Category: Just For Fun

4 Lucky Traditions and Superstitions When Moving Into A New Home

March 11, 2024

Between wearing green, spotting four leaf clovers, and being surrounded by little men with red beards, St. Patrick’s Day is full of lighthearted and strange traditions for families and friends to enjoy. Everybody can always use a little extra luck in their lives, and throughout the years, families have come up with plenty of unique traditions to usher in some good fortune as they move into their new homes. In the spirit of the season, let’s take a look at some of these superstitions to make your next move jinx-free! Lay a Positive Foundation Depending on how early in the process people begin to interact with their new home, many believe in writing positive messages on the frames of their houses and behind the drywall, and even scattering coins in the foundation in hopes that good, fortunate days are ahead. These traditions may be traced all the way back to “foundation deposits,” where groups in ancient Egypt and Sudan buried sacrificed animals, valuable tools, and pottery underneath cornerstones of important buildings in blessing rituals (according to historians at the Egyptian Museum in Manchester). Today, items that new homeowners place within their foundation and in their framing are a bit more

How to Have a Very Merry Christmas (and Other Holiday Home Safety Tips)

December 25, 2023

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all who celebrate! The holiday season is a great opportunity to take some time off from work and enjoy friends and family. While these breaks can certainly have its joyful moments, there’s something about meeting up with friends and family that can lead to an air of chaos. If you’re expecting guests who have a tendency of getting caught in hairy situations, it just might be smart to take a few safety precautions along the way. To ensure a very merry Christmas break, here are a few home safety tips homeowners should keep in mind while weathering the holidays. Monitor Ice and SnowIf you’re expecting a degree of icy or snowy weather throughout the holidays, it may be wise to make some extra efforts to keep your driveway and sidewalks cleared. You may have family members in town who aren’t used to dealing with frosty conditions. Take precautions that no one gets hurt from slipping on unattended patches of ice. With that said, those that may have the impulse of piling on the sidewalk salt or other ice melt solutions should wait and rethink their options. While effective at melting ice, rock salt can

How to be a Good Host During the Holidays

December 11, 2023

Hosting family and friends over the holidays can be a tough task. On one hand, it’s wonderful to reconnect with loved ones, especially those that live far away. On the other hand, getting a busy home in order can feel like an intimidating task after a year of balancing a demanding work schedule along with messy pets, and maybe kids with their own affinity for chaos. In preparation for the holidays, here are a few extra things that you can do to go above and beyond making your out-of-town guests feel welcome! Check On Your Roof’s StabilityOne pet peeve that is so common for guests is lack of decent parking. Whatever system that’s worked for your family throughout the rest of the year likely will have to change at least a bit once a new vehicle is introduced. So, unless you’re blessed with a larger-than-average parking situation, consider thinking ahead for some alternatives that allow extra room for guests. The common holiday struggle of juggling cars in the driveway is exactly why some considerate guests may take it upon themselves to use some sorely underutilized parking areas – such as the space on top of your roof. What many fail

Will Your Next Home Be Printed?

December 4, 2023

A more recent technology that’s been making its rounds by disrupting and inspiring innovations across industries is 3D printing. Glasses, shoes, car parts, prosthetics, and movie props are all being 3D-printed today, and the speculation of how this technology might change people’s everyday lives seems to be at an all-time high. With the speed and ease that common items can be printed, some have started to think even bigger. Enter businesses like Texas-based ICON, Denmark’s COBOD, and Shanghai’s Winsun, who all believe that 3D printing is the future of home manufacturing. Citing shockingly quick construction times, cheaper costs, and little required human oversight, many believe that 3D-printed homes becoming the norm is less of an “if,” and more of a “when.” So, if you’re curious to find out what your future home will look like, let’s discuss the process of 3D-printed homes! What Are 3D-Printed Homes?3D printing homes is actually quite similar to the process used when 3D printing other mundane items. Also known as “additive manufacturing,” 3D printing involves a machine printer containing a robotic arm dispenser, a chosen material to use in the item creation (usually plastic for most things unrelated to building construction), and a blueprint design

How to Start a Little Library

November 6, 2023

One major challenge that can come from moving into a new neighborhood involves transforming your new house into your new home. As we’ve discussed recently, a great way to become comfortable with a new city or a new area is to invest in relationships with your neighbors! Becoming familiar with (and hopefully liking) your neighbors often sounds nice in concept, but breaking through that initial comfortability barrier can be tough. The good news is this: there are many underutilized strategies that new homeowners and long-time homeowners alike can employ to make their neighborhood of strangers feel much more like a community. As homeowners, learning how to be a little more self-sufficient is smart. Challenging yourselves with progressively difficult DIY projects should give you an excuse to spend some more time outside and break the ice while meeting new neighbors. For a beginner-level DIY project that can be as simple or complex as your experience allows, nothing works quite as well as starting a Little Library. What is a Little Library?Also known as Little Free Libraries, Library Boxes, or just Neighborhood Book Exchanges, Little Libraries have been popping up more and more in coffee shops, apartment buildings, and neighborhoods all around

How to Survive a Scary Movie

October 23, 2023

Since we’ve previously discussed how to confirm whether your home is active with the paranormal, we thought it might be valuable to go over some additional Halloween-time survival strategies. When watching a scary movie, it’s easy to become frustrated by the classic mistakes and gaffes that the characters make as they bungle their way into the killer’s hands. Although it’s reasonable to assume that the stress and terror of running for your life can keep you from making practical decisions, choices made by horror movie protagonists can be baffling. In the inevitable case that you end up cornered by a masked, knife-wielding stranger straight out of a slasher movie, you don’t want to fall for the same old slip-ups. To be better prepared, we consulted some of the best minds in home maintenance, organization, and personal fitness for their tips on surviving a scary movie. How To Tell That You’re In A Scary MovieNaturally, the first step for surviving a scary movie is to confirm that you are, in fact, living in a scary movie yourself. Although it may seem painfully obvious to audience goers that the characters shouldn’t investigate that noise in the attic, or search their creepy, unfinished

Haunted Places Series: Winchester Mystery House

October 16, 2023

Location: San Jose, CaliforniaArchitectural Style: Exterior: Queen Anne-Style Victorian; Interior: Aesthetic MovementBuilt: 1886 – 1922 As we progress through the Halloween season, we thought there was no location more appropriate to visit than one of the most notoriously unusual architectural wonders of North America – and the tale of the woman behind it all. For our next entry, we visit the Winchester Mystery House. Sarah PardeeSarah Lockwood Pardee was born in 1839 in New Haven, Connecticut. In her upper-class New England home, Sarah had by all accounts a happy childhood with access to fantastic education, going on to learn four foreign languages (Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian). Pardee studied at Yale College’s associated female scholastic institution and became known for both her extraordinary intelligence and her beauty. Called the “Belle of New Haven,” Sarah had many admirers. In 1862, Sarah married William Wirt Winchester, a brother to one of her classmates and member of a wealthy New Haven family. William was an only son and, therefore, sole heir to his father’s considerable manufacturing company, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. William and Sarah Winchester were a well-off, idyllic young couple, but early on, tragedy beset the Winchesters. In 1866, Sarah gave

How to Tell if Your House is Haunted

October 9, 2023

October has officially arrived and, as we march closer and closer to the spookiest day of the year, it’s natural for our minds to focus in on the strange and obscure. If this was your first year in your new home, you may have noticed some of its more interesting quirks or “features.” Some houses seem to groan when the wind hits them just right, others might creak whenever the mood is right. These are just “house noises” that you’re slowly growing accustomed to…right? Many odd occurrences in the home can be explained away with a little bit of investigation, but when attempts at rationality come up short, it can be difficult to brush off the unexplained. As we all know, the Halloween season is best known as one time each year that the barrier between the material world and the spiritual world is its thinnest. In other words, if you have your suspicions that your house just might be haunted, you better figure it out now. To aid you in your investigation, we’ve placed our best paranormal researchers on the job to identify the surefire evidence that proves your house is haunted. Reader beware: only proceed if you want

How to Get to Know Your New Neighbors

September 18, 2023

The experience of moving into a new home can be like riding a chaotic roller coaster – with all of the anxiety and eventual relief that’s involved with the ordeal. Often, families can be so consumed with making themselves comfortable in their new home that finding comfort in their new neighborhood is an afterthought. Today, many can find it difficult to familiarize themselves with the people that share their block, whether because they might lean toward an introverted personality, or perhaps their hectic lifestyle limits opportunities to invest in new relationships. Regardless of the reasons for these hurdles, new homeowners should realize that their best opportunity to get to know their new environment is when they first move into their homes. If you’re interested in exploring some strategies for making a positive first impression with your new neighbors, you’re in the right place! The Benefits of Knowing Your NeighborsBased on some of the latest Pew research polls, a lack of familiarity with one’s neighbors is trending up. While only 4% of Americans ages 65 and up report not knowing any of their neighbors, this number grows to 7% for ages 50-64, 15% for ages 30-49, and a whopping 23% for

How Pets Are Changing The Way We Design Homes

August 28, 2023

Pets demand so much attention, but homeowners have a tendency to bend over backwards in order to accommodate. Frequently, cats and dogs can seem to rule their homes, and since the pandemic saw over 23 million American homes adopt pets (per the Washington Post), the ways in which homeowners are learning to spoil them seem to be spiking. Barkitecture is a term used in reference to the recent trend of remodeling homes with pets specifically in mind, with more permanent and invasive remodeling efforts invested to make family dogs and cats feel more at home. If you’re in the market for a new home, or you’re considering a remodel to make your dog feel more at home, here are a few stylish and subtle home designs you might want to try out. Starting with the Classics With these more traditional pet accommodations in mind, let’s move onto some of the more unique home Barkitecture trends that are changing home design. Home Barkitecture Trends Dog houses, on the other hand, have been around for quite some time. In the past, these structures have been fairly simple, usually consisting of a few walls and a pitched roof. Nowadays, as TikToker @chipgirlhere has