Byron and I have spent an inordinate amount of time in tile stores recently.

But between tile stores, we actually did do other things. We bought Byron a new MacBook Pro (his was 5 years old). I now want a new MacBook Pro (and mine is only 9 months old.. but the new ones have shinier screens, better battery life, and a backlit keyboard. Jealous.)

We also went flying to check me out in a Liberty. That was pretty neat. I am definitely going to need another hour or two of instruction in it to get comfortable. It was all sorts of weird. There is a FADEC, which means the engine is controlled by electronics. Unlike planes I am used to flying, this one actually needs electrical power to make its engine go. It is also a very light, fast airplane. Oh and it has a stick, a real stick, not the steering wheel yoke I'm used to. Probably weirdest, though, is the breaks. Airplanes typically brake and steer by the rudder pedals on the ground. This one stears and breaks with a hand controller next to the throttle lever. The whole thing was disconcerting. But Byron was all about making me uncomfortable, just testing out how it performs in a cross controlled stall. I'll probably fly it later this week. Its price/speed point is right to make it a great option for a $100 hamburger aircraft.

Ok, tile. Yes, my life is tile. We have graduated from the entertaining sketchy tile stores along the feeder to high end home design stores. You know, not that kind of store you go to when you are getting a "custom" home from a developer, but the type of store you go to when you are getting a real, actual custom home, with your architect's drawings and making selections.

So, as you know, Byron and I really want glass tiles. We've looked at travertine, we've looked at slate, but they all looked faded and just not "right" for our kitchen and what we want. We want glass. Now, "modern" glass kitchen displays often favor subway bricks for glass tiles, and we don't like that either, because it looks like a subway. Seriously. Its just oddly trendy and a little too industrial for us.

As we look more and more, our price point kept climbing and climbing.

Finally we found this lovely glass tile in a "French" pattern. That means its a bunch of different shaped tile in a pattern. Fairly large tiles. We thought it was nice, there were two off-white beige colors that looked liked they would work with our contertops. The darker one we worried was a little too dark/brown, but turned out to be a perfect match for the beige speckles in the black granite and paired beautifully with a white grout to bring out the white of our cabinets. Think Cutri beige. There was also a whiter option that we were considering, but when we brought it home, it was a little too washed out.

But of course, this wasn't good enough for us. We found this company, Oceanside Tile. Our big complaint about all the glass tiles we found so far is they didn't have much character, they were perfectly smooth and colored, clearly pressed out a machine. Part of the appeal of glass is its natural beauty. Oceanside uses recycled glass in three different finishes - matted, clear, and iridescent. We really liked the latter two. All their glass had that beautiful look we wanted. The also have these textured "deco" pieces that we loved.

And the price per square food was nearly DOUBLE the already expensive French pattern... Oh yeah, and they make the tile to order and it takes 5 weeks to get in. Clearly doing our whole backsplash in this would not be an option. So at the expensive interior design stores in downtown Houston, we worked on a plan to buy some Oceanside tile, either 2 x 2" pieces in the deco style or maybe in plane or even some 4 x 4" pieces and pop out some tile from the field and replace them with Oceanside. We settled on two of Oceanside's shades of green that matched the two beiges of the the French pattern (depending on which beige we tried to use). We also loved the "oxygen" clear tile. But things were getting busy. We're still struggling with how much tile replacing we can do without disrupting the field of French patterned glass tile while incorporating all the Oceanside we can afford.

Anyway, here's what all the options look like in one picture: