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Gorgeous Casa Sollevare Luxury Home

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Hey, do you enjoy looking at new homes?

I guess you could call it a form of window shopping.

I enjoy occasionally going to open houses in the area to see how other people have decorated or renovated their homes. Especially if the home is similar in design to my own. It’s a great way to get some ideas.

Even if the house isn’t similar to the home you’re currently in it’s a great way to get ideas for your own home or as a way to begin developing plans for a home you might buy in the future.

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I sometimes even browse the MLS listings to compare home prices and take a virtual tour of houses. You could even do a search on one of the search engines for homes that have features that you’re interested in.

For example if you were looking for “luxury golf home Italian architecture” you’d find this absolutely gorgeous house!

This home, currently being highlighted on the CasaSollevare.com website is owned by the architect that created the luxury design on the Colorado Golf course. It was actually named the 2006 home of the year by Colorado Homes & Lifestyles magazine. It’s a Tuscan design and this luxurious home is a cliff side home elevated 350 feet. It has a 360 degree view that extends 50 miles and overlooks Colorado’s most popular wine producing area.

6_fireplace_parlor.jpg Isn’t that a beautiful home?

I love the gorgeous fireplace parlor.

Can you imagine retiring to the parlor after a fine meal? The chairs are lovely too. They look like some that I saw on another website earlier this week that were made of old wine barrels.

I’d also be more than pleased to have a kitchen like the one I’ve included an image of below in my own home! It’s modern yet appears to have that timeless old fashion style to it as well. I love the warm yellow walls too.

The attention to detail within the home is amazing. Each room is furnished beautifully.

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I could add more photos and continue to gush over this lovely home, but the best suggestion I could make would be to visit the site and go on the virtual tour. I believe if you do the whole tour you’ll see all of the main rooms of the house on the upper and lower floors.

Believe me when I say this home has it all including a gym and spa, garden room, kitchen, wine cellar and so on. It’s even got an elevator!

Unfortunately this home is not within my price range at $2,500,000 but for all I know it may be within your budget! Whether it is or isn’t it’s a nice home to have a peak at and to dream about owning.






Use a Robomower or Lawnbott on your lawn – free up your time

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Summer is here and the weekends are for having fun, going to the cottage, beach, sporting events, visiting friends or just plain relaxing. If cutting the lawn is a chore that you’d rather not do why don’t you get a Robomower?

I was asked to do a short write up about Bamabots.com – Robomower and Lawnbott #1 Dealer – and to tell you the truth, once I started reading about these amazing machines I was hooked. I love the idea of Robotic lawn mowers.

We have such a small lawn that it really wouldn’t be practical to get a Robomower. I mean our backyard is 17 feet wide by approximately 30 feet long, but the perimeters have raised garden beds that are 3 and 4 feet wide, and then there’s a 20′ x 20′ patio area, so you can imagine how little lawn is left.

Now if I were back at my parents house with their good sized yard that probably took at least 45 minutes to an hour to cut both the front and back lawns a Robomower starts to sound like a good idea.

The Bamabots site has a top ten list of reasons why owning a Robomower or Lawnbott is a good idea. As an ER nurse I truly appreciate #8 on the list “They are safe. In 2005 there were 72,000 emergency room visits involving lawn mowers. ZERO involving robotic lawn mowers.“. Now that’s got me thinking. My elderly neighbor always pulls out her electric lawn mower while keeping an eye on our windows. I swear she does this on purpose. She then proceeds to begin cutting her lawn while in bare feet. Of course this brings me running outside. I’m certain she does this on purpose. If anyone in my neighborhood needs a robotic lawn mower – she does!

Other nifty tidbits on the top ten list that caught my eye was the fact that all of the Robomower and Lawnbott parts are replaceable, plus they really never wear out since there’s no motor to break down it’s said that they could last for decades. All you really need to do is change the blades once a year and replace the batteries when they no longer hold enough of a charge to cut your lawn.

Many of my recent posts have been about going green and doing our part to lower our carbon footprint. Well you could consider the robomowers “green” as they don’t use gas or oil so they do not contribute to pollution. I didn’t know this but 5% of pollution is caused by lawn mowers!

The best reason to get a Lawnbott or Robomower is because it will free up your time. Since the robotic lawn mowers can mow autonomously without human help all season long you could literally go away for the weekend or go about your business and your lawn will get cut on it’s own. These mowers actually go out on their own, mow your yard and then head back home to their charger. They’ll do this repeatedly throughout the season without any help from you.

professional175.gif Bamabots.com sells many different models of Robomowers and Lawnbotts. Each have different mowing capacities. The RL850 model that I’m showing to the left are great for lots that are up to 3/4 of an acre, where as the Robomower RL1000 is perfect for yards that are up to an acre in size.

Speaking of the RL1000 there’s a Robomower review that discusses all the features of this model in full detail.

rl1000-176.gifIf I were thinking of buying a Lawnbott or Robomower I think I’d take a serious look at the RL1000 since it is one of the models that has the autonomous feature where it can be programed in advance and cut your yard and returning to it’s charger on it’s own.

It just so happens that both of these mowers are on sale right now.

Just like any other type of lawn mower these are not inexpensive but when you consider what you’ll save on fuel and or electricity, plus gain in free time I think the price becomes comparable to a good regular lawn mower.

Have you ever seen a robotic lawn mower in action? I haven’t, but I’d like to as I’m sure it would be kind of cool to see.

Oh if you visit the site you must check out The Garden Groom – a hedge trimmer that self cleans, and the Electronic Venus Flytrap that burps when it catches a fly. Both items are near the bottom of the main page.

Landscaping adds value to your home and gives you extra living space

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I’ve noticed lately that the value of homes in our area has been going up and up. We’ve only lived in our house for six years and already and going by the price similar homes in our area have sold for, our house has gone up in price by more than $250,000 making homes in our area $450K +.

Don’t be fooled. There’s nothing particularly special about the homes in our area. It’s a nice neighborhood, but it’s not a gated community or anything. Housing prices have just been going up.

The odd thing is, I find many of the homes rather plain Jane. For all I know they’ve been gutted and completely renovated inside, but from the outside they don’t look like anything special.

That’s where we are different. We are renovating the inside of our home, but we began our indoor renovations at the same time as our outdoor landscaping. Luckily we finished the outdoor landscaping the same year we started. The indoor renovations are ongoing much to my dismay.

We have no plans to sell our home, but I’ve always figured that all the work we’ve done landscaping our yard and caring for our lovely garden has added value to our home.

My suspicions were confirmed when I read an article on Plant-Care.com that states that a study cited in Smart Money magazine states that consumers value a landscaped home up to 11.3% higher than it’s base price. I’m pleased with that report since our home is the only one on the whole block that really has any landscaping. We’ve added value to our home. It’s confirmed!

The article that I found that information in was one that discussed a number of unique backyard landscape ideas. If you’ve considered landscaping your front and or backyard and would like some great ideas you should go read the article. There are links within the article that lead to other articles with more in depth information about each particular type of landscaping discussed within the main article.

We don’t have a pool and we never will because our backyard is just too small to have a pool, but if you’ve thought of putting a pool in your yard or perhaps have one, but haven’t done much else to the yard you should read the section on pool and landscaping around the pool area. Certainly if you’ve watched any of the programs on TLC you know that you can landscape a pool area in many different styles and your yard could go from a recreation area to a true living area with a little landscaping.

As many of you know our landscaped backyard includes raised garden beds along the perimeter of the yard and a lovely patio for entertaining. There are some great deck and patio landscaping ideas discussed in the above mentioned article. If you’ve thought of putting in a patio or deck, but you aren’t sure where to start or what materials to use you’ll get some great starter suggestions by reading the articles linked to the landscaping write up.

Some simple, and economical ways to landscape your yard, whether you already have a fully landscaped backyard or just a flowerbed or two is to add some garden lighting. Outdoor lighting, electric or solar, can be used to light a garden path or highlight plants or other features with a garden or backyard. We use solar outdoor lighting and it makes our yard look quite lovely at night. It also makes it pleasant to sit outdoors in the evening in the dimly lit garden.

We used interlocking easy stone to create our raised garden beds, but we could have used layered rocks, or we could have brought in some larger rocks and made landscape features out of them. The above mentioned article discusses the use of rocks in the landscape and how to create a natural look using rocks.

One thing that my husband in particular wants to add to our garden is landscape speakers. There are some speakers that are made to look like rocks that you can place within your garden and hook up to your indoor stereo system which would allow you to have music in your yard yet maintain a natural look and feel. I’m pretty sure that, that is one of the ideas that we’ll use ourselves that’s mentioned in the landscaping article.

I’ve actually visited the Plant-care.com website several times in the past when I’ve been looking up plant care information. I know I visited this site when I was looking up information on Aglaonemas – Chinese evergreens a couple of years ago. They had several articles about these easy to care for plants so they kept coming up in my Google searches. I actually think that’s how I discovered the site in the first place.

To close this long post I’d just like to get back to my original idea. if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know I get quite a bit of pleasure out of my landscaped backyard. I love it and visitors adore it. If you haven’t yet landscaped I would strongly encourage you to do so. You’ll get extra living space that I’m certain you’ll enjoy and it appears you’ll also increase the value of your home.

Take a look at the landscaping article. I’m sure you’ll get some great ideas for your own backyard landscaping.

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