Thanks for the tips, The earwigs have been targeting my squash plants. All the squash plants I sowed directly in the garden never got beyond their first true leaves before the earwigs totally destroyed them. The one squash I planted out from my mini greenhouse is barely hanging on. I could use all the tips I can get. For some reason the earwigs seem to be fixated mainly on my squash seedlings, as most of my other vegetables are not being decimated. I will come out at night and find them munching on the leaves in groups. Will try the beer trap ideas and maybe the petroleum jelly.

Ok, I get what spidey is now!! Very neat and creative! Don't you love finding new ways to use things in the garden??! It will be a lot of fun for him getting to plant things around Spidey ;-) Plus I could see having a big Halloween party around it with fake cobwebs, bales of hay, and pumpkins for your nephews and nieces! Glad to hear Mandy is doing well again- and back playing with her boys! CMK

OMG PIM, I acn only imagine! LOLOL! I am truly not laughing at you, but the way you told the story is rather entertaining. I am not afraid of spiders, actually it is sort of the reverse. I find them fascinating! My ex-BF was attempting to write horror stories and decided to get a Tarantula to keep in a vivarium to "inspire" him. After he got the thing, he somehow decided he was going to make some extra money by breeding them and selling the babies to the local pet store. Next thing I knew, there were 3 vivariums and one of the spiders did make an egg ball (or whatever you call them). Now bear in mind, he was terrified of them which meant whenever they had to be fed or the vivariums cleaned then I was elected. I really didn't mind at all since I thought they were neat. Well, the babies started to hatch and were just beginning to crawl all over. Unfortunately, he had failed to replace the regular screen top (about 1/2 inch "holes") with a finer mesh. He went in a few mornings later to check the brood and not a single baby was there. He asked me if I new what happened to them and when I went to look, I found a couple of the babies on the wall and floor behind the vivarium. Sure enough, all 300+ had climbed out of the tank, through the screen and were all over the room that we used as an office. Needless to say, he came completely unglued at the thought of all those baby spiders crawling around the house.... I caught the ones I could find, but unfortunately most of them ended up dying. I was vacuuming up dead baby spiders for weeks it seemed. He ended up taking the adults back to the pet store and that was the end of the Tarantulas. And as far as phobias.... mine is snakes. I don't want them anywhere near me or my house. YUCK! Alexa

llucy - you're right. Thank you! mama goose_gw zn6OH - other public spaces: we're have a living room 17' x 18' in the the southeast corner of the house, a kids' common room upstairs that is 24'x17' and an unfinished basement (I have a roller skater, too! should be a good place to move down there). We'll also have a deck along the east side of the house, part of which will be shaded. I know the great room concept is much more popular, but we like a separation. And it's not a huge separation, the living room is just down a 7' hall in this version. Oaktown - thank you for that honest input! It's still in flux now, so that version is a possibility still, but I think I like this one better. I received a comment from Mrspete that the kitchen looked off, way off, in that version, so this is my attempt to deal with the kitchen. I like how there's easy access from the garage to the pantry in this one. Also, we aim for our mudroom to be a nice, sunny space (there will be a wall of windows on the south side there), and some of that light can flow into the kitchen in this plan.