Because I am obsessed with having bulbing plants in bloom indoors in winter, I bought some more today. Today I added these 2 Amaryllis varieties: Minerva (red and white) and Apple Blossom (pink and white) and another pot of paperwhite narcissus.

I have always wanted to do that. I may try if I get to town before thanksgiving.

It is so much fun. Nothing says "it is winter time and I am dying to have something growing" more than a shelf, bookcase or counter covered in pots of forced bulbs. If that's not enough for me, there's always cyclamens, aloes, Christmas and Thanksgiving cacti and Dutch hyacinth for winter color. Oh, and let's not forget African violets.

I am going to hang 2 lights in the end window of camper and plant some tomatoes tomorrow. I was trying to save seed but forgot them so they sprouted. I hate to kill them so I will grow them. Experiment.

I will be probably be going to Walmart in the next 2 weeks so I could get the paper whites too. I miss having plants in the house.

I guess I have a little compulsion. My house looks like a jungle. I drag about 50 house plants inside every winter and outside every spring. That's not counting the cactus in pots. And for some reason they are always bigger and heavier when I have to drag them inside in the winter. Ha ha!!!

i try to have a plant sale/giveaway every fall before I start dragging them in, but I don't seem to get it done. My neighbors come by and take what they want but I still have way to many.

i cannot throw away any kind of broken stem or piece of plant I have to pot it up. I swear there is no help for me. When the May 20 tornado blew everything away, I swore I would not do this again. Well you see how well that worked out. Ha ha

i just can't imagine my house empty of greenery all winter. I would go batty. And about late January I will start haunting the box store and local nurseries and I will not come home empty handed.

Ha maybe that's what's wrong with me. I went batty since I moved into this camper and there's no room for plants. Lol. There is a way if I just get rid of a few things

Hmmm...I replied to this yesterday morning. It's always strange when your post doesn't show up.

Kim, why are you living in a camper? That sounds exciting. My sister-in-law is living in a "RV" now--going to sell their house and travel.

Anyway...one of the questions I asked in the lost post is: Do you clean your plants before bringing them in? I brought in a couple of herbs a few weeks ago and I'm pretty sure I brought in some tiny insects. Or maybe they were already in my house (The countertop compost pail tends to have the tiniest of flying insects always in it even though it is sealed.)

Currently I have only herbs indoors. Basil and lavender. (the tiny insects are eating the basil and the lavender has some brown spots but it's making new growth too). Also, parsley, peppermint, and rosemary. I love the smell of fresh herbs in the house. And I love that you have a rosemary plant cut like a Christmas tree, Dawn.

I suppose it's time to start thinking about moving plants indoors. I don't have many. My non-potted herbs survived last winter except the basil, of course. I do have an aloe vera that is a monster. It's only about a year and half old. Where am I going to put this thing?! I nearly killed it last winter--didn't realize I was overwatering until I looked at it one day and it was so sad. Put it outside in the spring, ignored it, and it's crazy big now. I also have a bambo plant that doesn't look great but is growing. And I couple of "house plants" that we received when my mother in law passed last February. I have no idea what kind of plant they are and they actually perked up when we moved them outdoors in the spring. We keep them in the mostly shade.

Kim, It must be hard to live in such a small space when you like to have plants around.

Stockergal, I wish I had a house full of plants, but the dogs and cats just won't leave them alone. They think of indoor plants as toys to dig in, stuff to sleep on, etc. I used to have plants indoors but got so tired of fighting the animals. Otherwise, I'd have plants everywhere indoors. I think it is important for a gardener's sanity to have some plants around in winter. If I heated the greenhouse, I'd fill it up with more than it already holds now in winter, but I really don't want to heat it. It is so big and I feel like heating it would cost more than I'd be willing to spend. Anyhow, by the time I drag all my large containers of zone 8 and zone 9 plants into the greenhouse in autumn, it is pretty full and there's not much room left. They can tolerate surprisingly cold nights in there because it holds heat from the sunlight well, but I wouldn't want to fill it with tropicals. Sometimes, on a rare very cold night, I carry the lemon tree and orange tree in from the greenhouse to the mudroom to ensure they survive as it is. I wouldn't want to have to move a lot of other stuff.

I do keep looking at the spare bedroom that we turned into a weight room after our son went off to college and no longer needed his childhood bedroom. It has a treadmill in it that takes up a lot of room, and a large weight machine that no one really uses. I put my seed-starting shelf in one corner of that room in winter. I'm thinking of setting it up early and putting all my winter plants on that for now. Tim will complain and say I am turning the weight room into a plant room, but since nobody works out up there any more (Tim and Chris work out in the gyms at their workplaces and I walk the dogs for exercise), I feel like we now are wasting a room to 'store' an unused treadmill and weights. I'd rather fill it up with plants. : )

I'd really like to convince Tim to move the treadmill and weight machine downstairs and out to the garage, but I remember how hard it was to get them up the stairs at the time (around 2007 or 2008) and I remember him saying they'd be there forever because he was never going to try to get them down the stairs. I thought it sounded like he meant it at the time and I don't think he has changed his mind. Personally, at this stage, I think a plant room would be more useful than an unused weight room.

Dawn

I had a house when I worked at the school but when I quit I had to give up my school house. So since we, my son and i, already had property I figured the best thing was to buy a cheap camper and live near my garden. It has been ok but I do get a little cabin fever. I love being able to go to my main garden anytime day or night and get food for a meal. Last winter I rented a little house so I wouldn't freeze, this year I am not working a regular job so income is sketchy. I am in process of building a small house specifically for preserving the harvest. It's what I do so might as well make it easier. I got a lot of great tips from the harvest folks and here too. Just waiting on my son/muscle and I can begin framing the inside. Yay I am so ready

Kim, it sounds exciting--living in a camper near your garden...and building a harvest house. Like a TV show. I'm sure it's not as glamorous as it sounds, though. Congrats on your new small harvest house!

About indoor plants...

I bought one of those macrame plant hangers--like the ones I remember when I was a little kid. What sort of houseplant would look good in one of those? I have little experience with indoor plants. Any suggestions?

Honestly I would like to have a hanging macrame "end" table. I must have seen one in my childhood and it's sticking in my memory. My house remodel is very farmhouse-ish (although our house is a simple ranch style and very small). But I like a little bohemian in my farmhouse...so, yes, some macrame please.

Ohhhh, I feel a new project coming on........thanks Dawn lol. Like I need another project to add to the list which includes laying new wood flooring in the bedrooms, painting the living room and bathrooms, adding a bottom cabinet to the dining area with floating shelves above, finally putting up pictures and decorating the entire house. Almost a year and I am finally ready to put up pictures, how sad is that?!

Anyway, back to the bulbs.......I would love to do this. I have some bulbs in the garage but they are gladiolas. I might have to look for some amaryllis bulbs. They are so beautiful. I would love to have one on the dining room table surrounded by smaller ones like hyacinth. Dawn, how did you plant yours? I have seen them planted but curious about how you do yours. I do remember I bought this cute little glass dish just because it was blue (my fav color) and it was cheap, like $1 cheap lol. I can use that. I just need to get my table cleaned off now. With not enough storage in the dining area the table is a catch-all. My homeschooled house seems like a tornado constantly lives in our dining area.

My sister is planning on buying a small RV after her daughter graduates. She lives in Connecticut right now and wants to move back to Oklahoma. It would just be her but not sure she can handle something too small since she makes jewelry and really needs a craft room. I've wanted to travel but don't think I could do it full-time. As a kid, my family traveled for about 5 years......5 of us in a 40' travel trailer. We made do, but geesh I can't imagine it now.

Oh macarame hanger!!! I remember my grandmother having one in her house in the corner with a philodendron planter in it. That plant was so huge she wrapped it around a picture frame and over along another wall. I think that's what I need for my sweet potato vines that my daughter started. I have the perfect corner for it too. Amy, is macarame very difficult? Sounds like another project that I could do with my daughter.

Amy, I should hire YOU to make a macrame hanging table for me! :)

Macrame isn't particularly difficult. Plant hangers are pretty easy. Of course, you can get fancy and make it harder. Hobby Lobby probably has instruction books. Shoot, Wally World might have them, I've never looked. Sometimes it's awkward because you start with long cords, so you have enough cord to get to the end. You have to be able to visualize in 3 D a little. It could be compared to crochet or knitting in difficulty I think. Hardest part is following instructions, but simple pieces are just square knots. Start with soft/smooth cord. Rough twine is "rustic", but hard on your hands.

Hazel, YOU can do it, LOL.

I remember doing macrame' in the 1970s and it wasn't hard at all. Like Amy, I believe the books, cord, beads, etc. likely are available at places like Hobby Lobby, Michael's, etc. and possibly at Wally World. (Our nearest Wally World keeps changing up their sewing and crafts area so I never know what they do or don't have unless I've just been in that part of the store.)

Amy, yesterday I did answer on the other thread and, when I realized I did that, I just shrugged and said "oh well, they'll see it". I had typed a long answer on the correct thread and then when I went to post it, the internet service had gone out and I couldn't submit it. When we got the internet service back, I answered in a hurry before it could go out again. Our internet service has been crappy this week, spending more hours not-working than working, so when I can get it to work for 10 minutes, I just type what is stored up in my mind before the internet service goes out again and it is so frustrating. We're so remote and in such a low-lying area that the local internet providers all have trouble providing internet service reliably and it is constantly hit and miss, and lately I can only get online for a few minutes here and a few minutes there before the internet service goes out for 6 to 12 hours. You can't get mad and switch to a new internet service provider because all of them will look at a map and tell us that we "can't" get wireless internet here because our location is too low and too blocked by trees.....so the fact that folks on our street even have internet service at all is sort of a miracle.

Melissa, I don't think a year is that bad. I think it takes time to make a house your own after your purchase it, and it is smart to just mosey along at a reasonable place and have the remodeling and redecorating evolve over time. I think the best-looking houses are the one that have evolved over time to suit the family that lives there instead of something that looks like somebody ran to Ashley Furniture (or wherever) and bought a pre-packaged set of furnishings and brought them home. Rooms that evolve over several months or even years seem to me to have more heart and authenticity.

I take my time picking paint and flooring because those colors have to last forever and I don't want to make a mistake that needs to be changed sooner rather than later. I find paint the hardest choice, and I want to get it right, because it is the background for everything that eventually goes into the room or up on the walls. It used to be that I just bought a can of paint and painted. Now I paint sample swatches on the wall and look at them in all kinds of light and make sure I like the color before I proceed to painting the whole room. It can make it seem like it takes forever to get the painting done, but it doesn't take as long as having to repaint after it turns out that a wall color that looks great with morning sun coming in the eastern windows looks very different and not so great later in the day.

I usually plant bulbs in an appropriately sized pot (not too deep or too wide or excessive moisture in the growing medium can rot them). The growing medium depends on the bulb and its moisture needs. Often, a more coarse growing medium is better (as it drains better), and I have even forced some bulbs just in shallow dishes of gravel (small gravel, like decomposed granite) as well as in soil. They used to sell little, shallow, forcing pots specfically for forcing bulbs in winter. Well, they probably still sell them, but I don't go looking for them and buy them. I just use whatever I have. Dutch hyacinths and paperwhite narcissus do especially well when grown in shallow glass bowls of gravel. I usually put the amaryllis in pots that are only slightly bigger than the bulbs. Since the amaryllis plants become topheavy and like to fall over once the stems are tall and the flowers are about to bloom, I usually stick a bamboo stake in the pot and stake the plant's main stalk. Otherwise, the cats use the Amaryllis flowers like a punching bag and I come downstairs in the morning to find that the Amaryllis that used to be growing in a pot sitting on the window sill by the kitchen window now is lying on the floor, naked, while the pot and growing medium are on the counter or in the sink. At least with the stake, the flowerhead isn't as interesting to the cats because it is more stable and doesn't flop around when they slap it. See, I really need a bulb-growing space that is kitty cat free. Or, I need nice-looking silk amaryllis plants for the kitchen so they can survive the cats.

It is noon here and hot. This has to be the craziest November weather ever. I am going to look for some more bulbs this weekend if I get a chance. I need to stagger the planting of them over 4-6 weeks or longer so the bloom period also will be longer versus having all of them bloom at once.

Gardening catalogs are arriving more frequently now and I am getting really distracted by the pretty photos.

Dawn

Facebook showed me a memory today. Two years ago there was snow on my patio.

And my AC is turned off. My thermometer says it is 77* out at 5:45, on 11/16? WTH?

Amy, I saw several people's fb memories from two years ago! What a difference today is from 2 years ago!

Sure you don't wanna macrame for hire? lol

It was 85 degrees here today. That's shockingly warm for mid-November and yet, it wasn't even a record high for us. Some cities around us, on both sides of the river, did hit record high temperatures for yesterday's date though.

I saw some of those FB memories of snow two years ago too. It made me laugh. Oklahoma weather is as odd as it gets.

Today you folks in central and northern OK are expected to have some awful wind at times, with gusts in some areas in the upper 30s and 40s. Imagine how that hot air is going to feel at that wind speed. At least most of you "only" have a Wind Advisory or Lake Wind Advisory instead of a Red Flag Fire Warning, so at least there's that. However, if the relative humidity values were to drop lower than expected, anything could happen.

I'm going to try to move some large plants to the greenhouse today. These are the ones in really big containers that I can't lift. I have a 2-wheeled hand truck (aka as a dolly) I can use and an Aerocart 8-in-1 wheelbarrow that is convertible in a way that allows you to slide it under large containers to move them as well. I could wait until tomorrow for cooler weather, and maybe I will if it feels too hot too early outside, but I'd rather get them into the greenhouse before the wind goes crazy. Our wind isn't even going to be all that bad here, though it might gust in the 30s in the afternoon. My one worry about moving the really large containers in hot weather like we're going to have today is that snakes might be lurking in or around the containers. The odds of that happening tomorrow when we're almost 20 degrees cooler are a lot lower.

It is just a little after 5 a.m. here and it is 60 degrees outside. That's ridiculous for this time of the year. I bet our average high would be in the 60s in mid-November in a more typical year.

Everything changes tomorrow though, as the winds begin to back off a bit and the cold air comes rushing down. We're expecting a frost here Saturday morning and probably Sunday morning as well. A part of me just hates to see the growing season come to an end, but then another part of me knows it is time. It is, in fact, beyond time.

I'm still wondering when real cold weather arrives, because after a couple of cold nights this weekend, we warm up again.

No bulbs, but I do have an impressive collection of plants after just a year. I mentioned needing to move more inside, and my husband suggested setting up a shelf in the garage instead. He's not a plant person and teases me about all my "weeds", so it may be a fair compromise. Plus we have a cat who thinks my plants are his bed. I lost about a dozen plants to the little monster when my husband moved in, so everything has to go where the cat can't get to.

But all this talk about amaryllis bulbs make me want to get one...or three...oh well, my husband is just gonna have to get used to living in a jungle.

My amaryllis bulbs already are sprouting. We'll have flowers before Christmas.

Your husband will adapt. He has no choice. He married a gardener. (grin)

Lol poor guy!

I need to keep chanting, "bulbs, bulbs, bulbs, bulbs" in my head so when I head to Home Depot tomorrow I'll remember. Or set a reminder on my phone lol. I wish I had some of the paperwhites now. They'd make a refreshing center piece on the Thanksgiving table.

Macrame.......ok, now my wheels are spinning. I would LOVE to have a macrame hanger that you can put about 3 shelves in for small plants. I have the perfect corner too. My daughter and I make/sell paracord dog collars and leashes so I'm sure I could learn macrame.

Dawn......speaking of paint samples, that is ALL I have bought so far because I wanted to ensure we ALL liked the color and as you said, it would be the backdrop to all my decorating. So, after 12 samples, we finally decided on a color. With that being said my husband said today, "I'd just like the camouflage to go away in the living room." Ha!! Literally......twelve different colors on the wall in small swatches. But just to be fair, I was actually trying to match the original wall color at first because I really didn't want to paint the entire living room. That idea went out the window. I guess I'll get paint tomorrow and start painting after Thanksgiving is over.

And, speaking of projects......we started one today. Another one, I should say because we are always doing something sporadically. We ripped up the carpet in our living room back in August and replaced with wood flooring. Now we are moving to the next phase of flooring which is our master bedroom. Carpet & padding is up as of today. Next phase begins right after I get some more underlayment. Then I just need to decide what color I want in there because I really don't want brown. Like you said Dawn.....everything is a work in progress and honestly, I want it to match us and not simply just a home that we've had delivered from Ashley.

Now......back to those bulbs.....do you think it's too late to dig up gladiolas? I want to move them. Who in the world would plant gladiolas beside their aerobic sprinkler!? EW!!!

I'd love to paint, our house is all beige because former owners remodeled before selling. But we have a 5 year goal of having a place in the country, so I can't justify the expense. If I had my way, every room would be different colors.

Melissa, It is easy to forget bulbs in the fall. I do it all the time. This year I actually remembered. Sometimes by the time I think of them, it's just too late.

For the gladiolas you want to move, I think fall is a good time. Just be sure to mulch them well after you move them, and no, I don't blame you for wanting to move them from the present location!

Macarame' is easy and it is fun. We had a cool art teacher in 8th grade who let us work on artwork that was sort of trendy for the times (late 1960/early 1970s) so we got to learn macarame' (so easy a caveman could do it), beading (with tiny love beads), batik (which I loved!), pottery and tie-dying, among other things. It was so much fun and such a change from the standard art projects done at the time.

Camo in the living room? Hey, deer season is opening, and you are right on trend. : )

It can get old to paint swatches on the wall and stare at them in all kinds of light as you decide what you want, but it sure beats painting a room a color you're sure you'll all love, only to discover that once it is on the walls and has dried, it doesn't look at all the way you thought it would. It is so much easier to paint over a few swatches than to repaint a room.

Removing old flooring is my least favorite thing, especially if you're removing a tile floor and the backer board beneath it, but once the new flooring is in, it is such a monumental change. We did the laundry room and kitchen floor at the same time in a wood-look plank tile back in October. It looks great. I was hoping we'd be working on the breakfast room and living room floors by now, but it is looking like we won't even start them until after Christmas. I'm okay with that because I don't want us messing up the main living area during the holidays. Tim has either 2 or 3 trips scheduled for December and then, he swears, his travel is over for the year. Ha ha ha. Only because the old year is ending. I think early January might be a good time to start on the breakfast room and living room floors, but we'll see. He may come home any day now with a list of scheduled trips for January. I hope not. I think he has to stick close to home in Jan-Mar 2017 because his boss will be away at a 3-month-long course at the FBI Academy, and they usually both are not gone at once that often. Tim's traveled more in the last year than he did in the first 34 years of his career in law enforcement combined and it has been crazy and very hard to keep track of which weeks he is scheduled to be gone. His long honey-do list of projects his wife wants done didn't shrink much at all this year, but we did get a lot of the kitchen and laundry room done so I'll cut him some slack on the rest of it.

I might drive him crazy a little because I'll take something that was in one room and repurpose it in another room. Or, I move it to the garage to wait while I am refinishing it or painting it so it can be repurposed in another room. So, our decor changes a bit but sometimes it is just that I am moving some things around to get a different look. The garage is full of works-in-progress. You're supposed to be able to park the vehicles in the garage, right? Well, at our house, that's not happening right now.

Jen, Waiting to paint to your own taste when you get into a more permanent home is probably smart. If you followed your heart now and painted each room a different color, the first thing your real estate agent would tell you when it is time to sell is that you need to paint everything a neutral color again, and that would be a lot of repainting to do in just a few years when y'all are ready to buy your place in the country. I think I could live in neutral rooms for 5 years, knowing that when I got to my country home, I could paint whatever colors I wanted. You know, when we moved here in 1999, each room (except the breakfast room and living room which adjoin and were painted the same) was painted a different color. I loved it. However, all these years later, now I'm painting everything quieter, more neutral colors. I've finally gotten tired of all the bright walls. Change is good, though, so I'm just trying to enjoy the process as we go along.

If the neutral colors make you crazy, you can brighten up the rooms with plants (lol), artwork, blankets or throws, painted baskets, etc. That is the one advantage of neutral walls---you can bring in color in many other ways and the colors won't clash with your neutral walls. It is sort of the same as in the garden, where our garden neutrals are the shades of brown (soil, mulch, wood, etc.) and we bring in colors via foliage and flower colors.

About 10 years ago, my cousin and her family begin plotting their move to the country. It involved three families selling their city homes and buying one big piece of land in the country where they could put three houses close to one another, but not too close. I believe they bought 15 acres. For three years, my cousin had a vision in her head of what their home would look like when they moved to the country. She spent those three years buying the furniture they'd have in the new house, drapes, artwork, accessories, etc. By the time they moved she had a huge stockpile of boxes of new stuff for the new house, and because she planned it all along, it coordinated from room to room in a manner that pleased her greatly. Because she accumulated it over time, antiques were a part of the mix, so her new place instantly had a 'collected over time' look once they finally were able to move. When the house was ready, they moved in and she had it all decorated in absolutely no time at all. I was amazed at how quickly she got everything unpacked, in place and looking like home. When we walked in the door the first time, it didn't look like a brand new house---it looked like a perfectly loved, well-decorated, collected home. It was awesome. I loved that it looked so flawless without looking like a display from a furniture store (not that there's anything wrong with furniture store displays).

Jen, I believe there's worse hobbies than gardening for a man to put up with. Sometimes when Tim is looking at all the space my gardening stuff occupies (you know, fenced garden plots in the yard, the potting shed, the greenhouse, the space in the garage devoted to storing garden tools and stuff, the plants in the mudroom, the seed-starting shelves in the weight room, the pile of garden catalogs on the coffee table, and on the nightstand upstairs, etc.), he gets a pained expression on his face. I can read his mind. He's thinking there sure is a lot of space devoted to gardening and all the stuff that goes along with it. I just sweetly remind him that at least he isn't married to a woman who collects expensive handbags or dozens of pairs of shoes and boots or fur coats or expensive jewelry. Everybody has 'stuff'. It is just that we gardeners have gardening stuff instead of some other kind of stuff. Oh, and there's the other stuff I didn't mention---food processing gear for our home-grown food, vases for bouquets of flowers, and watering cans stashed everywhere so one is always within easy reach. Hmmm. That's a lot of stuff, isn't it?

Dawn

Melissa, I saw a super cute plant shelf hanger. When I have more time, I'll look for it. I saw it online. It involved rope and little wood shelves--it wasn't macrame but it was really cute. Maybe I should try to macrame. I really want to. It makes me tear up to think of all the things that I want to do but can't because of life.

I keep saying that 2017 will be the year of more time. I want to read. I want to watch some TV shows that others are talking about. I have several painting projects. I want to learn to macrame. I want to work jigsaw puzzles of Santa and Christmasy things. I want to bake cookies. I just want to be home.

Hazel, I am right there with you on 2017 being the year of more time. My husband will finally graduate with his Bachelor's of Clinical Scientist (I love saying that btw lol) which has seemed like a very, very, VERY long road. There are things I want to do as you have said and I just need to do it. I would love to see the rope and shelves you were talking about!!!

Dawn....I do the same with our garage at times. Things go out and then they come back in later. I have a big picture frame that was in the garage at my other house for 2 years before we moved. Then I painted it but couldn't decide where to put it. After 4 years I never hung it up. After 3 moves since buying it at a church sale for $1, I have finally found a home for it. But, I think I want to add a bit of antiquing to it first.

And the camo on the wall.......it's just what he called the different paint swatches all over, lol.

That sounds so exciting buying land for a family like that. We used to talk about buying about 100 acres and my husband's parents, his brothers and their families, and us all living out there but not right by each other and having a central meeting building in the middle. Now I think about doing that for my children and us.

Cookies............mmmmmm......we are making cookie boxes to mail to family/friends this year for the holidays. I miss doing that with my mom; making several different types and giving goody packages.

Jen, our house is exactly that....all a darker beige color. Except for the girls' room which was the previous owners little girl's room and it's what I call pepto bismol pink. Even our ceilings are beige. I painted one home before we sold and the new owners (we knew them) came right in and painted the very night they got the keys. I said then I would never paint a house before selling again because I felt like I wasted money. Then we did it again last year, but actually just touched up. I refuse to do it anymore because if someone really loves a home, the paint (cosmetics) color won't matter.

Hazel, It is frustrating that life is so busy, isn't it? Our life has become much more quiet in a lot of ways now that our son is all grown-up but then, my sister, who is six years younger than I am, has seen her life go in the opposite direction. She had kids while very young and then her kids had kids very young so she's got 6 grandchildren and at least some of them are with her every weekend (occasionally she loses her mind and has all of them at the same time). She works all week long and has grandkids all weekend long and I'm not sure when she ever has time to do anything for herself, like reading a book or watching TV. Compared to our quiet country lives, her life is a whirlwind of activity....almost chaotic, but she's happy and seems to thrive on the chaos. I savor the quiet time I have to work on projects and to read. I don't watch much TV so when people are talking about shows they watch, I'm clueless most of the time. When we are having a lot of fires, my free time flies out the window, but for the last couple of years, fire activity has been fairly low (compared to the drought years of 2011-2014, for instance) with only a few random weeks of being really busy with fires so I've had time to do lots of reading and lots of craft projects and home decor stuff. I don't bake cookies much any more unless I'm baking for the firefighters during periods of time when we are overrun with fires. Or, I do bake quite a bit around the holidays, but more to give away the cookies than to keep them and eat them all ourselves.

Melissa, I did love his camo description and think it is a perfect way to describe a wall with painted color swatches on it. You can just pretend the camo was an intentional choice until you paint over it. I like the concept of painting the paint swatches onto white paper or posterboard and taping it to the wall, but I don't think that gives a true idea of what the paint will look like on an actual wall since the posterboard won't be the exact same color as a person's wall is. Paint swatches and all, I am no closer to deciding on the final color for our kitchen walls than I was two months ago. I think I don't like any of the colors I've tried so far. Maybe after we get the backsplash done, it will be easier to decide on a wall color. The only thing I know for sure is that I don't like the color the walls are painted right now. The search for the right color continues.

One thing that I love about our house is that from the moment we began planning to move here and build it, we knew this was our last home. We knew we were not ever going to choose to move anywhere else. So, when making choices about paint colors, flooring, etc., we never had to make any choice with resale value or a future buyer in mind. We could just choose what makes us happy. I know that younger folks who expect to move several times in their lives might have to make those sorts of choices in order to sell their home quickly should a job transfer or something necessitate moving earlier than they had anticipated and they want to sell for the best price, but I'd rather not have to make home decorating decisions like that with somebody else in mind. I've known people who have had real estate agents look at their home and more or less demand they paint the whole thing, upgrade the kitchen, etc. before they put it on the market. Well, I'm sorry, but I probably wouldn't do that. I don't think you necessarily get a good return on investment since there is no guarantee the future buyer will like your choices anyway. We did paint our entire house in Fort Worth (all white interior by the time we were done) and we refinished the beautiful oak floors before we put it on the market, and it sold quickly. We didn't do anything else though. I figured if the future buyer wanted different kitchen cabinets or countertops or whatever, then they could install whatever they chose after they bought the house. As it turned out, my sister bought our house and lived there for several years before she sold it. She didn't change a thing in the years she lived there and the house sold quickly then too. We've been lucky though because when we have had a house on the market, it has been a buyer's market and homes were selling fairly fast. I can see where someone whose house sits on the market for months and months might buy into the idea that they need to paint it, etc. to freshen it up to sell. I do agree, though, that if someone truly loves a house, most of them won't be deterred from buying it just because of the paint color on the walls. Paint is easy to change.

Dawn

We took a bath on the house in Tulsa. I'd owned it for 15 years and working a job that barely paid the bills meant I wasn't able to do much in the way of fixing things up. But my job transfer necessitated we move as quickly as possible. Otherwise we may have waited until we found our house in the country. But I like this house, like the location and layout of it. For now, it suits us.

I teach crafts at our church camp in the summers, and usually have friendship bracelets as one of my crafts. The adults call it "macrame jewelry".