Margo, I've been following yours and the red shed girls adventure thru your blogs, you guys look like you had a blast! what a great lil junk vacation or heaven, whatever you'd call it! I love your blog, hafta go there almost everyday to see what you have cookin' in that creative head of yours! You got some awesome finds, I love it all. That scooter is adorable, as well as the stroller. I love your new gears, you're not selling those are you, they would look spectacular in your home. Glad you ladies got back safely and boy, its a good thing that trailer had a good lock on it going down the road, it was BEYOND FULL!! blessings-sherri

I can relate. I will paraphrase since I told my story in the "Tell me about your SFG" post. I turned a blighted area of my yard into a beautiful raised bed area with gravel walkways. I can't wait to get dirt and plant a dozen or so veggies for my family. I'm so excited about using the ugly space for something useful that I can't stand it. Anyway, to cure my bug, I started broccoli and cauliflower in cool whip containers so I can transplant them in April. I hope you can find a way to pass the time until the ground thaws and is ready to plant. I plan on trying winter gardening next year when I have a season under my belt and dirt (always helps). Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's Garden

Okay, I heard back from Fairchild. "Dear Lisa: Sorry but there will be no Champagne. We will never have this variety until we figure out how to grow it better in South Florida. It performs poorly in our climate and soils. The Champagne fruit that we sell at the IMF are from our relationship with Ciruli Brothers, the sole owner of the Champagne trademark. Also, I am sorry, but we cannot pre-order trees. The trees for this year's website should be on the web. I will check this later on today to be sure. Thanks and take care. Richard J. Campbell, Ph.D. Senior Curator of Tropical Fruit Center for Tropical Plant Conservation Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden" They are now accepting Brunch reservations. We had a blast last year, so am somehow going to scrape up the $$ to attend. Hope to see you all there! Lisa

momj47- One thing I should have mentioned in my original post is that although we plan to move, we will be keeping the home and renting it out, so I'd rather have something reliable as I'd be the one responsible for replacing it in the future if it fails. I do realize that there's been a fair bit of manufacturer consolidation (seems like GE and Whirlpool own almost the entire refrigerator market), so it may be a moot point. I don't know if these brands have been fully merged, and if they just maintain multiple brands in name only and share manufacturing processes, or if they're still very much separate and have unique failure rates. A trip to Consumer Reports would indicate that they're all pretty much the same in terms of failure rate. Think I might just have to buy the cheapest one I can find and hope it doesn't fail. I guess that the nasty reviews I've read will be common amongst all manufacturers, so I can just hope for the best.