Smart Husband, Smart Home

James is going to tackle all of the electrical work in the new house himself. He's spent a lot of time mapping out the electrical layout of the house and preparing the electrical boxes inside and outside the house. We'll be ready to start the rough in for the electrical and plumbing in just a few weeks.

From the beginning, James has wanted to build a smart home to save energy and as he puts it, "because it's cool." He spent a lot of time researching products and methods that would allow us to control lights, thermostats, appliances and even things like door locks and window shades online or from a wireless device like an iPhone or iPad. So say we're both at work and a fast moving thunderstorm rolls through, we could close the skylight from our desk. Or maybe we forgot to lock the front door on our way out - no problem, I'll just do it from my iPhone app. More importantly, the system will allow us to control the thermostats and electronics in our house and specify energy saving settings that would be applied when we are away from home. Here's a quick video of James testing out some of the technology. He's customized an iPhone/iPad app that allows you to set up the system to meet your specific energy and entertainment needs. Even I'm a little impressed.

On Display

I have been taking pictures with my DSLR now for seven months but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I finally got a photo printed. This is the blessing and the curse of digital photography I suppose. I gifted a few of my favorites to my sister-in-law Mandy for her birthday in early July. They were of pictures I took in or near her backyard. Recently, I decided to put some of my photographs online so that I can keep them organized and share them with others. It's also a good way to ensure they are backed up in case something happens to my computer. If you'd like to browse through my galleries, hop on over to my new site and take a peek. If you are interested in any prints, let me know, I'd be thrilled to share them with you!

Hanging in the Chadwick Family guest bath

Dream Big Sweepstakes

I've had mixed results when it comes to winning lotteries, drawings or sweepstakes. Two lucky moments do come to mind though. The first time I ever won anything I happened to be strapped to a stretcher at a blood drive, about to pass out (I'm 1 for 8 when it comes to successful blood giving) when I heard my name called for a drawing for a free iPod shuffle. I don't know whether it's because the nurses just felt bad for me since I had been "giving blood" for two hours at that point so they fixed the drawing or if it was just my lucky day, but I ended up going home not only with an arm full of bruises and a nasty migraine, but also with a shiny new iPod. My other lucky day was when my name got picked in a raffle at a charity golf tournament. I think I won like $500. I gave it all back to the charity because let's face it, they can use it more than me. Still, I felt lucky.

I'm hoping some of my luck will carry over and win us the West Elm Dream Big Sweepstakes. Oh to have $10,000 to spend at West Elm and $5,000 in paint from Benjamin Moore! It's like a new home owner's dream come true. James could tell you that I have a West Elm catalog with dog ears on every page and I dream nightly about how I want to decorate our new digs. Part of me knows this is a nearly impossible sweepstakes to win and will turn out the same way the HGTV Green Home Giveaway did (for the record, I entered that one every day for three months straight!). But oh, a girl can dream!

Day 72 and 73

This is what the house looked like at the end of the day yesterday...

View from the master bedroom

...and today!

James at the front door


Dining room looking into the living room. You can also see the staircase going down.


Looking into the kitchen from the living room


One of the most important rooms in the house - my closet!

Day 71

The framers are working fast, all this went up in two days. I'm trying to get pictures often but it's difficult to keep up with them! It's so exciting to see the framing, we're finding just having walls up around the foundation makes the place feel so much bigger. I'm starting to realize this house is going to be a lot larger than it looks on paper. Hopefully in the end we'll have a house that blends in with the surroundings, not a giant monstrosity on a hill. One thing's for certain though, just about every room in the house will have a great view!

These guys work fast!




Wasting as little wood as possible


View from the driveway of the main level

We also spent today digging a giant trench from the house to the well house and garage for our water and communications lines. The trench literally looked like our very own backyard Grand Canyon. I think it would also make an excellent luge run in the winter.

Ready to greet friends at our future front door!

Day 68

Hallelujah! Our builder started working today and the framing has begun! It feels like it has taken us forever to get to this point. Saying we are excited to be here is the understatement of the century. I may not even be able to sleep tonight. We can't wait to see what it will look like at the end of the day tomorrow...and the next day...and the day after. Yippee!!

I think I could get used to the view from these windows

Keywords

Do you use Google to search for things on the Internet? Okay, that's a silly question because everyone uses Google to search for things on the Internet. Today I just happened to log into my Google Analytics account for this blog to check on the site stats. I set up Analytics for this blog about a year ago just to get an idea of how many visitors we were getting, how they were finding us and where they were located. I couldn't help but laugh (out loud and repeatedly) at some of the "keywords" that people were typing into a Google search that eventually landed them on our blog. Here are just a few of the funniest.

"yellow dog with a smile"
"green life yellow lab"
"swallows swarming CT"
"great bear and yellow dog cultural pictures" (yes, seriously)
"my girlfriend inflating inner tube exploded" (yup)
"the green site day by day yellow lab"
"yellow dog national lampoon"
"nemo-yellow dog"
"good outdoor fun"

Haha! I wonder what these poor people must have thought when they landed on yellowdog-greenlife.blogspot.com

In related news, in the past year this blog has had 9062 page views and 5712 unique visitors speaking 27 languages from 37 different countries. Cool! The map below shows where y'all are from. I'm not convinced we're all that interesting but I sure hope you keep coming back!