners" looking "at" each other, taking turns to speak etc. They cannot learn to do this in a few weeks. This takes "years" of practice before they can do this seamlessly in "adult social" situations. Even if you only have a formal dining room does not mean that you can't use it everyday for dinners. Is it far from the kitchen? One of my friends swapped the dining room with the family room which is open to the kitchen. They put the dining table in the "family" room open to the kitchen and put the TV in the closed off "dining room". They are much happier. They feel that the kids can now eat at the table and the family does not have to listen to TV when in the kitchen..... I am a huge advocate of closing off the intrusion of TV. Our only TV is in the basement. In my household, I have only 1 dining table that is open to the kitchen. We have very modern open floor plan. I do not have closed off room for dining. My kids and our family eat at the table every evening. I also have an island where our family of 4 can sit comfortably and eat breakfast together. In this arrangement, we are slightly short of "eating" spaces when we have 3 families together for dinner and the groups are not separated. When there are 2 tables in the house (dining room plus a breafast table) then the children and adults can be separated more easily for family entertaining. This is the observation I have made regarding our family set up (1 large table) and other families that have larger houses with formal dining rooms. Unfortunately, generous kitchen plus formal dining is hard to achieve in homes that are less than 3000 sq ft, I think. If your house is not big enough to have both, I would put an island in the kitchen for kids to do homework, hang out with mom AND have generous storage for the kitchen, keep the dining room and use the dining table for daily meals.

Are we related? I LOVE the Ether chandelier and it was my first choice for the entry (double-height) light -- I'd misread the price. Ha ha ha on me! And then I found the tumbleweed chandelier (Sunlight Chandelier by Trans Globe Lighting) and I realized once again that everything happens for a reason! (Meaning, I found a fixture I like a lot with a price which allows me to sleep at night, but that doesn't mean I don't still have thoughts about it. Although, I'm now dreaming of the Tord Boontje Blossom Chandelier -- yowza! Wow, those fixtures you linked are terrific. You have some eye! I am definitely coming to you when I need help. The big square fixture is by Knikerboker Lighting, from Archisesto, which is a firm run by our very own giacomo_it! It's the Qubo 55cm and I love it love it love it. Here it is in our dining room: We only have two of the Louis Ghost chairs as well, and you can't see them in this photo: they're flanking the mizuya (which we use as a buffet, on the far right). I got them from eBay for significantly less than DWR. Yippee! We have four typical Louix XVI wood chairs from Ethan Allen and then two Varenne Opera Chairs from Casa-Midy at the heads. I love those chairs .... Our table is also big and heavy, so I totally know what you mean about the Ghost chairs not being weighty enough. The wall against which the mizuya and Ghost chairs are is mirrored, so I esp. love having the Ghost chairs there. My children (four and two) also like sitting in "The Glass Chairs," and their little female friends get a big kick out of them as well! (I think it's something princess-y, but since I have sons that's a topic which has totally passed me by!) (This is my kitchen. See what I mean about traditional?)

As with everything else, not every individual learns the same way or masters a skill the same way. Great teachers present alternatives for students in the hope that one will make sense and stick. Absolutely. My son also had a difficult time in school because of teachers who refused to be flexible to address his needs. He was in middle school when home PCs were not prevalent. That poor kids could simply not put his thoughts down in writing. We know now that has dysgraphia. I went and spoke to his teachers asking that he be allowed to use his computer for assignments. His Science grade shot up to straight A's. His science teacher suggested oral presentations. On the other hand he had an ass for a Social Studies teacher who continued to mark correctly answered answers wrong because the handwriting didn't meet his criteria. DS's problems started with ear and speech problems, leading to spelling problems in elementary school. It took a second grade teacher to recognize the issue. He said DS spelled just fine if you took how he heard and spoke the words into consideration. Previously they wanted to hold him back. By the fifth grade he was put in a special "focus" reading group. Stuff like you would see in kindergarten. This despite the fact he had been reading sci-fi novels at home since 2nd grade and his most requested gift every year was the world almanac. After a huge war with the district I had him moved to a different school. He was immediately place in the high reading group at that school His new teacher wanted to see how he did by starting him at the top, not the bottom. He did just fine. From D and F grades from the previous school to A and B grades with an occasional C. Then in middle school the struggle began again with the writing. By high school he detested school. He purposefully failed his classes so he would have to go to night school. The tech magnet he looked forward was horrendous for him. He knew far more than the teachers who were supposed to be instructing him. One teacher would frequently call DS at home for tech support for the teacher's home computer. Same teacher almost failed DS for not completing lab work. LOL Those were extremely rough years for us. We couldn't afford private school and homeschooling hadn't become secular yet. I became "that mom" who actually blackmailed the district into moving my kid out of the horrid 5th grade he was in. Basically DS turned out to be a kid with a "genius" (we hate that word) IQ, who has a photographic memory of the written word. Unfortunately he fell through the cracks of the public school system. Got passed over for gifted programs in the name of diversity, never had his achievements recognized. He was too "different".