The snow was gone here a couple weeks ago and thank goodness for this weather so far! After the past couple years (and even last month) where we've had below normal winter and spring temps, it's a nice break. You can thank a positive NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) and a neutral to slightly positive Pacific Oscillation for that. We had gotten so accustomed to teens and twenties for highs every winter for weeks at a time and being pushed to consider that "normal" (which it isn't, at least here in SE PA), that what we are experiencing now seems "mild" and in reality, it's closer to "normal" and what the temps should be (highs mid - upper 30s and lows in the mid 20s for the coldest month of January). Since the beginning of December, I have watched below normal weather here in the east being idiotically cheered on by several commercial weather forecasters (some who finally admitted that they were "snow lovers" after weeks on end threatening that winter is coming... winter is coming.... look out.... And even concocting hypothetical graphical scenarios illustrating what would need to occur to theoretically produce even more severely below normal cold weather), while those same ones cheered on the above-normal temps elsewhere across the U.S. But god forbid, let us struggle to normal and slightly above and they get their panties in a twist. Meanwhile out west, temps are some 30 degrees above normal. :-\ Sorry for the weather rant...but I've been wanting to get that out. ;-) beanmomma - if you can remember the winter of 2001 - 2002, you might be able to predict whether your plants will come out of dormancy too soon. I have a couple new potted shrubs and a new containered tree (a plum that only needs 250 chill hours which I'm sure has gotten that by now) that I am watching too. Right now it seems that the temp range has been perfect for "chill hour" accumulation. But I think as long as we do hit or go below freezing at night, I expect the plants will hang on in dormancy awhile longer. Crossing fingers that we can make it through this month like this and squeak through February the same way, then we should be pretty much on our way to spring! :-)

patricia, My flooring: Kitchen has 16X16 tile (travertine look but budget friendly ceramic lol, so it's a nice oatmeal/taupe). My cabs are white, but right above the uppers next to the ceiling I have glass cabs that are deep red inside with lights for display (this used to be a soffit area and we did this during the kitchen remodel). My countertops are granite from HD-mojave cream, so it has some red, black, green, taupe, creame white. My living room/foyer, dining room, stairs and upstairs foyer/hallway are all hardwood flooring, it's a light natural oak , (I let my bf decide). I wanted to stain them dark).. Here's a pic that looks almost identical to what they look like: (ours are not polyed yet and doesn't have the orangey look but has the color variation) Our sofa /chair/ottoman is a dark taupe/cappucino colored leather and we will be keeping it. (I bought it after I painted my LR it's current color, which now looks like chocolate milk exploded, that's WHY all the downstairs is being repainted). My sofa table, LR tables are all the dark espresso/cherry like the DR set. I have held the paint chips up to the dining set and the sofa and they look good against it...but i def want to make it look richer and not wash it out! Currently the DR is a deep mocha color, however it makes the room look TOO dark, it's about 2 shades darker that the current LR color. I'm looking for colors to tie in the floor with the color variation, dark furniture, and play off the sagey/grey green of the kitchen (deep red accents) Our kitchen gets Western light, so the kitchen often looks brighter during the day, and a darker olive around sunset. The DR and LR get Eastern light (front of the home) but the LR always gets more light than the DR (more windows). The LR flows into the Kitchen,foyer and DR. The DR sets between the foyer/LR and Kitchen! This is a older home so it's not the super open layout. We did take out 34 inches of the wall separately the foyer/DR to bring more light in since it only has one set of double windows! Here was my inspiration wall color pic for MY kitchen: Here's my granite: *you can't really see the red in the pic above but it's there! I can post pics of my kitchen tonight, LR layout, and sofa for LR...i'm at work now and surfing for ideas! Shame on me!

1) I didn't even think about custom cabinets as an option because I assumed they would be too expensive. When I received a quote for the semi-custom brand I planned to order, I was shocked at the cost, so decided to get a few custom cabinet quotes just to see. They were surprisingly close in price (some custom lines were actually much lower). Since I wasn't limited to specific sizes, it greatly improved my whole design, allowed me to get a bigger sink and some other custom options. It also changed the entire look of what I originally planned. I went from full overlay, raised panel to beaded inset, recessed panel doors. It's really more like the look I wanted all along. 2) After demo, we decided to move the main kitchen doorway over a few feet, which allowed us to include a buffet which will house a much needed appliance garage and provide a lot of extra storage. 3) One of the last minute changes was to a farmhouse sink. I had originally ruled it out based on the likeliness of it chipping, but someone on GW mentioned the video demo of the Kohler cast iron apron front sinks and I was sold. 4) One change early on in the planning stages involved the windows. We had a large, beautiful bay window where the kitchen table was and a very small window over the sink. There was no question we were going to change the sink window to three much larger windows, but I was playing around with the idea of eliminating the bay window altogether and extending the run of sink windows. We did that and it brought in so much more natural light and we gained so much more cabinet space. It greatly enlarged the whole kitchen area.

Some of these are big mistakes IMHO. For example, the kitchen is tight but she really wants a lazy susan, which I agree is fine, but she couldn't fit the 36x36 so one place offered a 33x36, but she went with the one that was a 33x33 which leaves only 9" opening to get things in and out of the susan...way too small in my book, but she'll have to live with it. Another big mistake is, she's opened up the wall between the dr and the kitchen which is really nice. But she's determined to set the dr up for the holiday dinners which are maybe 1 or 2 days a year. She says the rest of the time they don't use it. I keep trying to tell her she will now that it's opened up...in fact that she'll get a lot of use out of it. But she won't believe me. To fit her crowd in for holidays she wants to put 2 tables side by side, but doesn't want to deal with a fixture hanging in the middle of the room between the tables, so she's centering a fixture over the table with the table only 24" away from one wall leaving a huge space in between the table and the island for the other 364 days of the year and a really tight fit for people to get in and out of that side of the table. But again, her house, her money, nothing I can do. I can see in the future she'll be buying a new fixture on a chain and swagging it to the middle of the room so it looks right. At least I somewhat won the argument to enlarge her island now that the wall is missing...not as large as I would like, but it's better than what she first wanted. And I'm still coaxing her into a color scheme that's less schizophrenic than what she currently wants. But it ain't easy. And I'm dealing with the frustration that I tell her something and she disagrees...her sister tells her the same thing and suddenly it's a great idea. Oh well.