I have honed calacatta marble and I love it. There are three issues with marble that people talk about--chipping, staining and etching. But only one of them is really an issue. Chipping--while it is an issue, other natural materials chip too, so I don't think it is fair to say that chipping is an issue unique to marble. It is softer than granite but I had granite before and I had plenty of chips around my sink. I This time around I am trying harder to be careful. I have trained my husband to lower pots into the sink carefully and I keep a cutting board strategically located right above the dishwasher pulled all the way forward. Over the dishwasher is a prime place for chips. Staining--this one is a really stupid issue because it does not have to be an issue at all. Marble does not stain if you get it sealed, assuming you clean your counters daily! My counters were sealed when they were installed almost 18 months ago and still nothing stains them. Not wine, not tomato sauce. Nothing. Last evening, I found coffee and strawberry juice from the morning that I must have missed when cleaning--I wiped it up hours later and no stains. Sometimes coffee gets under the Nespresso machine. I find it days and days later and clean it without a problem. Etching is the issue. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. We had a party last year and made margaritas--there are little rings all over the area where the blender and glasses were. We use a lot of lemons and limes and there are little spots on my counters where they squirt past the cutting board. I am very careful about citrus--that is about the only thing that etches every time--but careful doesn't equal perfect. If I am juicing a bunch of lemons, I do it over the sink. I have been able to wipe up citrus within a couple of seconds with no etching. Honing helps as etching shows more on a polished surface. Only you know whether the etching will bother you too much to live with it. Does it bother me? A little. Do I wish it wouldn't etch? Yes. Am I the counter police? A bit but I am easing up over time especially because I know that lemons and limes are the real culprits so I can mostly control that. The next margarita party might see a towel put down by the blender and some extra cutting boards. To me, nothing is as beautiful as marble and I would do it again in a heartbeat. But it is not for everyone.

My electrician (aka hubby) finally got my second pendant hung over the island today!! You may or may not remember when I posted this pic back in September or October Right after I built and installed my temp island. The area looked, quite frankly, somewhat ridiculous. An 8 ft long island with this one lone pendant hanging over one end of it. The reason it was there was because that was an existing box that used to have a fluorescent light box on it. I knew I wanted to put in another box ran off of the first one and install 2 pendants, well, today it finally got done!! Yay!! Not only is it aesthetically pleasing but there is soooo much more light over my island now! Can I just mention again how much I love the smoke colored glass in these pendants? Also, in keeping with our weekly thread "no accomplishment is too small", I tracked down some spare 2x6 and cut blocks to fit in the old window spot. I also got the piece of drywall cut to install. The only reason I haven't yet is because I am thinking of creating a "time capsule" to put in the wall before I close it off. Chances are that spot will be opened again at some point in the future, it is where the MIL quarters and main house meet. Even if I never open it back up, I thought it would be cool to leave a "treasure" there for someone to discover in the future. Tell me truthfully, does that sound really lame or kinda cool?

I think that the size of the kitchen has some relation to how long one expects to live at a particular address. When I was in my 20s in San Francisco, I moved fairly often and generally had very small kitchens and did not do very much cooking, outside of the work I did in a restaurant. What I did cook back then was fairly simple, but it was also very easy for me to go to a lot of different markets to get ingredients just before making a meal. Now, as I am older, I like to have inventory and not have to shop as often. When I was younger, I liked to shop often. I do not think that the trend has much to do with what generation you are talking about but what age group you are talking about. I was very much like the Millennials when I was the age that they are now. When they get older, they will change as well - otherwise they would stagnate. However, my ex-roommate from San Francisco who visited me last week-end still maintains the lifestyle that we had in our 20s, but he grew up in New York and finds it normal to go to delis every day for food. He still only stocks condiments and beverages in his fridge. He can make tea or coffee, but not much else.

I've decided to transform the leaf mould bin into a compost bin sooner rather than later. Instead of emptying out all of the leaves, I've started incorporating grass clippings and kitchen/garden scraps into the bin, making sure it gets a good green/brown ratio. Over time, by turning the existing brown materials in with the new green materials, it should make good compost. The negative about this is that I won't be able to use this stuff for about two years, when I could have actually collected leaf mould in one year. The positive is that compost is more nutrient rich but can also be used the same way, as a top dressing or mulch, for water retention and weed suppression, but giving those plants a boost that leaf mould may not do. I'll work green materials in for about a year (or unless we get it so full that it absolutely can't hold any more) then setup another swimming pool composter up. On appx April 2018, the plan is to collect compost from the first bin. On appx April 2019, I'll collect compost from the 2nd bin. Then, April 2020, from the first bin, and on and on. Meanwhile, I'm slowly building up a small farm, with rabbits, cows, chickens, and eventually, ducks, possibly turkeys, etc. Rabbit poop = instant garden fertilizer + worm food, for vermicomposting, to collect worm castings for the garden, and the worms themselves could feed some fish, for a future aquaponics setup. Cow, chicken, duck, and turkey poop will be composted. As of right now, it's all about slowly moving forward, to try to obtain a balance, where everything works together.