On the Lido deck, near the pool is the Lido Bar. It opens at 8:30 a.m. for those who need something then. Besides selling alcohol, cans of Coca-Cola products and fountain drinks are available. This bar is also the bar that provides drinks for those who are dining in the Lido restaurant, a short distance away. As in most bars, once you have become a regular, the bar staff will get to know you well. That is more apparent on these longer voyages. The bar servers have told me that they really prefer the shorter itineraries because those passengers drink more and the servers make more in tips. Other serving places include the Crow's Nest (good views during Happy Hour - well-attended), the aft facing Seaview Pool and a specialty bar in the Explorer's Lounge. No real bar there, but there is a server present. In the evenings, violin/piano performers are the draw, not the alcohol. You can also gets drinks in the Showroom at Sea (live performance venue) from a behind-the-scenes service bar. Larger ships have more bars, both on Holland America and other cruise lines

Sheri, What sun? Sorry, just kidding. Cloudy and cold here all day and I have missed the sunlight. How are you going to use the sunlight? Will your flat of peat pellets be sitting inside the house in a sunny window? Or, are you planning on carrying the flat outside every morning and setting it in a protected yet sunny location and then carrying it back inside at night? If you are going to have them inside sitting inside a sunny window, I think you could start them now. I am assuming they will be able to get at least 8 hours of sunlight a day though. If you are going to carry them outside every morning and back in at night, I think I might wait and start them around March 1st. Remember that tiny seedlings are very vulnerable to the cold weather, though, so don't leave them outside on a day that is going to stay in the 30s. If you have a sunroom or sun porch, you probably could start them now in that location too. If you use only one seed per peat pellet for herbs and veggies, you can leave the transplant in the pellet until it is time to plant unless the cold hangs on longer than expected and the plant is outgrowing its' pellet. The drawback, though, is that there is little nutrition to speak of in that peat, so your plants might get a little hungry. You can get around that by feeding them with a liquid fertilizer like liquid fish or liquid seaweed or compost tea, diluted to be one-half as strong as the label recommends. How will you know if your plants are hungry? Their color may look a little off or they might yellow a little or their rate of growth might seem to be slower than usual. In addition, plants that are left to sit outside in the sun all day in peat pellets can dry out quite easily, especially if a brisk wind is blowing. If plants that small get too dry, they can die before you make it home from work to water them. The smaller the plant, the smaller the margin of error. It is easy to move the plants up to a larger container if the time arrives when you believe they need it. One clue will be that their roots are growing out of the bottom of the peat pellet and reaching out looking for someplace to go. Just use paper or styrofoam cups. Poke a couple of holes in the bottom for drainage. Put 2"-3" of Jiffy Mix or an organic potting soil or seed-starting mix in the bottom of the cup, assuming the cup is 6" or more inches tall. Set the peat pellet on top of that soil and then fill in around the pellet with more soil. Water to settle down the soil and then add a little more soil if needed. The cups will give your plants more room to grow roots and more soil to hold moisture as the plants grow. I like to transfer them up to larger containers as it gives the plants stronger, more vigorous root systems. The stronger and more vigorous the root systems, the better the plants will do once they are in the ground. It usually isn't absolutely required to move them up to bigger containers, though, if you don't want to do it or just don't have time to do it. The only other problem I have with peat pellets is that sometimes the plants in them seem to suffer from damping off more than plants in something like Jiffy mix. I suspect the pure peat contributes to that by holding too much water but I am not sure. If you drink chamomile tea and have chamomile handy, watering the peat pellets with a weak mixture of unsweetened chamomile tea seems to help prevent damping off. As an alternate method of raising them, you could wintersow them in flats that stay outside 24/7 in a somewhat protected location. For detailed directions on wintersowing, go to the Wintersowing Forum and read the FAQ. One advantage of wintersown tomatoes is that they seem more coldhardy. However, since they won't start growing until the daytime and nighttime temps are "just right", the plants might be smaller than you want them to be by your average last frost date. In some areas, that might not be a problem. However, in our climate, where spring weather is sometimes fleeting and we sometimes seem to go from winter to summer in the same week, smaller plants might not get large enough to flower until heat is already a problem. A lot of people who wintersow tomatoes do so in a climate that has a long, mild spring quite different from ours. Another alternative would be to put them in a coldframe like Bill P. (who posts as GoneFishing on the Texas and Tomato Forums) does. He seems to have great success with his tomato plants in a cold frame and he doesn't have to carry plants in and out morning and night. Dawn

This is an adorable house with nice symmetry. I am far from an expert, but I wouldn’t change a thing about the building. Start with landscape. Yes, the oompa-Loompa bushes need to go. I’d replace them with something that will stay lower than the windows. Also, plant enough of them that they extend out to the corners of the house. The brickwork along the steps look like they’d give you a great place to add some decorative pots. Without knowing what zone you live in and what direction the home faces, you won’t be able to get any concrete suggestions as to specific plants. My advice would be to visit an independent garden center or nursery in your area. Most will employ designers who can help you put together a plan based on your local weather and your tolerance for upkeep. It’s generally not a particularly expensive service and often a portion of the cost is rebated back to you if you purchase the plants from the nursery. Remember, you can always do this in steps- over several months or over several seasons. After you’ve tackled the landscape, then you might consider making changes to the house. Then again, you might find it’s simply not necessary. Remember, it’s a first home. Your likely to sell it someday. Don’t spend money over improving the building. Landscaping updates will give you the most bang for your buck.

We didn’t get pre-approved for the exact reason you pointed out - I wanted to avoid an unnecessary hard credit check. We did; however, initiate discussions with a recommended mortgage broker to vet our plans (i.e. expected sale price, amount of earnest money payment, combined income, assets) and to make sure we understood what the process would look like at closing. Then we entered into a purchase agreement and put down our earnest money. This helped the seller obtain a better loan rate since the house was pre-sold, and will ultimately convert to our mortgage down payment. Generally speaking, if you know your financial history, income, and what the anticipated mortgage will be (I’d include a 30% contingency over base price), you should know whether you might face approval issues. We kept our max possible sale price well below what we should quality for, so the only concern now is whether the house will appraise! (Not really concerned, we’ve vetted and planned for this to the extent possible). I’m a fan of credit monitoring apps if you aren’t on them already. I would also recommend having an attorney review the purchase agreement as others have said. I would have hired one if I weren’t an attorney myself, or otherwise well versed in the custom build process (the terms “allowances” and “changes orders” might as well have been Greek to me before this adventure!).