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 For more information or to sign up on line, simply click the view schedule link. The free seminars last 45-60 minutes and are held in the store’s Community Education room, unless otherwise indicated. Also, they ask that you make a reservation so they know how many people to expect.

Upcoming Event

Reserve your spot for Gabberts‘ popular ten-hour design series, At Home with Design, with senior interior designer Connie Wersal-LaVelle, Allied Member ASID. Classes meet October 7, 9, 14, and 21 (day and night sessions available) and include identifying your personal style, the psychology of color, one-on-one design consultations with the instructor, and more. Reservations required. Call 952-928-3123. Galleria

The TV Show…
Edelman Productions is producing a new bathroom show, BATHTASTIC!, for the DIY network this Summer/Fall 2008 in Minneapolis. The show focuses on fun, fast, creative, affordable ways to makeover a bathroom—WITHOUT getting into a major remodel.  

About Edelman Productions
Edelman Productions is a leading producer of programming for networks such as HGTV, Food Network, The History Channel, and the DIY Network. DIY is now seen in over 40 million homes. 

They are looking for…
Energetic homeowners who are open to ‘out-of-the-box’ design ideas, live in the metro area (within 25 miles of downtown Minneapolis), and have a large bathroom in need of a makeover.

Benefits of Participating:

• Free Professional Designer
• Receive $2,000 towards your project
• They offer a discounted licensed contractor
• Companies may donate goods for your project in exchange for being featured on the television show
   

Requirements of Participating:

• Your home must be located within 25 miles of downtown Minneapolis
• Estimated financial contribution: $3,000 – $5,000 
• For the project, you must be available to appear on camera at least 7 half days during the course of 1-2 weeks

HOW TO APPLY:
Please e-mail bathcasting@edelmanmn.com an include:

• A brief description of what you like/dislike about your bathroom
• Photos of your bathroom & a photo of yourself
• A daytime phone, e-mail address, City of Residence
• An approximate budget

APPLY ASAP—SHOOTING HAS ALREADY STARTED!!

CONTACT: bathcasting@edelmanmn.com

Also see Facebook “Bathtastic” group and www.myspace.com/bathtastic for photos!

Here’s a quick look at few of the fabulous home-related happenings taking place around the Twin Cities in the upcoming weeks and months….

RAVE Awards

Celebrate Great Residential Design!

Wednesday, August 13
6:00-8:30p.m.
MacPhail Center for the Arts
501 South 2nd Street
Minneapolis, MN 55401

Join AIA Minnesota and Mpls.St.Paul Magazine on Wednesday, August 13 for a celebration of this year’s RAVE Awards!

The winners will be recognized at an event, sponsored by Marvin Windows and Poliform, at The MacPhail Center for the Arts in Minneapolis on Wednesday, August 13 from 6:00-8:30p.m. Program jurors, James Dayton, AIA, James Dayton Design, Kevin Flynn, AIA, LEED AP, EcoDEEP, Andrea Myklebust, sculptor and public artist and Shawn Gilliam, Homes Editor, Mpls.St.Paul Magazine will do a program and present the awards.

Join AIA Minnesota and Mpls.St.Paul Magazine on Wednesday, August 13 for a celebration of this year’s RAVE Awards!

The winners will be recognized at an event, sponsored by Marvin Windows and Poliform, at The MacPhail Center for the Arts in Minneapolis on Wednesday, August 13 from 6:00-8:30p.m. Program jurors, James Dayton, AIA, James Dayton Design, Kevin Flynn, AIA, LEED AP, EcoDEEP, Andrea Myklebust, sculptor and public artist and Shawn Gilliam, Homes Editor, Mpls.St.Paul Magazine will do a program and present the awards.

Reservations are required. Price is $20.00 per person (register at http://www.aia-mn.org/rave/). Tickets are available at the door for $25.

The deadline to register is 5:00p.m. on Tuesday, August 12.

Homes by Architects Tour

September 20-21
Join the American Institute of Architects Minnesota as 29 architect-designed homes in the Twin Cities area open their doors for one weekend in September. The tour, created by AIA Minnesota, promises to be truly standalone, showcasing how an architect-designed home is the product of a different process. Experience the lifestyle of these homeowners and find out how they worked with an architect on their new or remodeled home. Learn how an architect can add value to the entire process from concept and design through construction and completion.

Tour homes are located in Burnsville, Chanhassen, Deephaven, Eden Prairie, Edina, Golden Valley, Greenwood, Lake City, Lindstrom, Prior Lake, Minneapolis, Minnetonka, Stillwater, St. Paul, and White Bear Lake. Learn more at www.homesbyarchitects.org.

18th Annual Fall Home & Garden Show

Minneapolis Convention Center Hall B & C
1301 Second Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Phone: 612-335-6000

Maps / Directions / Parking

Show Dates & Hours
Friday, October 3
1 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Saturday: October 4
10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Sunday: October 5
11 a.m. – 5 p.m. 

Produced by Midwest Home magazine, you’ll have 3 days to discover the latest trends, techniques and designs from the premier experts in and around the Twin Cities. Look for many new and exciting show elements and the return of your favorites.

* Second Year Under Midwest Home Magazine Ownership
* The Finest Products for Living
* Thousands of Dollars in Home Remodeling Project Giveaways
* Luscious Garden Areas

For more information, visit  www.homeremodelingshow.com.

Parade of Homes Free Consumer Seminars

Thinking of building a new home, or remodeling? Don’t miss these FREE consumer seminars, open to the public.

Professionals in the home-building industry will present information essential for anyone considering building a new home or remodeling.

The seminars are free, but require a reservation. Call BATC at 651/697-1954 or register below to reserve a space.

All seminars are held at the BATC office, 2960 Centre Pointe Drive, Roseville, MN 55113.

http://www.paradeofhomes.org/seminars/seminars.aspx

Happy 4th of July from The Don Edam Group.  As we celebrate the birth of our nation here in the Twin Cities, we wanted to provide you with some great things to do on the 4th in the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas.

Minneapolis

Riverfront – http://www.mplsredwhiteboom.com/
Music starts at 5 p.m. on Main Street and fireworks begin at 10:00 p.m. The fireworks can be viewed from Main Street, the Stone Arch Bridge and along West River Parkway.
Powderhorn
Powderhorn Park’s Fourth of July fireworks will begin at 10 p.m. or dusk.

St. Paul

Taste of Minnesota - http://www.tasteofmn.org/
The Taste of Minnesota offers a great venue for eating, listening to music, and watching a great fireworks display. Fireworks show begins at 10:20 p.m. Admission is free.

Edina

Roseland Park (Lake Cornelia)
The city closes down 66th Street between Lake Cornelia and puts on a spectacular fireworks display.  The John Phillips Sousa band plays patriotic tunes at Roseland Park shorty before the fireworks begin.  The display will begin just as the sun goes down (dusk that is.)

Eden Prairie

Round Lake Park - http://www.edenprairie.org/vCurrent/upload/images/july08-broch-final.pdf
Celebrate the Fourth of July at Round Lake Park with activities and entertainment concluding with a spectacular fireworks show. Check out the website for more details.

HAVE A BLAST ( no pun intended)!!

Google has been synonymous with everything from great search, to amazing free email, to maps, etc…but one of their relatively new features (for Minnesota at least) is Google Street View. Google Street View is built right into their Google Maps feature. The implications of this tool for your home search are enormous. Google Street View allows you to type in an address, location, or point of interest and then take a virtual walk through the neighborhood.

For example, if you were interested in our listing on 1511 W 33rd Street in Minneapolis and wanted to see how far your actual walk to Lake Calhoun would be, you could go to www.google.com/maps, type in the address and click search. You’ll notice 5 options in your upper-right hand corner. The one farthest to the left is “Street View”. If you click on it, it will highlight all the streets that Street View is available for in a light blue color. You’ll also see a little yellow person pop up. If you click on that yellow person, it brings up a small window with a picture of the approximate address location (some of the pictures are more recent than others). Now, using your arrow keys or your mouse, you can walk up and down the street, turn right or left, and zoom in and out. If you head West from our current location, you’ll take a nice 2 block stroll to Lake Calhoun.

Minnesota is not completely covered yet by the Street View team, but the majority of the Twin Cities has ample coverage. So now, not only can you search for your future home online, but you can also take a stroll around the neighborhood…all while in the comfort of your current abode (and in your pajamas if you’d like)!

Here are some other resources and fun stuff for Google Street View:

Google’s Own Street View Tutorial

Some Fun Pictures That Were Taken While Creating Street View – gtstreetsightings.com

Happy Easter, Happy House Hunting, and Speedy Spring Sales to all of our clients, friends, and family from all of us here at The Don Edam Group!!!

Green is the new black during this, the final weekend of the 2008 Parade of Homes Spring Preview^SM presented by Builders Association of the Twin Cities’ members.

This year’s Guidebook includes plenty of great Green articles to help us make sense of this growing movement and the homes in this year’s 14-home earth-friendly mini tour are built to showcase Green building practices, products and design, and many of them will host education seminars and other interesting events to give home buyers a better understanding of their Green options.

Some of the seminars that are taking place this weekend include: “Landscaping for a Green Community”, “Light up Your Home AND Your Energy Bill” and “Geothermal Heating and Cooling: A Systems Approach.” And I’m thinking about checking out an event with eco-friendly design expert, Jackie Kanthak, who will be will answering questions, giving green design ideas, and offering advice on the the hard to find eco-friendly products for the kitchen and bathroom.

Green or not, the homes on parade cover a broad spectrum of prices to fit the needs of every buyer, ranging from the lowest priced home by S.W. Wold Townhomes, Inc. in Cambridge, priced at $119,900, to the most expensive home by Stonewood LLC, located on Loring Drive in Minnetrista and priced at $2,950,000.

So come on out this weekend to take advantage of the longer days and beautiful spring weather that’s rolled our way, and peruse the preview parade!

For more information go to http://www.paradeofhomes.org.

Happy house hunting!!!

:: Kelly ::

I wanted to take a moment and introduce myself. My name is Kelly Carlson, Marketing Manager for the Don Edam Group, and I’m going to be contributing to this blog (and to the real estate industry in general) in the days to come, from a completely new and different perspective than your typical real estate professional.

Hoping to utilize a trifecta of my favorite hobbies (trend hunting, exploring new places, and trying new things), as well as tapping back into the service journalism and editorial voice that my U of M education once afforded me, my intentions are to keep you posted on all the latest news, statistics, tips, and trends in real estate and to scope out and share with you all of the food and dining, shopping and style, arts and entertainment, health, education, and local events that make our Twin Cities neighborhoods unique and fabulous places to live!

Although I am relatively new as a licensed real estate agent, I’m excited to know that the combination my background, work and educational experience, and personal interests can lend something new to the industry. While my expertise (& nearly a decade of experience!) lies primarily in promotions, marketing, and trend research, I also have 2 years experience as a credit analyst for a local mortgage services company and 4 years experience in title insurance research, giving me a range of knowledge and skill that can only add to our clients’ success.

I get a kick out of being a social anthropologist and spotting changes in consumer behavior, scoping out new trendsetting products and services, and just about any super-smart thinking on where our societies are headed at large. I look forward to developing new and innovative ways of marketing your homes and neighborhoods so that others can see why you called it “home” for so long, and I hope you enjoy the information I can share with you about the people, places, and events that form our great Twin Cities communities.

In the meantime, happy house hunting and speedy sales to all!

Kelly

Every parent of young children has an unwanted-toy graveyard somewhere in the home. Today’s prized playthings inevitably become tomorrow’s cast-offs, ready to be given away, discarded or boxed up in the garage. According to the folks at Springwise however, the alternative, offered by Texas start-up Babyplays, is to receive four to six toys by mail each month. Parents can keep the toys as long as they like, and send them back to receive a fresh batch. Monthly subscription rates range from $36.99 to $64.99.

Babyplays offers a range of age-appropriate toys, and depending on their membership level, parents can rent up to 10 toys a month. Besides reducing clutter, members can save money by renting instead of owning. You could call it the Netflix rental model applied to toys. We’ve seen start-ups tweak the rent-not-buy concept in innovative ways: a German company, Lütte-Leihen, sends parents a fresh batch of baby clothes that can be exchanged for new ones each month and the same model has been applied to women’s accessories, with companies like Bag, Borrow or Steal offering members access to designer handbags and jewellery.

A factor all of these firms must reckon with is the need to acquire an adequate inventory of items to accommodate customer whims—a potentially expensive proposition. That said, the rental model still has plenty of new potential applications. What’s key is that many consumers are becoming less interested in full ownership, opting instead for the convenience and flexibility of renting or fractional ownership.

Looking for a commanding view of the collapsing housing market? According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, some 138 mountaintop acres next to the landmark Hollywood sign in Los Angeles are going on sale Wednesday for $22 million.

Abutting the largest urban park in the country –- and just west of the giant sign’s H, the property atop Cahuenga Peak has been privately owned for years. Eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes bought it before World War II in hopes of building a mountain hideaway for his then-girlfriend Ginger Rogers. She demurred. It passed undeveloped into Mr. Hughes’s estate and was sold in 2002 to Chicago-based Fox River Co. for $1.68 million.

Two years ago, city officials, residents and conservationists launched a fundraising drive to buy the property atop the 1,820-foot-high peak, which affords sweeping views of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley and the San Gabriel mountains. Their stated goal was to make the peak part of Griffith Park, the municipal land that practically envelopes it. Safe to say, they didn’t raise anywhere near the current $22 million asking price.

Griffith Park has suffered two damaging wildfires in the past year. Any potential developer is certain to face obstacles getting building permits.

Still, rare hill properties in Los Angeles can attract determined buyers, while the overall housing market remains depressed. In Los Angeles County, notices of default outnumbered home sales in the fourth quarter of 2007, and the median price of homes continues to fall, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a La Jolla, Calif., real-estate research firm. From the lofty heights of Cahuenga Peak, the view isn’t necessarily rosy. Full Story