Castle Dromborg

Less than 30 miles from here, our dream home is for sale. I didn't even know it existed until it was advertised in Sunday's edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Castle Dromborg looks like a 1000 year old Scottish castle, but actually was built in 2008. Many artisans worked on the project, it boasts 4 million pounds of Arkansas stone with an additional million pounds in the landscaping.

The 13,000+ square foot 5 bedroom/5 bathroom home sets on a 100 acre woods with amazing views of the Ozark Mountains.

It may look ancient, but smart home technology, commercial grade elevator, heated floors and driveways make this a home that is state of the art. It even has a 3,800 square foot guest house for those unexpected weekend relatives that show up!

 

White River Hardwoods owners Bruce and Joan Johnson say living here is magical. The setting for the castle is perfect, atop South Mountain just outside Fayetteville, Arkansas.

 Sunrise Custom Homes won the Residential Design Build 2010 Excellence Award for best "Architectural Feature/Element" for new construction of Dromborg.

The Library is detailed to perfection including exquisite hand-carved and hand-rubbed moldings, deeply fluted columns, coffered ceilings, antique onyx lighting and high ceilings.

The Corinthian Order defines the room with custom palmette frieze and rich Cherry wood beams.

 

The Master bedroom has his and her private bathrooms and closets with shared stone shower...♥

Who wouldn't love closets that look like this?

Quarter-sawn White Oak cabinets with oversized custom columns and gothic glass in the uppers, Sub-Zero refrigerator, 2 Sub-Zero under counter refrigerator drawers, Viking 8 burner range, Electrolux double ovens, Bosch dishwasher make this the kitchen of your DREAMS! 

The main entry boasts a massive White Oak Dutch door that welcomes guests.

The Great Room is a combination sitting, dining and kitchen with vaulted 26' ceilings lined with hand carved rustic cypress beams. The room was designed so that the entry table would double as the dining table.

Magnificent iron gates open through beautifully crafted stone walls to the private driveway which gracefully winds up the mountain to the estate.

Gargoyle sentinels guard the grounds.

 Wondering how much a house like this would set you back? Well, a 30-year mortgage, with 20% down (roughly $2.8 million) at 6% interest would run just under $70,000 per month. The good news is that they are throwing in a Rolls Royce with the purchase!

LuxuryRealEstate.com

Garage: 5 car garage and 1 single car garage both heated/cooled
Great Room: 32x68, Includes Entry area, Dining for 14+, Main sitting area, Ceiling Vaults from 14' to 26', (4) 14x14 beams line the vaulted ceiling with hand carved panels along with (11) 6x6 rustic cypress beams, Complete multi-media system
Chapel: 10x10, Domed Ceiling with round faux cut stone wall, Antique chandelier, Stone floors
Guest Wing: 3 Monastic Sleeping Chambers, 12x12 rooms with large windows, Built-in closet and chest of drawers, Full bathroom with quarter sawn White Oak paneling and stone floors, Kohler cast iron tub with 220 jets
Master Bedroom: 20x20, Walls in this exquisite room are 60% glass and face the rising sun. Fabulous sun and moonrise, Fully carpeted, Access to intimate porch, Built-in bedside chests and pendant lights, Crystal chandelier, Up-lighting to barrel vault ceiling
Elevator: ThyssenKrupp commercial elevator, Capacity 2200 lbs., Elevator car is paneled in Knotty Walnut with a natural finish and upholstery panels, hand carved moldings, and stone floor
Men's Lounge: 21x17 and 8x10, Intimate setting with massive embellished double beams supported by massive hand carved corbel brackets with hearts, clubs, spades, and diamond motifs., (2) Private patios, Full bathroom with shower, Overlook to Great Room
Map Room: Intricate beamed ceiling, Rusticated walls with deep window openings, White Oak floors with Cypress inlay
Observation Deck (4th floor): Blue Stone Patio, Fireplace, Gas outlet for grill, Heated floors for ice melt, Amazing view of Ozark Mountains and valleys
Additional Rooms: Guest Suite with Full Bathroom, Laundry Room, Large Butler's Pantry, Half Bathroom, 12x12 Wine Cellar, 7 Mechanical rooms
Extra/Amenities: 10x14 double hand wrought entry gates with security code pad, Walled courtyard garden with oversized fountain, Pool, 1/2 acre pond with lights, fountain and stocked with fish, Natural gas generator (V8 engine), Storage Building, 3 tee boxes and golf green

Resilient, with apple flavoring... that's how I explained the new and improved Jayme Goffin over at the Coop . She said she didn't know exactly who she was anymore since she's missing 111 pounds of the person she used to be. Is it possible that when our appearance changes, our personality changes too? She's experiencing a "dry spell" in blogging, we all reach that point at some time. I know I have the last few weeks. My life is the same everyday, very little excitement on Granny Mountain. I haven't been to the theatre in eons and my clubhouse attire is outdated so I've given up going to the country club for lunch. Yeah, like that ever happened! 

I blog about grandkids and aging, throw in a few recipes and take a lot of pictures, a LOT of pictures. I never realized how much I loved photography and it wouldn't be near as much fun if I didn't have someone to share them with. So you you see, I know my purpose, it's clear. I am Nana, I do my best to make memories for the three wonderful GRANDson's that we've been blessed with. I hope when they are grown they think of me when they smell warm apple pie. If they do, I've done my job well!

The Nest

Look what I found on Mother Nature Network... an innovative idea from the masterminds of two Apple geniuses, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers. The Nest Learning Thermostat from Nest Labs comes just in time for cold weather's game we play with our thermostats. Up, down, touch the ground, most of us do it... we give our controls a workout then leave the house forgetting to turn the temp back. Wasting energy is no joke, it affects the world as well as our pockets.


For the first time there's a programmable thermostat that "learns" what we consider to be normal. It programs itself by our habits, learning what we like to wake up to, go to bed to and come home to. Within a week of being installed, it programs our personal likes and adjusts to our comings and goings no matter what the season.


It's easy as pie to use, just connect and walk away. Use it just like you do a regular thermostat, but this smarty pants can be connected to a home wireless system to allow you to adjust the temp AFTER you've left home from a PC, Smartphone or tablet. And for all of us obsessive-compulsive geeks, you can check daily energy use through an Energy History feature. I will share that I keep a Utilities file, going back several years of energy costs. Kilowatt usage/cost/and little arrows pointing up or down, they tell me when we are wasting or living too big for our britches!


This brainy little device has a Nest Leaf feature that tells you when you are saving energy. It even gives you tips on how to make energy wise decisions around the house... pats on the head! Schmart, very schmart!!!

Changing Seasons

Every fall I wait for that first glimpse of the lake. The woods are so dense here we can't see it at all from May until the end of October. But slowly, leaf by leaf, I begin to see blue peek through until one day the leaves are all gone and our treehouse becomes a lakehouse!

This summer's heat and drought really has affected the color of the leaves this fall. We are lucky we got rain in August, so many trees were stressed and dropping leaves.

Mother Nature is amazing, to recover from weeks of scorching heat. The trees out our way are mostly oaks, poplars, walnuts and dogwoods.

There are Blackjack Oaks, White Oaks, Red Oaks, Pin Oaks, Post Oaks, Arkansas Oaks, Chinkapin Oaks... all on our land! If you google oaks you will see there are about 600 species across the world, all belong to the genus Quercus.

The dogwoods that dot the mountain are a crimson red in the fall. They love the shade of the dense woods and thrive. We just had an old one die this summer. Gnarled and missing many branches, the top had been broken out, most likely from ice or maybe a spring storm. It survived many winters until this summer's heat finally took it's toll.

All along the lake you see the bones of trees that have died. The Corp of Engineers requires us to leave them, they eventually fall and when the lake is at higher levels, it provides a place for fish to lay their eggs in the spring.

Rogers is an old town and in the historic district the streets are lined with beautiful old maples, my favorite. All shades of red, orange and golden yellow.

Great neighborhoods where kids ride bikes and people still set on their front porches.

I grew up in a house like this and sometimes I think I'd like to have an old house again. You get so much with an older home, not just the charm and craftsmanship of an era gone by. You get a house that owns it's land, it has a presence... a soul.

Wonderful old houses that say

"Welcome Home."

Need More Energy? Just $9.99

Last month when we went to Branson for the weekend we hit some of the outlets, but if you've seen one outlet you've seen them all. We had lunch down at The Landing on Lake Taneycomo then decided to walk it off. I've seen these products at Walgreens and Walmart, but not a whole store dedicated to nothing but As Seen on TV!

 Right there in the window... Bionic Bands that will cure almost everything that's wrong with me!

 I'm a little bit of a "gadget nut," once we started looking around we saw several things we have already bought. This is one of them, and yes they do work!

Should have bought this spray for Ben, his breath is so bad even skunks avoid him!

In this teeny tiny box was a pair of boxers, even extra large ones!

 How'd they do that???

 This would make the party, no one would have ice cubes like these!

 This is a bad idea, I already spend too much time in the shower!

 Wish I had all the money we've spent on inserts for our shoes through the years. We finally got smart and just bought good shoes to begin with... but not until after we ordered these several years ago!

 I just bought this plastic snake thing at Lowe's that I LOVE! It's got little ridges on it that snag onto hair in the drain... that's probably more information than you wanted to hear!

 Functional, but the "old jokes" that you'd have to put up with wouldn't be worth it!

One of the few things we didn't buy from an infomercial. Our neighbor did though and she wasn't too impressed.

No more sewing, that sounds good...

 They charge big bucks to remove hail dings, wonder if this really works?

 Technology has advanced to wireless yet we still have to squeeze a messy tube of toothpaste every day...

Very tempted to buy the plaid dusting slippers, I could be finished with my cleaning after a few trips around the house. We already have the Barbasol Bank!

Now where did we put our life savings...

Complaint Department

Morning, did your weekend go fast too? I can't believe I go from "Whoo hoo, it's Friday" to "Oh no, it's Monday" in two blinks. We ran errands, did catch up work and visited parents. I try to get things done during the week but sometimes you can't get it all done.

This week has me waiting on a repairman and meeting with my father-in-laws' doctor, with no set time for either one. They will "call me," ever get that type of appointment? I get it a lot, at their mercy, hurry up and wait.

I'm also waiting on a part from QVC to fix  my floor steamer. If this doesn't fix it, I'm mailing the whole kit and caboodle back to them. It's not their fault, I've ordered from them for 25 years and they always are fair and easy on returns, my gripe is with merchandise that's defective when it leaves the factory.

Then last night I waited in menu HE dubble L to fix a cell phone problem. It kept re-routing me to the same "plug-in-your-information-part" until finally I gave up. Tomorrow I'll try again to reach a human!

So, I'm waiting in the complaint line this morning... good thing I'm in my bunny slippers!

Frugal Fun!

Fred and Ethel lived with us for many years and greeted Trick or Treaters from porch swings, garden benches or bales of hay. I have no idea where I found the idea for their pantyhose heads, probably a Woman's Day or Family Circle magazine. They were simple folks, he in his overalls and she in her plain dress, they were country folk that moved to town! From their meager beginnings at Horseshoe Bend, they traveled to Deer Run then onto Oxford Drive and Ravenwood Court. Nottingham Place was next and finally to sunny south Texas in Las Brisas. In all it was a 10 year run for decorations that cost nothing and brought smiles to kids each Halloween, pretty good I'd say!

Have a great weekend!