Morticia would like these

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S79829370

Our floor color ended up being more of an orangeish/brownish with a hint of red, which I actually like better than the Santa Fe Red Mr Wright used.

I had been worried that our greenish/teal oriental rug in the living room would mean we'd be living in a perpetual "Christmas mode" but this will be fine. It also means that we had to rethink the kitchen cabinets and we opted for the brown/black cabinet drawers and doors, which also means we saved nearly half of what we planned to spend down there because our first choice was, of course, the most expensive. And at IKEA, you can opt for drawers rather than shelves inside the cabinet. One of my sisters, BB, has drawers rather than shelves and I have coveted them for years...

I don't know what Frank would think of black cabinets in the kitchen, which he refused to label kitchen in his blueprints, preferring the term workspace.

I find that whenever we talk about doing anything, we spend an inordinate amount of time wondering if Wright would approve of it, and even though he's not here to give his opinion one way or another, we are just like his paying clients. We want to respect his work.

On our tour of the Rosenbaum house in Florence, Alabama, we were all marveling on how tiny the furniture was. It turns out that Wright designed all the furniture for what he considered an "average" person-5'8 1/2"-exactly his height. This would have been fine, except that the Rosenbaums, both mother and father and their sons were all tall... Julia Child tall. But, they used his tiny chairs, squeezed their basketball player thighs under the low dining table and never thought twice about it. When asked why on earth they just didn't get furniture more suitable for their frames, Mrs. Rosenbaum replied, "Mr. Wright wouldn't like it."

I don't think I'd be uncomfortable for 50 years to please the man, but I would like to think he didn't hate the choices we're making.

Searstime

OUR FAX WORKED!

And just in the nick of time. To celebrate we're heading to Sears tonight. They are having a big appliance sale and they will hold the stuff until we need it. I have already picked out the refrigerator, a freezer on the bottom model. One of our daughters has it and they like it very much. I find I need more fridge room on top because with our shrinking household, we just don't have that much need to open the freezer, mainly to access the cocktail necessities of life and ice cream for the grandkids. Although Julia Child hated her freezer on the bottom. In one of her episodes, she was bending down to put something in it and complained about it being designed for "pygmies." We now buy our groceries weekly and not keeping massive amounts of food in readiness since we're not feeding 4 hungry girls and whoever they bring home for dinner. And let me say, in my experience, both having been raised in estrogen heavy household, and then running one- girls eat WAY MORE FOOD than boys. One of my sisters told me once that she usually stopped eating when she got tired of chewing.

Right now I have a Jenn-air stove, with the dual ovens. I like the dual ovens, but the upper smaller one doesn't heat as accurately as the lower, larger one, and the stove top, while having five burners, cannot accommodate three large pots at once. Although our children are all out now, we still cook for the hordes because of family dinners so I'm looking for a larger gas cooktop. And once again, I think Sears has it.

Pat is meeting with our builder to discuss the steel beams in the roof. THINGS ARE HAPPENING! This is so exciting!