Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Corey Seager graces the cover of R.B.I. Baseball ’17

There’s only been one baseball game in our life for almost a decade now; and that is MLB The Show. But our first baseball game ever was R.B.I. baseball on the original Nintendo system. We were hooked instantly.

R.B.I. Baseball ’17 has recently made a comeback from it’s retro version, and it seems to be gaining some popularity. The interesting part is it is an officially licensed MLB game, so it has over 1,000 players and all 30 MLB stadiums. I admit to being curious to if it’s any fun or not.

Corey Seager will serve as the cover athlete, and he’s the perfect choice to appeal to the younger brand of fan that this game might attract.

The game will be on XBOX One, Playstation 4, and all iOS and Android devices. Color us interested.



from Diamond Hoggers http://ift.tt/2kezliO

Homes You Can Own for $1,200 a Month

Winning Spaces for Watching the Big Game

Monday, January 30, 2017

How to Negotiate Repairs After a Home Inspection

Most would-be buyers and sellers believe the real estate "deal" is done at the signing of the contract.

In many cases, the deal-making and negotiations only start at the contract signing. Even in more competitive real estate markets, negotiations still happen once in escrow.

Issues typically arise after the home inspection, and those issues tend to result in another round of negotiations for credits or fixes.

Here are three buyer tips for negotiating repairs after a home inspection.

1. Ask for a credit for the work to be done

The sellers are on their way out. If the property is moving toward closing, they’re likely packing and dreaming of their life post-sale. The last thing they want to do is repair work on their old home. They may not approach the work with the same conscientiousness that you, as the new owner, would. They may not even treat the work as a high priority.

If you take a cash-back credit at close of escrow, you can use that money to complete the project yourself. Chances are you may do a better job than the seller, too.

Finally, if you get the credit, there will be less back-and-forth to confirm that the seller correctly made the repairs.

2. Think 'big picture'

If you know you want to renovate a bathroom within a few years, then you likely won't care that a little bit of its floor is damaged, that there's a leaky faucet, or that the tiles need caulking. These things will get fixed during your future renovation.

However, the repairs are still up for negotiation. Asking the seller for a credit to fix these issues will help offset some of your closing costs.

3. Keep your plans to yourself

A good listing agent will walk the property inspection with you, your agent and the inspector. Revealing your comfort level with the home or your intentions, in the presence of the listing agent, could come back to haunt you in further discussions or negotiations.

If they sense you are uneasy with the inspection, they'll be more willing to relay that to the seller. Conversely, if you spend two hours measuring the spaces and picking paint colors, you lose negotiation power.

If you mention you're planning a gut renovation of the kitchen, the sellers will certainly hear about it. And they're going to be less likely to offer you a credit back to repair some of the kitchen cabinets.

Eyes wide open

A word of caution: You should never complete the original contract assuming that you can and will negotiate the price down more after the inspection. It will come back to bite you, particularly in a competitive market.

If the property inspection comes back flawless, there's nothing to negotiate. If you attempt to negotiate anyway - to recoup what you lost in the initial contract negotiations - you risk alienating the sellers and possibly giving them an incentive to move on to the next buyer.

You need to go into escrow with your eyes wide open. A real estate transaction is never a done deal until the money changes hands and the deed is transferred. Stay on your toes. Otherwise, you may risk losing out on further viable negotiation opportunities, which could lead to buyer's remorse.

Shopping for a home? Check out our Home Buyers Guide for tips and resources.

Related:

Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of Zillow.

Originally published December 18, 2013.



from Zillow Porchlight http://ift.tt/1f7px4R

A Reply: MLS Cooperation Creates Value for All Brokers, Not Just One

Public MLS StatisticsThe future of MLS’ has been a hot topic recently, and was discussed at Inman Connect.

Michael Wurzer from FlexMLS (a MLS software vendor) wrote a response titled “MLS Cooperation Creates Value for All Brokers, Not Just One” to Rob and I (and others). I’ll repost it here for your reading pleasure, and offer a few thoughts afterward.

I attended the Inman Connect Conference in New York City last week, where there was yet another panel posing the so-tired question, “Is the MLS Doomed?” I’m not going to dive into the panel itself, which did a fine job, but rather I want to comment on two blog posts from Rob Hahn and Drew Meyers over the weekend that followed-up on the panel.

Both blog posts are great examples of what leads so many down the well-worn path of predicting the death of the MLS, namely a fundamental misunderstanding of the value MLS delivers. MLS creates value through cooperation of competing brokers. The mistake so many make in analyzing the future of the MLS is they misunderstand either the source of MLS cooperation or the nature of it.

For example, the analysis in Drew Meyers’ post suggests a few technology tweaks could replace the MLS. However, as I explained in my post MLS Is More Than Technology about ten years ago (yikes, 10 years flies), cooperation is based on trust, not technology. The simple reason Zillow Group (ZG) could not replace the MLS is that, as a competitive advertising entity, they won’t get all the competitors to cooperate.

In fact, ZG’s very public strategy to focus only on Premier Agents makes it very clear that they have no interest in working with all brokers, they understandably just want to work with those willing to pay them the big bucks. Of course, one could argue that, eventually, ZG’s Premier Agents some day will be the only agents left, creating a de facto “MLS,” but that ignores the diminishing returns of an advertising platform like ZG in any given market. Competing brokers automatically will seek out alternative platforms in order to compete in a less bloody ocean and that competition naturally lessens the cooperation. The bottom line is that competitive advertising portals like ZG are not designed to create cooperation, and so they will not replace MLS, regardless of the technology involved.

Let’s move on to Rob Hahn’s post. Rob says, “The core value proposition of the MLS is that it is the lawgiver which regulates the behavior of real estate professionals to each other.” Again, the core value of the MLS is cooperation, not the rules themselves. The rules are the agreement that comes from and creates the cooperation, but that doesn’t mean the value of the MLS is from the rules themselves. I think the failure to make this fundamental distinction results in people thinking of the MLS as a burden instead of a value.

Next, I’ll address the point in the title of this post: “MLS Cooperation Creates Value for All Brokers (and Agents and Consumers), Not Just One.” Distinguishing between the value of cooperation (all brokers) and the needs of one broker (competition) is critical to any analysis regarding the future of the MLS. Typically when folks like Drew and Rob analyze the value proposition of the MLS, they do so from the perspective of a single broker or agent, but that ignores the core value of the MLS, which is the cooperation among the individual brokers and agents.

A simple example might make this point more clear. Many in the industry express concern or confusion about how Upstream is going to the impact MLS organizations, but Upstream, by definition, will not reduce the value of the MLS because it is an individual broker product and not a product that provides aggregated data from all the brokers in the MLS. Undoubtedly, many individual brokers will benefit from Upstream and Upstream will be integrated with the MLS for those individual brokers, but the product is not intended to and cannot replace the MLS itself because it only deals with the data for each individual broker, not the entire MLS. Again, as ZG found out following its blow-up with Listhub, the MLS aggregation is fundamentally different and more valuable than the listings of any one broker. Thus, by serving all brokers through cooperation, the MLS creates value that doesn’t exist anywhere else and is not replaceable by serving anything less than all brokers.

Let me wrap up by calling for an end to all conference panels prognosticating about the death of the MLS. I think we’ve all heard that debate enough and what’s a lot more interesting is what MLSs are doing to improve the incredible value created by cooperation. I’ll write more about that in the coming months, but, for now, let me proclaim once and for all, “The MLS is Dead, Long Live the MLS!”

I don’t disagree with his thought that the value of the MLS is cooperation and trust — not technology.

Playing devil’s advocate…

That said, I’d argue agent/broker cooperation (based on trust) already exists, independent of the technology being used to facilitate that cooperation. It would still exist even were a new technology platform to emerge to facilitate the business currently taking place using the prsent day MLS.

Social networks are a similar dynamic. We all know Facebook is the elephant in the room — yet even they are not invincible (a topic I wrote about in 2012). If a majority of my trusted friends moved from Facebook to social network Y — I’d follow, and Facebook would become useless to me. The fact that I trust those people isn’t dependent on the technology in place.

It seems building a new technology offering to facilitate real estate business for member associations around the country, while allowing those associations to control who does and does not belong to the group, is entirely doable.

Zillow Group could then buy such a offering, or fund its creation.

Keep in mind, Zillow Group has an advantage virtually no one (aside from Realtor.com) has — their product is used by virtually every buyer, seller, and agent in the country. Scale and brand power shouldn’t be overlooked in this discussion.

That’s all for now, though am certainly willing to continue the discussion in the comments.

The post A Reply: MLS Cooperation Creates Value for All Brokers, Not Just One appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.



from GeekEstate Blog http://ift.tt/2jMFiop

OfferPad

Some of you may have heard about an Opendoor competitor that recently raised $260 million in financing (equity + debt).

Offerpad.

offerpad-homepage

They are smaller than Opendoor:

Revenues to date – which come from an average 9% fee that includes 6% that’s equivalent to the typical real estate brokerage commission and a risk-based fee that ranges from 1% to 7% – are in the neighborhood of $20 million.

How many other similar models will emerge in the coming 12-18 months? I’m betting it’ll be more than a few. Keep in mind, these models are really just modern versions of We Buy Ugly Houses. I’d be curious to hear what they view as defensible about their businesses (aka their moat) other than money and brand.

The post OfferPad appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.



from GeekEstate Blog http://ift.tt/2jO73KJ

Sunday, January 29, 2017

30 SEC READ: He needs your hand (ENG, ESPA)

Illustration by Ken Crane _______________________ EN ESPANOL AQUI >>> El necesita tus manos _______________________ A Master and his disciple were walking through the deserts of Arabia. The Master used each moment of the journey to teach his disciple about faith. “Entrust your things to God,” he said. “Because He never abandons His children.” When they […]


from Paulo Coelho http://ift.tt/2k7b5PC

Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017


The first monthly round up of the year to kick start 2017. The round up features a collection of Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials from unique Photoshop text effects to learning how to create icon illustration. The round up also includes web articles published through out the month from CSS posts to how to create an SEO audit.

Photoshop

How to Create a Lollipop Inspired Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to use a couple of text and shape layers, along with a bunch of layer styles, textures, and filters, to create a realistic lollipop text effect.pop Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

How to Create an Emotional, Molten, Shattered Statue in Photoshop

Photo composites often require several Photoshop tools and techniques to achieve a desired effect. In this tutorial we will combine several photos to create a statue from a photo of a model. We will then explain how modify the statue to create cracks, and molten rock using layer masks, adjustments, and several blending and painting techniques.shattered statue Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

How To Create a Stipple Illustration Effect

In today’s Adobe Photoshop video tutorial I’m going to show you a technique I come up with to replicate those intricate stippled illustrations that are made out of thousands of tiny dots, but without the tedious process of dabbing each dot with a pen.stipple Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

How To Create a Vintage Film Title Text Effect in Photoshop

In today’s Adobe Photoshop tutorial we’re going to have some fun replicating the classic film title styles from old black and white movies of the 30s and 40s. Three dimensional effects were often used, along with low key lighting. To replicate these aesthetics in Photoshop, we’ll make use of the 3D feature available in version CS6 and beyond, which will automatically generate realistic lighting and shading to our text.3d text Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

Illustrator

Put a Hex on Your Designs with this Hexagon Pattern Vector!

Create a folded paper style Rainbow Hexagon Pattern Vector with a single hexagon, a few line segments and a few triangles. Layering gradients really makes this hexagon pattern vector pop!hexagon Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

Bright Light Bulb Vector: Lights On in Under an Hour

Turn on the light with this icon and illustrative light bulb vector. In the tutorial below you’ll create the light bulb vector from simple shapes, manipulate gradients, gradient meshes, and blending modes all in pursuit of a semi-realistic light bulb vector design.lightbulb Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

How to Create a “Share the Love” Icon Pack in Adobe Illustrator

You’re going to be creating all three icons using basic geometric shapes combined with some of the primary tools that you probably already work with on a daily basis.love pack Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

 

How to Kickstart an SEO Audit for Your Startup – Whiteboard Friday

Launching a startup is a huge task all on its own. While it can be a challenge to factor SEO into the mix, it’s an incredibly important consideration. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares a comprehensive plan to kick off your new SEO audit and grab a piece of that organic search pie from the get-go.

kick start Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

How to Host a Node.js App on Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean is a great host that makes hosting Node apps easy.host Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

Ack for CSS Developers

Ack is a powerful and very user-friendly alternative to grep. Designed for programmers, it’s purpose-built to run searches over source code. By default it will ignore your .git or .svn directories, and you can tell it which types of files you’d like it to search in. For example:

css Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017




from Creative Nerds http://ift.tt/2kJ2Lo5

Book Review: House of Nails: (Lenny Dykstra) A Memoir of Life on the Edge

I recently bought Lenny Dykstra’s book, House of Nails

Here is my review of the book:

  • Lenny Dykstra (Nails) isn’t much of a writer. This makes for an extremely quick and easy read. I mean, the one thing I appreciate about it is that Nails doesn’t spend twenty pages diving into his childhood. Literally, you’re a page and a half about his growing up and then it’s on to the next stage of life. Dykstra writes as he thinks, one would guess. His mind moves fast and so do the pages. You will get that sense as you read through it.
  • It also has it’s downfalls with this quick style. There are literally chapters that seem titled ‘The Bear and the Cave” and Dykstra writes “The Bear went into the Cave.” and calls it a chapter. He simply doesn’t spend enough time diving into what I really wanted out of this book. I wanted more perspective about guys like Darryl Strawberry, Gary Carter, Doc Gooden, all those ’86 Mets, John Kruk, Darren Daulton, Mitch Williams, all those ’93 Phillies. Go into details about guys in baseball. Dykstra really doesn’t give us any depth at all about these guys. He rips through seasons. It seems like one page you’re hearing about his freshman year in High School and him losing his virginity and the next page he’s homering in the 1986 World Series. The only guys he dives into great detail on are Davey Johnson (who we get the sense he does not like because Johnson platooned him), and Charlie Sheen (we wonder how much of the Charlie Sheen chapter is truth and how much is Lenny Dykstra story time).
  • There are some inaccuracies in this book, which someone should have caught. We’ve caught at least two, which means there are certainly more if someone fact-checks Dykstra. First off he is talking about the 1986 Mets when he says in Spring Training that the Darryl Strawberry-Keith Hernandez fight happened and was no big deal. This didn’t happen in 1986 when the Mets were at their Zenith. It happened in 1989. Anyone who has studied or followed the Mets through this era knows that was the beginning of the end of that core making a run. I would expect someone who played on that team to know that, not be three years off.
  • The other small inaccuracy that we noticed was when Dykstra was talking about the 1986 NLCS and Mike Scott’s dominance. He mentions in Game Four that the Mets only run was on a ‘Straw home run’. He mentions two other Strawberry home runs in the series (these actually happened) and he talks a bit in-depth about his own home run in game three. To end the chapter talking about that 1986 NLCS, Dykstra even says that there were only three home runs hit in the series; contradicting his own damn storytelling just pages before. Just brutal.
  • It becomes clear that Dykstra is not interested in being known as a good guy. He mentions his growing up at Angel Stadium in Anaheim and getting a baseball from Joe Rudi when he was 15. He says this served as his inspirations to throw away thousands of baseballs to fans in his career, so many that the Phillies asked him to tone it down for expense reasons. In the same breath, he admits he hurriedly marry’s his wife on some courthouse steps and then said quickly he was headed to play a round of golf. There is very little written about inner character struggle by Dykstra. There is no mention of any type of faith or higher power. It’s much more about money, cock and balls, etc. Nails does not have a mind that operates with a lot of reflection and consciousness. I guess this was to be expected, but rather interesting.
  • Dykstra goes into some detail about what a ‘pussy’ Gregg Jeffries was and how much his teammates hated him. He also goes into detail about Kevin McReynolds (to a degree) and his disdain for the sport of baseball and love for hunting.
  • There is some decently detailed steroid talk, including how Dykstra got started on steroids. He supposedly did some research at a local library after the 1989 season and looked up a doctor in the yellow pages that would give him Deca-Durabolin.
  • The most interesting part of the book – and part we wonder if factual – is that Dykstra declares he paid $500,000 to hire a private investigator to follow around every umpire in Major League Baseball. He did this to gain an edge in 1993 over the strike zone and get favorable calls. Dykstra doesn’t name any names, but says he found certain umpires to gamble on sports and have huge gambling problems. He found another umpire to be homosexual. He would mention these things under his breath during at-bats with the Umpires and then gain favorable calls. His fight with Rick Dempsey at Dodger Stadium was according to Nails; due to Dempsey brown-nosing an umpire who was up from AAA that night who Dykstra had no dirt on. That umpire was named Ron Barnes.

Overall, this is a good baseball read. Dykstra loves baseball and any baseball lover should enjoy the quick flip through the pages. It also has some interesting nuggets about the crazy life off the field of a ballplayer that goes into some partying, women, and drug usage.

We would guess that somewhere between 75-80% of the memoirs of Nails written in the book are true or at least seeded in truth at their roots. No one will ever know how much is true.

The one criticism that we have of the book is it lacks in depth details, which we suppose is to be expected from a guy like Dykstra. We recommend this book to any baseball fan. But if you’re expecting deeply detailed dirt or to learn something you never knew before about a whole host of guys Dykstra played with, you aren’t going to find it.



from Diamond Hoggers http://ift.tt/2jKGHtg

How Can Your Website Deliver a Better User Experience?

In order to answer this pertinent question, you need to consider the basis of existence of websites. The main goal is to cater for the needs of all those who visit your given site. Users could be in search of some insight on a given subject, selling and buying of various items while others may be in need of entertainment.

For this reason it will be useful to define the purpose of your website. All in all, your aim should be to provide your website users with a better and incomparable user experience. You could achieve this by considering various aspects and the web design will have a profound impact on your site’s user experience.

Addressing the quality of your user experience will give your site a desirable digital rating in comparison to other websites offering the same kind of information. Efforts should thus be channeled in adopting a web design that will have features and functionalities that enrich the user experience.

This could be in terms of how easily they navigate, browse and search for various items in your domain with little if any challenges. Here are few principles that will aid you in achieving this:

Having a Unique Value Proposition

Currently, the cloud has a deluge of websites and setting yourself apart will have a huge impact on the users you attract. The value proposition implies a statement that vividly describes how your service or product best meets your users’ needs.

During the adoption of a given web design it will be good for you to consider the location of this. Seasoned experts recommend that you position this above the fold on the left side, see to it that things are not crowded at that end.

Another key consideration is the use of visual illustrations to simplify and engage the user in a better way. Studies have shown that the human brain is better at processing visual information in comparison to plain text but make sure the visual aids are in line with your users’ needs.

To crown it all, having unique content will help to distinguish you from other websites offering the same services or products. Craft content that is exceptional and in line with your main goals or vision.

Incorporate some White Space

It is best for you to avoid having a website that’s cluttered as this negatively impacts on the extraction of information. Studies have confirmed that incorporating some white space boost the comprehension of texts. It will be worth it to consider this in your web design.

Some notable figures namely, Herbert Lui of Wonder Shuttle have described the white space as key aspect in lead generation. This will go a long way in improving how easy it is to navigate on a given site.

Get your Call to Action right

Buttons meant for the call to action option should not be merely attractive but in line with the whole design of your website. It is not a must for you to place these buttons above the fold as this might be mistaken for an overly aggressive marketing strategy. The recommendation is for you to include them in the middle or bottom in your web design. The wording is also a factor and the use of words such as try and at best first-person phrases could enrich your user experience.

See to it that users get what they need after clicking the call to action button, a wrong response might make your users to leave the site without second thoughts.

Avoid having broken links

Broken links will be a great undoing to your website, it is the greatest disappointment a user could stomach. A link that doesn’t provide what a user expects discourages them from ever visiting your site and you irreparably lose their trust.
You could deal with broken links in the following ways to avoid these embarrassing situations.

First, you can create a 404 error page as this will help you keep the visitors and even refer them to more useful links related to their search. Alternatively, you can implement 301 redirects which inform the users that a certain web page is unavailable while at the same time redirecting them to a correct or more appropriate web page.

Make sure your pages don’t load slowly

The impression users have about your brand will be hinged on how fast your web pages load. It is easier for a user to press the back button in the event that a web pages takes longer than usual to load. You can attribute this to the relatively short attention spans of most users and the abundance of more responsive sites on the cloud.

In your web designs, avoid images files that are too big, the inclusion of embedded media from other sources as well as codes that are too bulky to beat this off.

The above measures will help you to achieve a better user experience on your website. By putting into consideration the principles outlined in the article you will end up with a web design that is more responsive to your clients’ needs.

Hope this article has been helpful!



from Onextrapixel – Web Design and Development Online Magazine http://ift.tt/2jiwS9D

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Fantasy Baseball Magazines are Hitting Shelves

This is a somewhat happy time of the year. I just made my pilgrimmage to Barnes & Noble to see what fantasy mags made it early to the rack and what athletes graced the cover. This year as you can see, they think that Bryant and Kershaw are what sells. Fine choices.

I didn’t buy anything except Lenny Dykstra’s House of Nails. It says he dishes on some former Mets teammates and has 1986 Mets material. That makes it an automatic buy.

Full book review to come later.



from Diamond Hoggers http://ift.tt/2kFqu8S

Your Saturday Baseball Post

It’s Saturday at Diamond Hoggers, and there are just 65 days and a couple hours until Opening Day 2017.

This weekend is unique – there are no football games whatsoever for the first time since September. So it’s time to make it through the worst part of the winter with no baseball and no football to get us through. These are the trenches. We must press on.

We’ll press on by taking care of two sick kids. My entire house has been hit with the plague. Two kids age two and under with fevers of 103 are an absolutely nightmare!

Here’s one from back in 1987, from Benjamin Orr who was the key member of The Cars. This is back when music was real. Back when the world was different and innocent. Your 80’s song of a week that should be played on a ballpark loudspeaker nearest you is ‘Stay the Night’.

So enjoy your weekend. Thank you for your continued support of Diamond Hoggers, where we put the flag at half mass every Saturday in honor of baseball season.



from Diamond Hoggers http://ift.tt/2jAKfk5

Friday, January 27, 2017

Own Jason Segel's Former Hollywood Hills Compound

Entrepreneurs: How to be Featured on Geek Estate

Geek Estate is a resource for the industry’s technologists and forward thinking real estate professionals. If you’re invloved in real estate and consider yourself a geek, you’re in the right spot. We’ve found over the years that one of the primary reasons people read GEB is to find out who the industry players are, their backgrounds and what they are working on. We’ve featured a number of entrepreneurs (see here for full archives), and plan to continue highlighting the people behind the great, innovative products and companies in this industry.

Interested? Please send the following items to Mike Price at mikeprice @ geekestatelabs dot com.

1. Answers to the following 5 questions:

  • What do you do?
  • What problem does your product/service solve?
  • What are you most excited about right now?
  • What’s next for you?
  • What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

2. Company logo

3. Headshot

4. One product screen shot (we may or may not include this in the post)

Caveat: Not all submissions will be published. The product needs to be relevant to our audience with a viable business model. You need to be serious about continuing to support your products and concepts for the long term.

Questions? Let us know.

The post Entrepreneurs: How to be Featured on Geek Estate appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.



from GeekEstate Blog http://ift.tt/2kvfImd

Danielle Steel Lists Her Historic Mansion

First Daffodils of 2017

Post by Growing The Home Garden - Vegetables, Herbs, and Plant Propagation Tips for Home Gardeners

Every year in the garden is different. Sometimes it's warmer than normal, sometimes colder. We may have more rain than usual or we may be in a drought. All of these factors affect how the plants grow, what comes up, and when they make their first appearance. One special event…

The post First Daffodils of 2017 appeared first on Growing The Home Garden.



from Growing The Home Garden http://ift.tt/2k1r1CG

House of the Week: Snow White's Cottage in the Woods

Mirror, mirror on the wall, which home is the fairest of them all? Why, Snow White’s house, of course!

To see for yourself, check out this ringer for the cottage where the Disney princess lived with her seven dwarfs.

The home was built with fairy tales in mind — but not just Snow White’s. The owner calls an island on the property “Shrek Island.” And she suggests that plaster “icicles” hanging from the ceiling in two of her bedrooms are reminiscent of “Frozen.”

“I call it ‘The Storybook Cottage,’ but it does look like Snow White’s,” said Evonne Bess, who has listed her home for $925,000 with Rick and Martha Ellis of John L. Scott Real Estate.

She bought it half completed and commenced a great finishing project, plastering walls, installing carpet and renovating the kitchen and other rooms. Bess kept its character, though, including a two-story tree trunk that runs up the middle of the living area. She refers to it as “the wishing tree.”

The 7.5-acre property enchants Bess, from “Shrek Island” to the wishing well and the hot tub and the treehouse with the water wheel. Bess has been known to stand by the well singing Snow White’s “Someday My Prince Will Come.”

The first impression of the estate, she said, recalls a recent movie, and not exactly a fairy tale — but still beautiful. “You drive through meandering woods and go across some bridges. You stop at the first bridge, and it looks like ‘Jurassic Park,'” Bess said.

The 4-bedroom, 4.5-bath home was modeled by its first owner after a fantasy-style house in British Columbia called “The Fabled Cottage.” This version is much larger: Bess ran it as a bed-and-breakfast briefly, and the property has hosted more than a handful of weddings.

“My son got married there last August,” she said. “I leaned more toward [hosting] weddings than a B&B. I didn’t like making beds.”

Photos by Mary Eklund.

Related:



from Zillow Porchlight http://ift.tt/2kbenDz