The money all goes back into the community. Last year we bought hams for 15 families in need. Donated to the school toy drive,helped our local volunteer fire department with gift giving and others. A young mother with 3 children had her home burn yesterday so we are going to help get the children clothes. We do so many things. In December we go to our two local nursing homes and wrap gifts for them to give to their families. We collect gifts all year and take them to each nursing home. Each patient get to pick out 2 gifts. We wrap each one for them to give to their family members at their Christmas party. Such a wonderful day. You don't think about things like this until you help on a special day like this. They are so grateful..

That's your goal and it's very doable. You have to be systematic though in terms of cataloguing what you have, then when it blooms. After you are sure you will have plants blooming throughout the season, you want to place plants so that they harmonize, contrast, set off each other. You could list your plants here or just type or write them down. Possibly a single page for each season and then put those single pages together from spring to fall, so that you can see each all the pages at once. You'll know from your notes if you need to add plants for a particular month of the growing season. Various ways to organize your thinking.

There are many interior design firms that have a church specialty. There are 6 at least that I know of locally, and I’m not exactly in a hotbed of design. They have access to materials and products designer especially to your situation. It streamlines things greatly to have all of that experience and all of those products together. I’m sure they would love to help you with a refresh!

Thank you so much JudyG Designs and Simplechoices! I appreciate your knowledge and the time you've given with suggestions and pictures. As of tomorrow I have to turn in these paint colors to the painters. The painters will only work with Diamond Vogel paints, so I've been trying to cross reference with my SW choices, which is always my go-to paint co., but the decision has been made; we are going with Captain Nemo on the front (both sides of wood). If you can look up that color, it is a deep gray (hint of blue) and it looks nice with our chairs- both the blue and the gray. I'd love your opinion- if you have one about this, on the color to choose for the three other walls in the room (both sides and the back). I am leaning toward Diamond Vogel- Metro. I don't understand enough about the technical aspects of warm/vs/cold and Light reflecting or not, but perhaps you can speak to that regarding these colors? We will make the carpeting choice after the painting is done. I appreciate your thoughts on how dark the carpet choice is, and I like the "rust" suggestion, so I'll begin looking in that direction. I think a blend of those tones- gray/rust/touch of blue? would make for a nice carryover of the antiquarian brown and might make the two brick columns accented too. The sample I had shown you- I was told, is commercial grade, solution dyed, and nylon. I did pull a loop and it did pull a few loops out, but not in one long strand...so not sure on that. I wanted to alter the ceiling to a deeper gray/bluish choice as JudyG Designs suggested, but it is too late....today the black paint arrived. How I wish I would have put my discussion on much sooner! Thank you, again! I so appreciate your suggestions!