The Modern Home – Page 45

Modern Homes – surPLUShome & ZEROW House

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Final results rolled in Friday for the Solar Decathlon 2009 and Team Germany claimed the win! This year’s entry, the surPLUShome, featured a glossy dark facade that was almost entirely covered in photovoltaic panels. Very sleek! I think I would have preferred to get rid of the wood trim and have it be more monochromatic, but that is just the minimalist in me talking. The house produced an impressive 2x the amount of energy needed. This is the second win for Team Germany, who’s 2007 entry also secured the top spot.

Another favorite entry from this years competition was Rice University’s ZEROW House. The ZEROW House is a 520 square foot zero energy home that proves that a home can be not only technologically innovative and attractive, but affordable as well. Be sure to poke around their website a bit. There are some great interactive tours.

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Modern Landscaping – Wood Slice Path

Modern Landscaping

Okay, at some point in time I must try out this design idea! I love it! Katy Elliot found this walkway at the Portland Flower Show. Natural, organic materials used in a fresh way create such a pretty pattern. It’s great! I think I would want to seal the wood to help it last longer, but then again it wouldn’t be terribly expensive or difficult to replace.

Via

About A Boy

That’s what this post is about.

A sweet boy.

A boy through and through.

My Ezra. (His hair grows in a natural mohawk. I love that.)

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As a newborn he was mesmerized by a blanket his grandma had made him.

It was covered in cars.

He was obsessed with cars!

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As soon as he could crawl he was off!

Zooming here and there on all fours.

Pushing his little cars around.

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The older he grows the more sophisticated his play becomes.

His cars find their way through the nooks and crannies of the dishwasher, the hidden passages of the dark closets, the mountainous terrain of the couch cushions.

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I can only imagine the adventures he’s experiencing in his mind.

Has he been on safari? Has he crossed the desert? Has he won the championship race?

Yes.

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That’s my boy.

A Bug Vacuum

I want this:

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So that next time I run into this:

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I don’t have to get close to it. EEEK!

Brad wasn’t even home. He had a client meeting up in Charleston. I didn’t know if I could handle this guy! He was HUGE!!! My first thought was mouse when I walked by the shower in my groggy state. I certainly woke up quick! After hyperventalating (I HATE spiders) I debated back and forth for 20 minutes about what to do. I knew I had to kill him. Trying to figure out how to catch him and put him outside was out of the question. And if I left him alone he would probably carry Ezra or Kenzie off while they were napping. That’s how big he was. It took several smashings and he was still alive! Our shower drain has extra large holes and I thought I could wash his mangled spidery corpse down the drain, but he didn’t even come close to fitting! I get shivers just thinking about it! Ick!

But wait! The story doesn’t end there. As a lovely parting gift this spider left us… hundreds of offspring! We stayed up late last night killing spider after spider after spider. We went to bed with some major skin crawling. Big time heebie jeebies.

And while I’m at it I may as well share another creepy crawly story from a couple of months ago. After drying off after a shower and I went to hang my towel up and discovered what? A big ol’ spider on my towel! Big time violation!! So not cool! This eight legged pervert was a fraction of the size of the spider pictured, but still Way, way too close for comfort.

*Post Edit: The spider didn’t release it’s offspring when I smashed it. (Although that did happen to my mom one time. Gross!!) No, the egg sack was left in my little boys room. Lovely. Here we are trying to read our scriptures before bed when we notice hundreds of tiny spiders jumping around us. Luckily they were small or I might have passed out.

Modern Home – The Ehrlich House

I came across this gorgeous modern house when I was window shopping (literally shopping for windows). All I knew was that the jpeg was titled Ehrlich. I automatically assumed it was Ehrlich Architects, but after perusing their site I couldn’t find this house anywhere. After hunting around a bit I found it! It turns out Ehrlich is the owners name. The house was designed by John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects and incorporates a number of passive and active green strategies. The modern landscaping is great. I especially like the water feature, though it seems that opening the living room out onto it would pose somewhat of a hazard for the clumsy, the drunk, or the wee ones. No?

Click on the link below for more pics.

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