Ultimate Bird Feeders

Droll Yankees 

Irwin Weiner ASID - My partner and I have a weekend home in rural PA, and we have a great garden, protected by a deer fence. It's nice to live in Nature, but it's optimum to edit Nature and allow only nice things into your yard. Case in point: bird feeders. Years of mishap plagued us. Possums, squirrels, and raccoons - and those huge crows! - would descend on our bird feeders, chasing away all the cute little colorful creatures we wanted to attract in the first place. One night, I woke up to a racket in our backyard, got a flashlight, crept to the kitchen, shined the beam out the back window, and found three raccoons yanking and pawing at our hanging feeder. The next morning, the feeder was gone and we never found a trace of it!

Did we give up? Not at all. We discovered the Droll Yankees Yankee Flipper (see photo above); it changed our bird feeding lives! You charge up the wire mesh perch/base and it swiftly rotates when pressure is put on it. It literally flips heavy birds and animals off the perch so they can't get at the food. It was hysterical to see a squirrel tossed into space by the perch. I can't recommend Droll Yankees products enough, and they have a squirrel-proof line of feeders worth looking into. This video doesn't feature the Flipper model, but it's a Droll Yankees feeder, and it's certainly mesmerizing to watch. 

 

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Living Tomorrow

Living Tomorrow 

Irwin Weiner ASID - Tomorrowland at Disney Land was a wonderful, trippy, space-age look - by way of the Sputnik era - of what everyday life would be like in the Future. We'll live like the Jetsons and strap on our shuttlepacks and blast off to the office! The Living Tomorrow facility, just outside of Brussels, Belgium, has been a showcase of more serious and practical future-living innovations. Tour the facilities and see cutting-edge technology interlaced with home life, office work, and creative pursuits. For more information, visit the Living Tomorrow website - and blast off with this tour video of their home of tomorrow.

 

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Hawaiian Hotel Splendor

Voyages Destination                            

Irwin Weiner ASID - Cabin fever is setting in - I who am more used to my native, sunny Cape Town than frosty Manhattan - so I naturally gravitate towards warm-weather videos for design inspiration these days. And who wouldn't! We all loved this Traditional Home video, with their lucky style editor, Krissa Rossbund, staying in the fabulous Royal Hawaiian resort. It's been refurbished for the umpteenth time since the "Pink Palace" first opened its doors in 1927 - in the grandeur of Rudolph Valentino, no less. The handcrafted furniture and colorful island quilts in their upgraded Royal Beach Tower is the height of classic sophistication.

 

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Man Cave Decorating: Trick Out All Work Spaces

RetroPlanet.com

Irwin Weiner ASID - Sometimes we turn a blind eye to decorating the male-oriented parts of any home, like the den, man cave/media room, basement, or garage. But why? Decorating makes any space more enjoyable to hang out in. Here's a RetroPlanet.com video on using some of their retro merchandise to decorate a garage, workshop, or barn into a more good-to-be-in environment. We liked the "filling station" theme for a retro garage, and accessories like metal paper towel dispensers, thermometers, clocks, and waste bins are practical ideas for anyone working on a car, bedding down a horse, or sharpening a lawn mower. Go antiquing or flea marketing to fill in the decor blanks and add authenticity to the mix, too. Bottomline: Don't neglect the man caves around your home or property; decorate to make all spaces more enjoyable for work and leisure.

 

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