Brizo announces a fantastic faucet rebate program

Brizo, the maker of fashion-forward faucets and fixtures, is running a rebate program that started on 17 August and runs through the end of 2009. Brizo makes some great-looking and high quality fixtures and their rebate program is a terrific excuse to consider Brizo if you're in the market for kitchen or bath renovation.

The program works like this, if you buy a lavatory faucet from the Vesi or Tresa collections, you'll receive a $50 rebate on each purchase of a coordinated lavatory, bidet or shower faucet from the same collection. Additionally, purchasing a Roman tub fixture or a Sensori shower system will get you a rebate of $100 each. There's a maximum available rebate of $500.

Renovating a master bath carries the highest cost per square foot of any room in your home and $500 back from a manufacturer is enough to soften that blow a bit.

Once again, it starts with the purchase of a lavatory faucet from either the Vesi or the Tresa collections from Brizo.

This is a Tresa single-hole deck mount lavatory faucet.

This is a Tresa bridge lavatory faucet.

This is a Vesi Channel lavatory faucet.

And here's a Vesi Arch lavatory faucet.

It's beautiful stuff and each of those collections feature a huge number of variations and coordinated components. Spend a little time poking around their website, it's a visual feast and it's as well put together as their products. Here's the direct link to Brizo's rebate program.

And if that weren't enough. Check out this video from Brizo about their Sensori shower systems.

Wow. I want that. Not just that shower, I want that life for crying out loud!

Brizo's committed to embracing new media, hence my ready embrace of Brizo. In addition to their website, you can find them on Facebook and Twitter. Bravo Brizo, bravo.

"Our Perception of Color" as seen in Decorati

Decorati, if you don't know, is a brilliant online design magazine and resource founded in San Francisco by the equally brilliant Shane Reilly. I met Shane through Twitter (@chiefdecorati) at the beginning of the summer. That I could meet and communicate with Shane Reilly is yet another reason I've become such an advocate of Twitter. I swear, through Twitter I get to interact directly with people I'd never meet under ordinary circumstances. Spend some time poking through Decorati, you will be glad you did. As if Decorati weren't enough, Shane also writes a personal blog and that's always worth a read too. Her blog is called Shane's Studio.

Anyhow, at the beginning of August, someone from Benjamin Moore posted a short piece on Decorati concerning color perception and I'm going to reprint it here.

Defining Color

The perception of color is a phenomenon of light - a form of energy with its own frequency and wavelength. Shine a light through a prism and you’ll see it divide into six color families: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. White light is the combination of all colors, while black is the absence of all colors. We perceive color due to the pigments in a given object. A blue pillow appears blue to our eyes because the pigment in the pillow is absorbing all the colors of the light except for the color blue reflecting back to us.

Color and Light

Have you ever tried to match a color swatch in a store only to find it looks like a completely different color when you bring it home? You’ve just experienced metamerism, the occurrence of colors seemingly changing when viewed under different light sources. Some colors are more prone to this phenomenon than others, including tans, taupes, grays, grayed-blues, mauves, lilacs, and grayed yellow-greens such as celadon. View color swatches in the actual space and lighting conditions in which they are being used.

Color and Space

Space affects how we perceive color, so keep proportion and scale in mind when making your color selections, along with whether you want the room to feel intimate or open. Consider elements such as ceiling height, visible wall space, furnishings, and large pieces of artwork, along with the number of windows and doorways in a room.

How Colors Affect Other Colors

Colors that surround a given color affect how we perceive that color. An off-white wall can appear pink when paired with a vibrant red carpet. Complementary colors, such as red and green, enhance each other’s color quality. Two squares of the identical shade of gray will appear to differ from one another when one is placed against a white background and the other against black.

That's great stuff and every word of it's true. It can be difficult to get accurate information about the science lurking behind the world of color but it's there. Thank you Benjamin Moore for so thorough an explanation and thank you Decorati for running it.

Bahamian Bird Tuesday

In honor of this being my 692nd post and it being Tuesday (and because I can) I hereby declare today to be Bahamian Bird Tuesday.

This is a male Western Spindalis, known in birding circles as Spindalis zena. It's a large (16.5cm), forest-dwelling bird and there's some heated debate among birders and taxonomists over whether it should be classified as a tanager or a finch. I side with the tanager partisans on this one, though that is not a popular view.

Despite the hoopla surrounding its classification, there are few thrills to compare with seeing one of these guys alight on the branch of a Gumbo Limbo tree while you're enjoying a quiet cup of coffee as the sun comes up.

Witch moth or money bat?

This is Ascalapha odorata, known in The Bahamas as a bat moth or a money bat. A. odorata is the largest moth in the western hemisphere and it can be found across Mesoamerica, the Caribbean and The Bahamas. Sometimes, they show up in the extreme southern US, though I have never seen one here.

A. odorata has a wingspan between six and seven inches, so they are hard to miss. Just about everywhere they're found, they're commonly called such names as witch moth, black witch, death moth and death butterfly. They are considered to be a harbinger of doom and in rural Mexico, getting one in the house portends the death of a member of that household. Pretty macabre stuff to attribute to a harmless moth.

Well, in The Bahamas they are everywhere. Inside the house, outside the house, day and night, they are as much a part of life on the Out Islands as land crabs and mosquitoes. In what I take to be a profound commentary on the very essence of Bahamian culture, these moths are treated as a welcome guest.

Bahamians call them money bats and having one fly into the house is a very good thing. In fact, having one come in means that you will come into an unexpected windfall. Having one hit you on the face as it comes in is even more lucky. In the last week, I got hit in the face by enough money bats that I ought to be rolling in the dough in a matter of days.

For a group of people who have been and continue to be so completely shafted by the world events that swirl around them, I think it speaks volumes about their national character. I went to a self improvement seminar ages ago and the speaker kept urging us to "choose what's so." It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me at the time, but in the years since I've come to see it as a really great thing to practice. If I can't change something about my life or the role I play in it, why not treat that something as if I chose it rather than moaning and wailing about having it forced upon me? If I'm surrounded by black moths with six inch wingspans and I can't do a thing about it, why not welcome them in? Why not indeed?

I may be completely out to lunch with this, just another stupid American who's hopelessly out of his element there. And so what if I am? It's a great honor to be granted a peek into the culture and lives of a group of people who are located closer to me than Atlanta is, yet who exist in a world I can barely imagine.

Home.

I'm back and I wish I could be enthusiastic about that. It'll come, though I might need a few days.

However, I have to say that the highlight of my return was seeing all of the terrific posts that appeared here in my absence. Such a diverse group of voices! Each post is a gem and I love seeing how all of that came together. Endless thank yous go out to David, Melody, Kevin, Saxon, Leslie, Adrienne, Elizabeth and Karin. If I can ever return the favor, don't hesitate to ask. If any of you would ever like to post again just let me know and my forum is yours.

In the week ahead I promise to go easy on my vacation photos though there are a couple of peak experiences I cannot wait to get off my chest. Too, there's more to come from the world of mosaics, more custom fabric samples to show, more appliances to review and design ideas to mull over. Being without this particular mouthpiece for a week has shown me just how big a part of my life it is. Believe me, I wouldn't have it any other way.