I went to a place today called "The Great Indoors" They were closing the store (just like every other store in that poor strip mall today) I hit the jackpot! I bought 21 knobs that were priced $6.79 a piece and I got them 90% off at only .67 a piece and 6 handles that were priced $12.45 a piece for only $1.25 each. Total for the entire kitchen cost me under $25! Should have cost over $200!

I have several different answers: Getting used to needing some less used item and having it flash in my head where it was in the old kitchen probably took at least a year to get over, even though I had been out of the old kitchen for the better part of a whole year. Getting used to the new cooking appliances and how to get the most/best out of them took almost no time to start, but really a year or two to perfect. Getting used to the way more functional layout took the blink of an eye. I've done almost no rearranging since I settled in, and what I have done has been because of new items that the new kitchen enabled me to use. So no time for getting used to what's where, assuming I remembered (easy to remember where the knives are, but I lost my grill press when I was first putting things away (the drawers weren't lined yet, so I put it in a cupboard) and I still haven't found it four years later after looking absolutely everywhere three times.) Getting used to the way it looks so that I don't constantly go "oooh" every time I walk in took about half a year. I still sit back and admire sometimes, but that frisson does dissipate as familiarity grows. From crush to love. :) Getting used to cooking in general? I had trial by fire. Other than a few sandwiches and the like, the first thing I made in my new kitchen was Seder for more than 25 people. There's none of that worry about messing up the new things when that many people are coming for a dinner which has to be made completely from scratch. And once you've used every single part of the kitchen in one fell swoop, it becomes a real working kitchen. So that took about a week. :) All of it spent prepping and cooking and using everything.

We are using a custom cabinet guy out of Libertyville. Our kitchen cabs will cost about $25g, but it's all walnut with all the bells and whistles. Another place to check out that was very competitively priced is www.buildmykitchen.com. They have a couple of showrooms in chicago and surrounding suburbs and were easy to work with during our design phase. side note about Abt: I have loved our experience there. They beat everyone's prices and the salesperson I've worked with (Barbra Tector) was incredible. Spent hours with me on a couple different occasions (I took forever to come to decisions!!!) and frequently emailed to make sure all questions were answered. Good luck!

Grandad..... no..... though I answer to Grandma to a couple of sprogs. Frieda, you are very partly right in that'Dido' is from classical legend of course - Queen of Carthage - and I love references like that; also poetry, yes, and I particularly love Purcell's opera 'Dido and Aeneas' with her dying lament, 'When I am laid in earth' before she climbs her funeral pyre as her lover sails away to found 'another Troy on Italian soil'. The opera also has a very beautiful viola solo - I used to be a viola player and have played it in several productions, up and down and here and there. But also, in another life I was a Diana.... let's not go into that, shall we..... but when I had to change, I realised I can't seem to let go of my name totally - it's me. So 'Dido' was one of the closest I could manage: even so, simply Dido was already taken so I had to put a 1 after it. Reallly, I should have registered as Dido Jones which I now consider to be my alter ego, though at first it seemed strange. For a while I felt like a different person, having a different name. Now I've just reverted to my old, grumpy, usual self. And, to cut a long story short, I suppose I look fairly Welsh (what I am - hence the adopted surname 'Jones'), being smallish (5'2", 56lbs), with dark-brown eyes, ex-dark hair (now white) and of an 'excitable' nature (have been known to throw things like ashtrays, in the olden days when there were such things lying around in any old places) Dido