Well again, it's been a while since I posted to this blog. We've been in the "wait" part of a hurry up and wait pattern for a little while now. But finally, the ball is starting to roll again. Specifically, we're talking to architects. Last week we had three architects come by the ranch. We gave them the tour, told them our ideas, listened to their ideas and now anxiously await their estimates for how much they'd charge to be our architect.

The architect will help us develop a set of drawings that can be used to pull permits, hire subcontractors, or follow ourselves if we opt to do some of the work ourselves. It's a pretty big step because up until now the ideas for the house could change at will. Once they're on paper it will cost money to put in change requests. So, we'd better decide exactly what we want now.

In the meantime, we've channelled our creativity and idle hands to prettier tasks -- YARD ART!




Like it? It's blue wine bottles on aluminum posts with LED lights powered by a solar panel. By day the blue bottles look like giant blue tulips and at night they glow. They provide a good amount of light -- enough to light a path or steps. We might need to market these.

As for our yard in particular, eventually the house will have dark blue trim to match and it will all come together quite nicely, but for now we're just playing with solder and enjoying every minute of it while the big picture slowly takes shape.