New glass mosaics

I'm out of town, but through the power of the Internet I'm still able to keep right on posting as though I were still sitting at home. Amazing.

Anyhow, I notice that I get a lot of traffic from people looking for inspirational photos of glass mosaics. When I'm looking for some inspiration along those lines, there are three sources I turn to time and again. They are Mod Walls, Ann Sacks and Walker-Zanger. I think those three have some of the best websites out there for seeing this sort of thing in action. Here are a couple of great rooms I found on Mod walls and all of them feature glass tile mosaics.

As you can tell from how varied these things are, there really aren't any rules except the single overriding caution of life in general; just because you can doesn't mean you should. Got a question about a particular image? Just ask and I'll chew off your ear with an answer.

This is what I meant about the difference between can and should.

More to love about Caesarstone

Ann Porter is a Kitchen Designer based in Naples, FL and she writes another great kitchen design blog called KitchAnn Style. Check it out here and she's also listed in my blogroll on the right side of this page.

I was reading Ann's blog and I came across one more thing to LOVE about Caesarstone. Several more things in fact. I mean look at these photos. Everything I'm showing you here is Caesarstone composite material. The technique that's been done here is a low relief; these damask patterns have been sandblasted into the surface of regular Caesarstone. 

This isn't something that comes from Caesarstone this way, this is a finishing technique. So the Damask patterns here are the result of a masking pattern, similar to the type of thing you'd find at Modello Design. Thank you Ann Porter for that referral too.

I'm really stunned by this and in a really good way. I see a lot of stuff in the course of plying my trade, but this is new and I love it. Remember, you want Caesarstone if you're in the market for composite counters!

Short selling explained

My pal Paddy Hirsch, Marketplace's Senior Editor, has taken to his dry erase board again to explain the whys and wherefores of the much discussed but seldom understood practice of short selling.


Getting naked in short selling from Marketplace on Vimeo.

My childhood on Ebay

Good Lord. Is there anything that nostalgia buffs won't buy?

I mean, how did this stuff become collectible?

I am flying to Pennsylvania this morning to attend my 25-year High School reunion tomorrow night. So maybe I'm sensitive to this sort of thing right now. But there was a time when this Corelle in the avocado green Spring Flower pattern was all the rage. My mother and all of her friends had it. I ate many, many toasted cheese sandwiches off of these plates. Times changed eventually, and my mother pitched all of hers in a radical fit of updating at some point in the early '90s.

It's interesting to see it again, if only to get a shiver of recognition. But to spend money on it on eBay? I guess I'm not one for nostalgia. I had a good time when I was a kid --I had a genuinely happy childhood. But I think I'm missing the impulse to try to cling to it or recreate it in my adult life.

Armed with that little scrap of self-awareness, this ought to be an interesting weekend indeed. Look out class of '83, I'm coming back to the land of my birth. So let's keep things focused on the now and keep the sentimentality to a minimum.

On the horizon: The Water Mill

This is the Watermill by Element Four. Element Four is a British Columbia-based company that's determined to solve the world's potable water problems and their first product in that direction is their Water Mill.

The Water Mill mounts to the exterior of your home and distills pure water from the air. It's estimated to cost 35 cents a day to run and it cranks out 3.2 gallons of water a day. The Water Mill can be connected to a sink top dispenser, the ice and water dispensers on a fridge, its own wall-mounted dispenser or it can run into a separate, refrigerated appliance dispenser. The diagram below shows these four dispensing options pretty well.

While the Water Mill can't supply all of a household's water needs, it can provide ample drinking water for a family or individual and it will help you throw away the bottle for once and for all.