Exterior

Owning a home is expensive enough as it is; upkeep can be difficult and people's priorities can feel scrambled when they are faced with several necessary improvements or upgrades that cost tons of hard-earned money. Even beautiful, new homes could always benefit from certain improvements. Commercials, magazines, and the amazing house down the block constantly push people to improve their homes with similar dedication to optimistic self-improvement. New paint jobs, new furniture, better shrubbery, crown molding, de-rusting fixtures, upgrading lighting--the list of home improvements never ends.

I was recently sent an email about Bonita Stone so I took a look at their website and I was immediately captivated by their Glowpave pavers.

As you can see from the picture on the left and in more detail below, these pavers glow in the dark like something out of the movie Avatar.

I wanted to know more about Glowpave, so I sent them some questions and company Director Scott Petricevich was kind enough to send back the answers below.

So you might be wondering why I'm writing about outdoor entertaining in winter when it's nearly May. It's because I'm currently on the Sunshine Coast in Australia where it's just over 5 weeks away from the beginning of Winter.

This is a sub-tropical region so although it does get a little cooler here the temperature on the coast never drops below freezing even on the coldest days and evenings. In fact I like the climate so much that I'm currently looking to find a new place to live here.

I have a lot of family in this part of the world, so I expect I'll be doing quite a bit of entertaining, and due to the local customs a lot of that will be done outside.

Eco roofs, or turf or green roofs as they're sometimes called, are ones which have plants growing on them - usually grasses and/or flowers for residential roofs but they can extend to having shrubs and trees on large commercial buildings.

There are many benefits to having a living roof, they're largely self-maintaining and can last twice as long as regular roofs as well as providing a great deal of heat and sound insulation, as well as other environmental benefits which I'll go into more detail below.

The idea of living roofs isn't new, the history of sod roofs dates back to the middle ages particularly in Scandinavia where traditional Viking houses used them.

My mother used to have an amazing fish pond at her previous house which had a waterfall at one end, then a 20 foot stream into a small pond at the other end. It was extremely relaxing to sit outside by it while reading a book - the sound of the waterfall and stream were more calming than I can put into words.

I will soon be going to my brother's country property in Queensland, Australia to spend some time there over Christmas. He's thinking about adding a fish pond to his small organic farm and he sent me some videos to look at.