My cousin in Tennessee is interested in native wildflowers and I want to surprise her if I am able to find any. Please let me know if you have any and we can work out some type of an exchange. Thank you.

tikilyn, in response to you question about what is "inefficient" about the kitchen... The main problem is that you've stuck in what is sometimes referred to on the Gardenweb kitchens forum as a "barrier island." Basically that means, you can't walk between sink and fridge, or between fridge and stovetop , or between sink and wall oven, without having to walk AROUND the island. It is a barrier to straight line travel between those points that you most often have to reach. Those who actually cook full meals in their kitchens (as opposed to just heating something up in the microwave 95% of the time) find barrier islands to be INTENSELY inefficient and annoying. It seems like everyone wants a kitchen island because they just look so "cool" and "modern." All of the kitchen design magazines feature them prominently on the front covers till it seems like, if your kitchen doesn't have an island, well you just might as well face it, you're a total loser. LOL! In reality, properly planned so that the island is to one side of what used to be called the "work triangle," a kitchen island can be a joy. But, poorly planned so that it IMPEDES your work, a kitchen island can turn out to be the bane of a cook's existence! I deliberately chose NOT to have a kitchen island and I couldn't be happier. I have a large L shaped peninsula that serves the same purpose as far as giving company a place to gather and giving a fabulous "bar" for serving purposes and for casual meals. But my work triangle is totally "barrier" free. Before you finalize you plans, do spend some time reading on the kitchen forum and post your kitchen plans there for feedback. There are some folks there with a huge amount of experience with kitchen design and they are very willing to offer advice. They can help you achieve not only a beautiful looking kitchen but also on that works beautifully! Next, beyond the whole kitchen thing, while I realize that your current plan is just a rough sketch, there are a couple of other things that I think you should take into account before getting too attached to it. (I won't bug you about the front-facing garage b/c we've already gone over that before on another thread and you've said your DH WANTS a front facing garage - so that's settled. ) 1) That powder room near the front foyer you have in your new plan is simply not deep enough to have the toilet and sink face-to face-like that. Men need a certain amount of room in front of a toilet to stand and aim. In your currently designed powder room, a guy would either have to stand to one side of the toilet (heaven help your walls!) or press his backside up against your vanity sink. NOT good! A 5 x 5 powderroom will fit a toilet and sink side-by-side with an entry door on an adjacent wall. For a face-to-face sink and toilet with a door on the wall between them, the room can be a narrow as 3 feet but it needs to be at least 6.5 foot long - and even then the door will need to open outward or it'll be nearly impossible to get into/out of the room. 2)And regarding the placement of that powder room... I suspect that many of your guests are going to feel very very uncomfortable using a powder-room that basically opens up directly into the Living Room. When a toilet is too close to a living area or another room where guests actually gather and linger, there is a concern (sometimes unconscious) that any noises made in the bathroom might be heard by other guests. Even worse, no one wants to worry that, if they make a bit of a stinky, someone in the adjoining room will smell it when they open the powder room door. Many people don't even like using a powder room where the flushing toilet can be heard from the public rooms. Having powder-rooms open off of a hallway where no one lingers helps to avoid these concerns. Guests may never say anything to you about how your powderroom makes them uncomfortable. Instead, they'll just shorten their visits so that they can head home (or to the nearest corner gas station) before they really NEED to use your PR. Strongly suggest that you find a less conspicuous location for the powder room. 3) If the bathroom for bedroom 1 is not going to be shared with the kid's TV room area as it was in the original plan you built yours off of, why not swap the bathroom with the closet space. That way you can put a window in the bathroom for natural light AND, if the closet is also going to serve as "safe room" space (as suggested on the plan you built yours from), it would be better if it were NOT on an outside wall anyway. 4) Wouldn't it be nicer to swap the master bathroom and that big closet so that the bathroom was along the outer walls and you could have more windows in the bathroom? 5) With no door between the living room and the kid's TV room, noise from the kid's area will bleed into the living room and vice-versa. 6) No way you're going to fit two L-shaped sectional sofas into a 12X12 TV room as you've shown. I've looked at a bunch of L-shaped sofas and the dimensions for each leg runs about 85" long. Two stuck end to end to form a solid U would require a space 85" x 170" not even counting space to walk around them or between the two unit. 170" is over 14 feet. If you're going to insert "furniture" into your drawings, be sure it is drawn reasonably closely to scale or you will confuse yourself about what will and will not fit in your planned spaces. The sofas you show in the Living room are close to scale. The ones in the theatre room are about half the size they should be! Lots of non-architects do design their own homes. But I think you'll find that everyone who has ever done so and been truly happy with the final result will tell you that they went through literally dozens of totally different basic layouts before they finally settled on one. And then, when they finally had a basic layout they were generally happy with, they tweaked it hundreds of times before they finally had a really great plan that they were truly satisfied with. If you're not planning to begin building for at least a year, you have lot of time to tweak and re-tweak you ideas. But, unless you really really love sketching house plans, unless you happily spend entire weekends revising your drawings for the umpteenth time, unless you find yourself sketching brand new possibilities on paper napkins while having dinner and on the backs of envelopes while standing in line at the post office, unless you fuzz out in the middle of movies because the camera happened to give you a momentary glimpse of a perfect hallway and it set you to thinking about how you could incorporate that into YOUR home, unless you wake up in the middle of the night and sneak out of bed to go tweak your plans yet again b/c you've just realized that if you move that wall 4 inches to the left, you can solve a problem that has been bugging you for weeks about just where the refrigerator ought to go... well, you might you really might be better off just turning the whole job over to a professional architect. LOL!

Sophie has the original set, but I'm pretty sure she has an easier version, or a condensed version as well. I'm sending her to check.... Okay, she's back, and she brought two. :) She has one that's a "Great Illustrated Classic". It says on the back cover, "In a specially adapted version by Eliza Gatewood Warren". It's hardcover, has 14 chapters, has large print, and has a black and white picture on every other page. I'm flipping through, and I'm thinking it might still be difficult for your grand-daughter if she's struggling to read. The second is a "Troll Illustrated Classic". It's "Retold by Joanne Mattern" and "Illustrated by Renee Graef". It's a thin paperback, but there's still quite a bit of writing to it. I think it would be appropriate. There are colour pictures on every page. It seems to be easier reading. I THINK the first one I mentioned is simply condensed, whereas the second is rewritten at an easier reading level. I could scan a page of each to give you a sample, if you'd like....

I don't normally bother to count but am trying to take notice of what I do every day, like give myself marks out of ten for the quality of the dinner I made (never better than 8 as I am more of an arranger of food than a cook!) and keep a diary. It helps to exercise my brain. The count I did for this thread was helped by the local library, listing in alpha order the titles I have borrowed, thus warning me of anything I have read before in the last 5 years since the program was set up. After some 60 years reading adult books, there is a huge possibility of re-reading, as you may imagine. However I particularly like Golden Age mysteries and can still find some authors I have overlooked. Netla, did you ever get a copy of 'Penhallow'? I recall that you mentioned that you wanted to read it.