Getting lit

Contrary to what you may have been brought up to believe, it's what's on the outside that counts. At least when it comes to landscape lighting.

If you've been following this blog for any amount of time—and if you have, you might want to look into a Netflix subscription—you already know we went through a rather substantial remodel a couple years ago. If you'd care to refresh your memory about it, especially the parts where strangers marched through my house starting at sunrise, giant dumpsters blocked the street and the word "budget" lost all meaning, you can read up on it here, here and here.

While many great things came out of the remodel, like our new whisper-quiet Bosch dishwasher, a master bathroom that can accommodate (or is that a-commode-date?) more than one person at a time, about 50 sq. ft. more of living room and a bitchin' kitchen, one thing we unintentionally lost was our exterior lighting.

Since we were putting in a new electrical panel and circuit breakers, upping the amps (not that having circuits blow every time three appliances ran at the same time for 20 years wasn't fun) and rewiring the electrical, we also upgraded the outdoor lighting transformer. The one we had was over 20 years old, and the hamsters and hand crank that ran it were both getting worn out. So hello to a brand new, digital whammy-jammy transformer that immediately blew out the line to our existing exterior lights.

Even though we didn't let the fact we had no budget for many things during the process stop us, we literally had no budget left to fix the exterior lights. So for the past couple years, the only outside lights on the house have come from the inside. We do have plenty of overly sensitive sensor lights around, so if you come near the place they light up like Bret Kavanaugh at a frat party. But they're just a poor substitute for attractive, illuminating exterior light that increases the value of the house, says, "Hey, I see you out there." and makes the neighbors oooh and aaahhh at the place as they take their evening drives.

Right now I'm researching what seems like thousands of new fixtures on hundreds of web pages while our incredible electricians from the remodel are in standby mode. Hopefully I'll be able to flip the switch on the job soon.

I don't expect my house will look like the one in the top picture when it's done. But I'm hoping it'll at least look better than this one.

Room with a view

Hotel room art has come a long way.

Not that long ago, you'd drag your travel weary self to your room, plop down on the hopefully bedbug free bed and look in front of you. There, bolted into the studs and secured to the wall—because apparently hotel art theft is a bigger problem than we know—would be a mass produced "painting" of the Thomas Kinkade variety. A landscape scene with two deer in the forest. Sailboats on a shimmering lake. A purple mountain's majesty range at dawn.

Generic. Expected. Predictable. Just like my high school girlfriend.

But the walls they are a changin'. From Super 8's to Four Seasons, hotel wall art has exploded into a mix of color and statement, both bold and challenging. Originally the idea was to create a calm, serene and idyllic feeling for the traveler who just wanted refuge from the big, bad outside world.

Today's traveler wants something more contemporary. Something that they actually see and enjoy, as oppose to something invisible and easy to ignore. Like my high school girlfriend.

Of course, wall art isn't the only thing that's changed in today's hospitality merchants. Towel art is suddenly all the rage as well. Like, for example, this totally non-creepy, not stuff of nightmare arrangement pictured here.