Oh yes, this bunch will always bring it around to food. Smiles. My father lived down in Florida for a few years with his sister. I remember the day he called me up sooo excited. He found a place down there that would cremate him and ship him for $699. LOL He didn't want any funeral, wanted to be cremated and buried in same space as my mother. We four kids had a bit of a discussion about it after he died, but we kept to his wishes and just we siblings and our partners were there when we put the little box in the ground. He wanted us to dig the hole ourselves at night, to save money, smiles, but our cemetery association was happy to do it for a few dollars. That was our only deviation from his requests. He did die when he was living back up here with us, so we didn't need the shipping but in his honor I did shop around for a nice reasonable crematorium. He'd have been proud. In fact I think he let me know he was pleased. A couple months after he died I was sitting at the computer with my back to the hall doorway. I heard him walk up the hall, say Hey loudly, like he always did in greeting. He sounded happy. It took me a few beats to realize/remember that he was no longer alive. Don, I knew you'd come up with some great music for the occasion. Smiles. When I was younger[thirties] my fondest wish was to have my body made into a skeleton like you have in anatomy class and just get propped in the corner for the kids to play with. As my nieces and nephews came along none of them seemed to care for the idea and it died a sad death. Ah well.. kids these days.. no imagination.. Smiles.

Funny, I was never a fan of chalk stripe suits, and even pin stripes are so formal, I see them only if you are in banking and finance. So much of the working world has grown more relaxed....I remember way back, a fellow I knew used to work in banking in NYC and when he first started, he didn't wear a vest, so when he entered the building, the receptionist asked if she could help him. After that, he wore the vest! Now, do they even wear 3 piece suits? A buddy of mine worked in NYC in the broadcast industry and wore "nice jeans" to work. But when you talk about guys being hard on suits, DH was an engineer and he spent a lot of time visiting customer factories and inspecting huge equipment 2 and 3 stories high that was very messy. Of course, going to customers, he had to wear suits. One time, when he was inspecting a machine, a hydraulic hose blew and he was covered in oil. Other times he'd be covered in carbon black and all kinds of wonderful things. So I quit buying him good suits. Instead, I took him to the goodwill and we bought his suits there ... maybe $45. Fortunately, he is a standard size and many of the suits didn't even need tailoring...or maybe just shorten the pants. He ended up being very nattily dressed for very low cost. And if he destroyed a suit, I didn't care.

Thanks - to answer a couple of questions, I am in Z 7 - I think I said that in my original post. DC Metro area. The infected roses have not yet been dug up - that will be done by the same company that will be replacing them, and I'm not sure what the little round evergreen bushes are. Also to clarify - my house is on the tour primarily for the "home" part of "home and garden" - my yard is nice but definitely not the feature, as is the case with most of the other houses as well. I don't know much about gardening, other than raised bed veggie gardening (what I know about rose rosette disease came from googling "what's killing my knockout roses") and have a service come to mow/weed/prune/etc., so I'm not sure I'm the best person to be educating people about anything...I just wanted the house to look as nice as possible curb appeal-wise before hundreds of people come tromping through. That's very helpful about Miss Kim. Maybe given the time crunch I will just have this landscaping co. replace the roses in the back yard which are completely dead and crispy as I think I can find some plants and shrubs I'll be happy with back there, and hold off on making decisions on the front...the roses in the front are not in quite as bad shape as the ones in the back. (this landscaping co. is well regarded locally and offering a 20% discount to houses on the tour, which is why I wanted to use them and do this now if possible).

I had an epiphany this morning. I was trying to put some things together that just didn't quite jibe. I remembered my old lesson from my pepto-bismol bedroom walls fiasco--if something in a room is bugging you, the way to make it go away is to pair it with things ALMOST like it that don't bug you, rather than try to contrast it or draw the eye away from it. Make it blend in. And truth be told, I really didn't want to fuss with painting all those doors--closet and otherwise, window trim, etc., even if it would look good. And my dad probably wouldn't like it. And I wasn't planning on hiding those beach watercolors away forever in that bedroom, I had toyed with putting them in the dining room anyway, to give that closed-in room the feeling of having a view . . . and the stuff on the dining room walls was rustic and woodsy, not ideal for what I envisioned for that room either, with formal furniture. The art on the walls in there was just being OK place holders for now, so totally chage-able. Switching out the art in the dining room and bedroom went with a direction for the bedroom that I had been toying with anyway--rustic northwoods cabin instead of light and beach-ey. AND, I have been wanting to find a way to use this color palette in a room in my house, and this may be the perfect opportunity. I'm already halfway there with the orange-y wood and the carpet . . . So I'm going to see if I can do some major re-arranging of art and furniture that is already in the house, I have some ideas of some wood pieces I can use in the room. The painted dresser and nightstand can go in the pink and blue girly guest bedroom with the white walls. I really feel excited about the possibilities, like "a plan has come together." I'll keep y'all posted, it may take me a few weekends to get it all done. This weekend I'll be happy if I can just make some headway on getting a wall paint color chosen. I'm thinking to go dark raspberry or grey-blue for the walls, like a darker shade of the carpet or even swing it a little grey violet if I can. There's just nasty plywood under the carpet, this is late 80's house.