Adopt-A-Highway

I thought I would share with you a couple of photos of my new team beautifying the roadways in Scott County!

Our Coldwell Banker Burnet - Scott County office that I manage is involved with several organizations/events that give back to the communities in which we live, work, and play.

One of our projects includes Adopt-A-Highway.  We have a 2 mile section of County Road 16 in Savage.

Our group of about 20 was able to tackle our stretch of road in about 30 minutes this year!  Great team work!

Our current project is collecting food items for the Scott County CAP agency food shelf.  If you get a chance, we would love to have you stop by with a food item. We are located at 8170 Old Carriage Court in Shakopee.

Have a great weekend!

Exterior Illumination: Phase III

Well, phase III is complete! I have both roof lines and the garage doors done which was my goal to have completed before Thanksgiving.

The fourth and final phase will have to wait until a week from Saturday. Every year I place a fresh cut Christmas tree on our front porch and we hang a swag of garland on the front railing.

The boy scouts dropped off the garland a few days ago but the tree will not arrive until December 6th.

Once I have finished decorating the porch I will post the fourth and final exterior illumination entry for your viewing pleasure.

One quick hint that I came up with this year involves the garage door lights. The "Light Tacker" worked great for the garage door lights by the way! Of course, the light string length never works out perfectly for the door frames and because of this there has to be a partial string of lights on the ground that goes between the big garage door and the little one. My old C7's used to allow me to remove bulbs without affecting the rest of the lights in the string. These new LED lights do not allow me to pull bulbs without knocking the whole string out. Because of this, I came up with the idea to wrap black electrician's tape around the 10 bulbs that I needed to hide. It worked perfectly!

Once again I have attached a link to a classic clip of Clark W. Griswold's light display in one of my favorite movies "Christmas Vacation" which you can access by clicking on the title above.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Exterior Illumination: Phase II

If there is one thing I have learned over the years it is that when it comes to exterior illumination you have to be flexible. Now I am not talking about my particular athleticism either.

I originally thought I would be writing about "Phase II: The lower level roof line" but I had to complete a blended phase II over the weekend. Because I purchased all new lights this year, that meant I also had to re-clip all of the lights where in the past I could simply pull out the lights from the previous year and get at it. I realized in a hurry that I was going to run out of clips and still had lights that I could hang. Solution: put up as many of the lower roof lights as possible and then shift gears to hang garage door lights.

You will see from my photo that I made it to the peak of the garage before running out of clips. I then started to hang the garage door lights with my new toy the "Light Tacker" (see below). I have to black out some lights with electrician's tape that run along the ground to the 3rd garage stall but will do that in phase III on Wednesday of this week.

I thought I would briefly talk about equipment as a good set of tools is key to a successful light display. Last year I purchased a high quality Werner extension ladder which is probably the single most important tool in my arsenal.

I'm a little higher than you may think!

I also made a small purchase this year to add to the excitement! The "Light Tacker 3000" (okay it is really called the "Light Tacker" but I thought I would add "3000" to spice it up a bit) has been a very nice addition so far. This is not your ordinary staple gun. The little white pieces shown directly below the staple gun are placed between the light strand and the staple to prevent a staple from entering the strand directly and thus shorting out the lights. Pretty slick!



I also use the universal light clips shown above to attach the lights to both the shingles and the gutters. It is a great all purpose clip that works on several different surfaces as well as with several different types of lights.

I should be done with phase III of my display by Wednesday night and will post another blog entry early next week. Phase IV involves a fresh cut Christmas tree which won't be available until December 6th.

As an added bonus, click the title above to view a classic clip of Clark W. Griswold's light display in one of my favorite movies "Christmas Vacation".

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Exterior Illumination: Phase I

The holidays are fast approaching so I thought I would write about a Newman family tradition that started when I was a kid and has continued on as Jessi and I started our own household.

Clark W. Griswold has been an idol of mine for many years and in fact, I like to think I have a little "Clark" in my blood. From lights to Christmas music to all kinds of other holiday traditions, we like to celebrate the holidays to the fullest. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not quite as aggressive as some of the local radio stations who started playing holiday music earlier this month but nevertheless I like to try to take it to the extreme. Thankfully, Jessi has the common sense to hold me back and keep me from going too overboard!

Our tradition has included decorating the interior of our home during the weekend after Thanksgiving but I like to have my "exterior illumination" completed and ready to hit the "on" switch the day after Thanksgiving. This past weekend I started on phase I of my project. As you can see from the photo above, I like to get my upper roof line completed as early as possible before the snow, ice, and frost settle onto the roof for the winter season.

I also decided to go to LED lights which meant I had to replace all of my lights this year. The downside is the initial cost of new lights while the upside is the energy savings that we will see over the next several years. Another bonus of these fantastic lights is that they rarely burn out. Every year it seemed like I would get the upper roof line up and within an hour or less I would have to climb back up to replace burnt out or broken bulbs. Not the case this year!

Besides the initial cost, the only other downside I can see so far is that the lights are not quite as bright. Jessi also thinks they are a little more blue than white and I will have to agree as they are a little less white/yellow than I thought they would be. Maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing though because as I was crawling around my roof after dark the other night, my neighbor across the street came out of his garage to let me know he liked them better than last year's lights.

I think we just may officially have a great start to the holiday season! I can't wait to share with you the next 3 phases of my project coming to a blog near you. It sounds like this weekend's weather should be prime for some light hanging and roof crawling so be sure to check back soon!

To go green or not to go green?

Have you seen the canvass shopping bags at Cub Foods or your local grocery store? Jessi and I bought a few a while back and they are fantastic! The larger bag allows us to carry more items than the standard paper bag, they save us empty bag storage space as we are no longer coming home with both paper and plastic bags, and of course they help the environment by not creating as much plastic waste and by saving our precious tree resources.

I recently made the decision to carry the green factor over into my business. If you are on my mailing list you may have already noticed that you are receiving less paper postcards and have begun to receive eCards from me advertising my listings and upcoming open houses.

Environmentally, to go green is a no-brainer. Where I stumble a bit is when I view it from a marketing perspective. Are eCards as effective in marketing my business and my clients homes? On one hand is the fact that everyone receives a lot of junk emails. You may not receive my email either because it is filtered out before you see it or because it is overlooked as unimportant. On the other hand, a lot of paper mail is simply tossed out as junk mail and never looked at. There is also the fact that an eCard can be more interactive. By clicking a link on an eCard you can view more information and photos and even access a virtual tour of a home you may be interested in.

Ultimately I want to do what is best for the environment but at the same time I have a duty to my clients to do the best job of marketing their home as possible. So this is where your opinion comes in. What are your thoughts on postcards via the mail vs. eCards in your email inbox?

Click the comment button below and let me know your thoughts. Tell your friends about this blog entry and let them weigh in as well. If you aren't currently on my mailing list or want to be added, send me your current email address to newman@newmansellshomes.com and I will include you on my eCard emails. Don't worry, I plan to send them out once or twice a month at the most!