Hi there. Nice home. Yes there are many lime formulas and techniques to white wash a house on the internet. Does your brick have a smooth finish to it, is it porous? A way to test this is to run water over the brick, does some of the water absorb into the brick? Does the brick stay damp for a bit? If so then your brick will work well with lime washing. If not then lime may not work well on your brick. So test a small area first. I know this may be a bit bold for you but I would consider white washing the entire house. I personally like homes in one color. It gives it more of a classic look. Also it would like very nice with the different textures of material( brick and stone). If you feel that might be a bit too much start with the brick first and see if you like it. Start with thin coats then keep applying. I feel the stone needs to be softened up a bit. So add a few thin coats over that as well. I would personally go all white and add plant, shrubs, trees and vines next to the house to break up the wall height. Plus that would really make your landscaping pop up against that White House and give it character. There is a lime formula that is mixed with white Portland cement that a world renowned architect Ken Tate gave me that we are using on our home. I've done some sample walls and it turned out great! It sort a tad thicker than a straight lime wash and it gives the brick a soft edge. It looks like it's been painted 100 times. Just like the old buildings in Europe were limed washed back in the 1800's. The mix I use is 4 parts white Portland cement and 1 part lime, 4.5 parts of water. Should have a consistency of whole milk but not too thick! You can mix pigment in with any formula but we choose not too. It comes out white but with a very soft gray white. I tested it with the reverse formula and the lime was Greek white. As light hits the lime, light reflects twice as much. So the more lime the brighter it greats unless you add a pigment. Some people like some brick sort of bleeding through, however we are covering all our brick so that it's all white. If you plan to go all white, you'll need several coats to cover. Sounds like you are adding shutters, good idea. That will give the house character. Also make sure when you buy or have them made to make sure they are sized properly to actually cover the window if they were closed. Not too small. I would go with a dark hunter green on your shutter and keep your windows and window trim the taupe color. And other trim white. If you go the lime route make sure you find someone that knows what they're doing. The most import thing when applying lime is to keep the wall wet down but not standing water, after applying the first coat of lime, let it dry 24 hours between coats. If you don't let it cue long enough between coats you'll have crazing (which are a network of very fine cracks). And make sure it's done between outside temperatures 50-90. Morning and afternoons. Try to not apply it when the sun is beating down. You don't want it drying too fast. We are liming the house ourselves, I know it's cray but we can't fine anyone that can do it. Also if you don't want to mix this yourself there is a company called Roma ( google Roma lime wash) they have premixed lime putty formulas and they can also mix in your pigment of choice. Just add water and your ready to start liming. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

kimberly42- try tweaking the leveling yourselves if you can get to the feet. it helped when we fiddled with our washer ourselves. aim for perfect level and perfect plumb while the machine is spinning a heavy wet load. remember to loosen the lock nuts, then tighten them up to the machine when you've done the best you can. oh, and other poster here had written a great post on leveling that advised watching the feet closely while the machine is spinning (lay down on the floor) and adjust any feet which seem to wobble.

A few weeks prior to the airing of this show, I received an advertisement in the mail for a local store advertising the neti pot. I was intrigued and did some online searching. You can now buy them at Longs Drugs as well. I have asthma and allergies and thought this might benefit me. But during my search I also found a sinus rinse technique using a squeeze bottle and saline and thought it more appealing, because you can vary the pressure with which the water flushes your sinuses. I am so happy to have discovered this and I use it every day. Parhelia, you just lean over the sink and tilt your head in a certain manner and the neti pot just uses gravity to take the water through one nostril, through your sinuses, and out the other nostril. Simple as that. And I totally understand your fear of drowning. I was a bit hesitant at first (I had an older brother who loved dunking me as a kid, and I always felt as if he might succeed in drowning me one day), but I don't get that feeling while using my sinus rinse bottle. Do a search for neti pot and you'll find videos showing people using them. I posted about this a couple of weeks ago on the health forum, but got so few responses that I thought nobody used them. Now I see that I was just posting in the wrong place. Of course, my family thinks I'm crazy, but I told them I don't care. I like to breathe freely.

So I decided to give away the tomatoe plants I was going to grow in containers to our grandparents. My husband talked me into it since I just started my nursing program on Monday, & of course he's right, it would be hard for me to manage everyone in our garden. So as of now, I have 5 tomatoe plants in the ground. We have a new house and the new thing around here is "no backyard". Our backyard is TINY!! There all doing great so far, we amended the holes with master nursery bumper crop (should have done the whole area as a whole, but will do it next year), I put in 3 celebrity, 1 Brandywine & a better boy. We added tomatoe tone around the tomato plants 4-6 inches around the stem & topped it with earthworm castings & straw bought from tractor supply (10.99 a compressed bale) and left about a 1 inch of empty around the stem. As for my strawberry plant and basil and cilantro which are in containers, I just threw on some earthworm casting and topped with straw. The banana pepper is in a whisky barrel container and I threw 8 stakes in of Jobes organic vegetable slow release fertilizer in the soil (what packaging said). So as for the tomatoe tone - it says add more in 14 days after the first fertilization. What do you guys recommend? We planted the plants on March 28, added the fertilizer and earthworm castings April 1. Should I get any other kind of fertilizer for my tomatoe plants or is the tomatoe tone good enough to last me all season (remember they are all in the ground). What about my strawberry or herbs? Should i just forsure leave them alone or just keep adding worm castings once a month? I think I'm leaving the fish emulsion alone, too confusing for me, unless someone advises me to use some on my plants - do give details lol