Lifesblessings, Critters are funny. I wonder what it was? Our "funniest" creatures were the raccoons we encountered the first summer we lived here. They'd come jump up on a table on the front porch, peer in the window, and knock at the window. We didn't encourage them, and in fact, moved the table away from the window to discourage them. (Raccoons can be really vicious.) We have a lot of possum visitors too. One day I opened the front door and the dogs ran out. Apparently there was a baby possum sitting on the porch railing. That little thing scurried right up the porch post and clung to the post with all its might. My least favorite visitor was the mama skunk and her four babies. She was raising them in the woods south of us, but brought them out of the woods, across our property and down to the creek every morning and every evening. We really didn't see her very often, but we knew they were around. One day, our niece and nephew were visiting and we took the two dogs for a walk after dinner...on leashes. As we returned to our driveway, the kids unclipped the dog leashes and then we spotted mama and the 4 little skunkies crossing the driveway. (sigh) First, the young dog got skunked. Then the older dog went running to him because he was yelping and crying, so she got skunked. We humans narrowly avoided being skunked. Getting rid of the skunky smell took a while. Whatever your creature was, at least it didn't bite you, etc. Hissing and growling is fairly mild, if you know what I mean. Still, I hate "surprises" like that. My worst surprise was being roared at by a cougar which is not something I ever would have expected. It is always something. My best surprise was the herd of five does who lived in a clearing in the woods when we bought the place. They got used to us pretty quickly, and the oldest one seemed quite fond of us. She used to bring her newborn fawn to the garden ever year....leaving it on the edge of the woods between the woods and the garden--about 30' from where I was working. She always brought them when they were teeny-tiny....just days old.....and left them there for an hour or so while she (I'm guessing) wandered around and looked for food. I loved watching the fawn and felt like I was being used as a baby sitter. Living among plentiful wildlife can be very interesting. Dawn

Hi from Anne, Actually, the cross stitch and other embroidery kits were not pieced. They were what we call wholecloth quilts. You got the size of the bed with the embroidery kits. Bucilla was one of the kit companies for those kits and I think they are still available today. They had many kits and the cross stitch and other embroidery kits were really popular. It kind of went with the 50's where the people considered all the hand work to be kits. Men often did leather work and copper work (not to say women didn't do that but the men considered those manly man crafts) and the women did tole painting, crocheted bed dolls (they were plastic dolls with crocheted big skirted dresses.), crocheted and quilted potholders and some quilts were made too, but mostly people were trying to get their lives back on track to recover from WWII, and then Korea came along on the heels of WWII. And there was the communist scare, and people were busy building bomb shelters in their back yards. I wonder today how many of those are still intact? We had men returning to work and women leaving the more industrial world, though they did still work, but more things like teaching, nursing and secretarial work. There was a focus on getting women to "act like women" whatever that meant. It meant women worrying about cooking nutritious meals, housecleaning, having their hair look just right, having frilly and basically useless aprons, and very pretty dresses with shoes and purses matching and women wore gloves and hats to church and going out. People focused on banning books. Did you know that there is a list of banned books every year. In the 1950s, I think was actually an attempt to ban Nancy Drew books as being shallow and poor literature, but in reality, Nancy Drew represented the new woman, having a nice car and able to be proactive and solve crimes (they were not mostly what we could consider crimes today). I read them all, and to this day I still could go back and read them again and enjoy them as much as then. A childhood friend and I would read the same books and then act the parts in her backyard of Nancy Drew. So much fun in those days. We did not have shopping centers or plastic (i.e. credit cards) yet, so we traveled on the bus to go downtown, visit all the five and dime stores as they were called then, try on hats and go visit Mode O'Day shops. How many remember those? How truly wonderful they were. And we had layaway. It was exciting to buy something on layaway and look forward to getting it. I guess cars and appliances were sold on time payments. Did you know that the sewing machine was the first thing to be sold on time payments, and within a year of when they came out, some 75% of households had one. It is funny to see a quilt of those times, for often they were almost totally hand sewn, but they would always use the machine to show that they had one for it was prestigious. And they often hired women to sit in the store windows and sew what are recognized as heirloom quilts with fancy quilting (I actually saw an exhibit in Los Angeles of quilts Barbara Brackman, our favorite quilt expert collected, and it had one or two of those as I recall. I always say that because some days I don't recall what I had for breakfast the other day. Chuckles. Well, that era brings back a lot of memories. Gals wore summer dresses that were full and pretty and those underskirts that made the skirts stand out and we had matching sweater sets and beautiful straight skirts with pleats in the bottoms and other beautiful styles. When women wore pants, they often were capris with men's style shirts with sleeves rolled up and the bottoms out with curves on the sides. Saddle shoes and pedal pushers were common at school. And the men and young guys looked so cool with their duck cuts and their cool pink or gray or turquoise shirts and nice pants with belts. No bums hanging out with ugly underwear, tattoos or shaved heads or beards and long hair in braids or pulled back, which comes from the prison crowd. Ask me how I know that. I am a student of criminal justice, and next year when I am almost 75, I should graduate. Whoo hooo! So I see a lot of documentaries and photos of the criminal crowd in prisons, and that is exactly what these guys wear. Pretty ugly. I love the days when men always had nice haircuts and nice shirts and pants and they were all handsome. Have a great Thanks Giving everyone who reads this. I purposely spelled it that way. We can give thanks for all we have and we can give to those who do not. Anne always

Have you asked Lowes if they still have the paint color in their computer system? After they removed the line, I had 3 MS colors mixed in the sample size. I know my local Lowes gets a lot of people who "float" that area, some that know the basics of the system, how to mix the paint, but may not be totally clued in on how to search for a color. Or just too lazy to do it. I know that there are good people who work there, but sometimes it's kind of the McDonalds of home improvement (just my opinion!). Also, it could be the spelling is wrong. The bird is actually a mourning dove, so the color might actually be mourning dove gray. That could be why they couldn't find it. If you have the color number, that might be even more helpful. You might want to consider asking at Sherwin Williams. Back in the early 2000's they carried a version of Mourning Dove from MS's paint line. The word on the street is that they'll still mix Martha's old colors. Their paint sample is something like $4 for nearly a quart of paint.

I use coverlets because once I went through menopause I was always too darn hot no matter what. I found a hydrangea quilt by Martha Stewart for Macy's. It is very springy looking IMHO, however I have the double/queen in our country home and It is about 5 inches too short. I have the same quilt at our other home and bought it in the king size for a queen bed because my other one was too short. The king size one is too long. You would think that instead of being chintzy good old MS would have insisted on a true queen size in addition to twin, full, and king. A coverlet meant for a double bed is just not quite long enough for a queen bed!