Lucy, What a special message today. You are such a caring and loving person Lucy. And what a wonderful idea to name a new brug Arrant's Star. Bob, you will be in my thoughts today as well and hope that Peggy has a good diagnosis from the vet today. Mike my prayers are with you today. (((Hugs)))

An amazingly stuffed full priority mail bubble envelope arrived yesterday, so after dinner I sat down to dig in & giggled with delight as I pulled out so many fun things that Vina had creatively packed up & sent. She must know my mind or something because everything was perfect! _Butterfly card lavishly decorated in gold, 3 dimensions, & colorful along with friendly sentiments and a happy face! _2 recent Garden Gate magazines that make flower gardening looks so lovely & easy. I flipped through & will definitely use that tip to scarify seeds by putting them in a jar with sandpaper & shake, shake, shake! Perfect for those Sweet Peas. _an entire package of Godiva dark chocolates in an assortment of flavors. I won't tell how many I've eaten already. There's still some left. He, he. _Grow Ums Herb Garden that contained 8 coco pellets & labels along with 4 types of seeds (basil, cilantro, oregano, & parsley). Looks like fun to start them this way & I have lots of pots to make a nice display. There are 20 seeds in each packet, so there will have plenty for several pots and I can share with my daughter because she also loves the fresh herbs. _12 packets of seeds from her garden all labeled & sealed in tiny ziplocks. Not one stray seed! She sent me just what we'd love to try here. My hubby loves all the daisy type flowers like blanket flower or especially coneflowers that are big, bright or bicolored. The generous 12 she sent me were: 1. bee balm Marshall's Delight 2. Clematis Jackmani (I have several empty trellis here & just received two cedar ones from a friend who is moving in 3 weeks.) 3. Clematis Arctic Queen 4. Coreopsis Jethro Tull 5. Coneflower Ruby Giant 6. Coneflower Milkshake 7. Dianthus Siberian Blues 8. Nigella Love in a Mist all blue (I want to plant these along the row of raspberries provided they survived the storm as the trellis is down & there are tree tops & limbs on them.) 9. Gaillardia Fanfare 10. Rudbeckia Indian summer 11. Sweet Pea, everlasting (by the way someone told me these are great for improving the soil like other legumes, so plant away in new garden spaces to make way for vegetables or other perennials) 12. Yarrow Cerise Queen If all of this germinates & grows I'll have lots of plants to fill in the holes left by the storm! Thank YOU Vina for welcoming me in to the group & sending such a generous package that definitely brought me some winter cheer! Here's one of my favorite shasta daisy pics from a few years ago. Grandma gave this chicken on a stick to our daughter when she was young & she liked to surprise me with it by moving it around. She had said she tried to make the chicken look like it was standing on the daisy flower. Corrine

A bit late to the tea party but IF I were drinking tea right now it would be Earl Grey. I got caught in a snowball similar to remodel creep. And yes I have real snow here but that's a different story. I had found a vintage/antique parlor sofa set a couple of months ago. I'd been looking for one for a couple of years but the ones I found were $250 and needed to be recovered. The set- sofa, rocker and straight chair- I found was $79.99. Long story but I nearly broke a leg getting to the cash register with the tag! After I saw it in daylight I took it directly to ServePro to be cleaned. $107 later it was not clean enough for me to sit on so I threw a sheet over it until I could check on upholstery. Ha! Upholstery would be over $1500 for labor. So back to Chris' idea of paint. But since my furnace is on now I decided to take the winter to decide what color. The colors in the living room are all white/cream/tan/beige and everything blends into everything else. GW decorating forum said I needed a colored rug. So I started shopping for a rug I liked, in a color that would work at a price I could afford. My existing carpet is on the replace list so I switched to looking at carpet. Found the perfect one; on line not in any store near me; $36 a yard. Plus installation. Hmmm. Need to rethink this. Room is 15x15. So when I was in Habitat I asked about carpet. One of the guys working there said he had a couple in his shop. I could have them. I should call him that night and he'd let me know the size. They were smaller than I wanted but for free........I said I'd be back up that way in 2 weeks and would pick them up. In the meantime I was cruising eBay to see what I could see. Another long story ending with me bidding more on eBay than I should have but as luck would have it, someone got in at the last 5 seconds and out bid me. Just as well, I had bid more than I really wanted to spend but the rug made my heart sing. By this time I was considering other styles of rugs and found one with a black background, cheap, so I bought it now. Fast forward to today, I went to Habitat to get the 2 free rugs that I thought I was going to pick up from this guy's shop but one was sold already and the other was $25. OK. bought it. May not ever get it clean. The rest of the story is.........I was driving down the road one day (the day I bought the parlor set) and saw this skinny horse in a dry lot. Three days later I was driving that same road and the skinny horse was still there. On my way home my truck turned into the driveway. There was a guy working by a tractor. I visited with him for a few minutes about the skinny horse, left my contact information, went home and called my vet for advice. Next morning the people called and asked if I wanted the horse. So of course I said yes and since I didn’t have a trailer could they deliver. He was eating grass in my pasture 2 hours later. So far my free horse has cost $135 for blood draw and results, $105 for the Panacur Powerpac, teeth to be done at the vet’s office (his dad will haul the horse for me) but not until after winter. I don’t want him sedated, nervous, hot and sweaty and be outside in winter weather. That will be $110. He’s eating a 50# bag of feed and 2 bales of hay a week. And the good news is, he’s gained some weight!! Oh, and I forgot to mention, he’s 30 years old. Not TOO old for me and maybe I will ride again someday if he recovers! So the carpet/rug is back on hold. The other good news, I sprayed the sofa with Awsum from the dollar store, Sucked it with the shop vac as I sprayed it with cool water from a spray bottle. Working a small area at a time, it’s getting clean. I’m waiting for the area I did today to dry to see where to go next.

First, Shicksal, great news. You're coming along really fast. Today is an odd day. At 6:30 this morning I went to Wal-Mart to put money on my debit card and buy a little hotdog roller for this job. My friend who is an electrician is here. I've got my two pendants over the peninsula hung, but learned somehow, the switch to them isn't powered, but the outlets next to them is. He's replaced two dimmers with regular switches. One of the benefits of doing this alone is the onus being off changing my mind. These dimmers just kinda made me crazy, so regular switches they're becoming. I gotta tell you. I'm a walking posterboard for Lutron. Now 15 dimmers, 12 motion sensors, and other fun stuff. Love 'em. He's also going to put in some outlets. Sad. I'll have to find other places to hang my laundry. He and another friend put a kitchen cabinet on the wall for me. I can hang 'em, but lifting these two onto cleats is way beyond my balance. Remember, I have to stand on the counter, press my head against the ceiling and screw things in. Lifting over a cleat and not falling off the counter backwards is something I don't want to attempt. But, getting this on the wall frees up a bunch of space. I can load it full of crap, then make doors. While he's working, I've put 4 handles on cabinets in my MBR. Got about 30 to go. I primed the two shelves for the cleat cabinets. They're an odd shape, W3624s. Custom, of course, from H4H and S.O.L.I.D. 3/4" maple. Minus shelves, so I cut those out of 3/4" MDF and will probably paint them a coral BM color I love. I've remudded the chewed up MBR wall. I've sanded and mudded yet again. I've gotten rid of 4 medium sized boxes of lighting materials, and a box of thrift store drawers I bought for their hardware and Blum release switches still attached. $2.00 a drawer box. Yeah man! I emptied the DW. Like to load it, hate to unload it. This was probably the greatest accomplishment of the day. Did a load of laundry/uniforms and got them into the dryer. Changed the cat litter. They're all happy with me. Arranged the MBR furniture and will bring the cabinets still in the kitchen back, since to paint I took a bunch down. I'm making room all over the place. I'll tell you. Lethargy, thy name is Christine. I hate this heat and incessant sun. This is more than I've accomplished all darned week, and it's only to kill time while someone else is working! Keep up the great work, all! You encourage me. Greenhaven, have a FUN time! Happy 4th, all!