Strange homes

Excerpt:

The Hobbit House, in northwest Montana, about a three-hour drive from Spokane, Wash., is a guesthouse. Number of units: one. But it is a large unit. The Web site, which the reporter studies before arriving, shows a 1,000-square-foot structure built into a hill, on a 20-acre site dotted with structures that range from small to perfect for squashing with your foot: a four-foot stump-shaped troll house, a few round-door hobbit houses with chimney pipes and several shoe-box-size fairy houses.

But what is a visit to the Hobbit House without a tour of the shire? Into the RTV we go, accompanied by Mr. Michaels’s dog, Libby, a collie-shepherd mix. Here is a tiny sod-roof house belonging to Frodo, a Baggins relation; there, in the trunk of a tree, is a mother-son fairy abode (complete with two doors). Not everything is hobbitically accurate: there is a two-foot-tall hairy-back frog, because Mr. Michaels figured that if hobbits were hairy, their frogs should be, too.

“And look,” he says, steering the cart toward the sod-covered roof of the life-size guesthouse. “You can drive over the house, because it’s built into the ground. Right now, we’re 30 feet over your bedroom.”

Link to a story written by a New York Times reporter with a photo slide show
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/garden/the-hobbit-house-in-montana.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Lift Your House With Balloons!!

Excerpt from article:
Back in 2009, Pixar Animation Studios released the immensely successfu

l “Up.” The comedy-action film went on to be nominated for five Academy Awards, becoming only the second animated film to receive the honor, behind Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

In short, “Up” was a landmark film, both beautifully rendered and beautifully told. The film follows curmudgeon Carl

Fredricksen, who attaches balloons filled with helium to his home until he and it are lifted away on an exotic adventure.

As a company that deals with homes, Movoto Real Estate had to ask: How many balloons does it take to lift a house? Fortunately, great minds have already tackled the question. This, however, didn’t stop us from building on fellow balloon enthusiasts’ work and calculating how many balloons it would take to lift some of the world’s most famous structures–imaginary or not.
Before we get to the fun, we’ll recap how others have attempted to tackle this question. Read more at:
http://www.movoto.com/blog/novelty-real-estate/balloons/
Posted 11/25 by Robert Milo on Facebook – I am a real estate appraiser. Thanks, we all need a little humor!!

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House attached to balloons flies, sets world record

Article excerpt:

How hard can it be to lift a house with helium balloons? A National  Geographic team of scientists, engineers, and balloon pilots has demonstr

ated how to achieve such a feat, which was filmed for a new TV series called “How Hard Can It Be?” They conclude that, although it’s very difficult, it’s not impossible.

It took the team about two weeks to plan, build, and lift the house into the air using balloons. They needed about 300 weather balloons, each of which inflated to a height of 8 feet, in order to lift the 2,000-pound, 16×16-foot yellow house. Lifting off early in the morning outside of Los Angeles, the house floated for about an hour and reached an altitude of 10,000 feet. According to the National Geographic Channel, the floating house set a world record for the “largest balloon cluster flight” ever attempted. The entire aircraft of house and balloons was about 100 feet tall.

My comment: I love science!!!

Click here to Read more and check out the great video