Unusual Life

35 years after Elvis’ death, they still celebrate Christmas at Graceland in style.

Graceland at Christmas photo set

Airstream Trailer: Home on the Range, originally uploaded by Eric Curry.

This is an absolutely stunning photo taken by Eric Curry. Unfortunately, this desert landscape is no more: just a few weeks after he took the photo, the desert was bulldozed and a nasty suburb arose in its place.

Glad someone is documenting these beautiful places before they disappear.

Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, known as Haas & Hahn, saw potential in places that most Brazilians view as unsightly, undesirable and terrifying. Favelas like Vila Cruzeiro and Santa Marta drip with sewage and ring with gunshots and police sirens, but Haas & Hahn wanted to give local residents a source of pride. The Favela Painting Project started with a huge mural called ‘Boy Flying a Kite’ and expanded into covering nearly every surface in Santa Marta with cheerful shades of green, blue, pink and yellow.

Slums into Rainbows

Gage Academy supporters recently took a tour of several artists homes and studios around the Seattle area in the Mighty Elvis Mobile. Hilarity ensued.

Gage Academy received a donation of $50 in gift certificates, so midway into our tour, we stopped at Dick’s Drive-in for lunch. Delicious!

We started the tour at Close Enough Engineering with Kim Hall and Steve Walker, then went on to the Paint-by-Number Salon and moved to the home and studio of Kelly Lyles, the home of Steve Bard and then ended the day at the beautiful home and studio of Ginny Ruffner.

Indooroopilly haunted house, originally uploaded by Leonard John Matthews.

This is an amazing old house, perfect for Halloween! The architecture is so interesting. I wonder what those turret rooms look like, if they’re round or more angular octagon’s on the inside. Even the rooftop looks like a witches hat!

Here’s a cool Flickr slide show of other “haunted houses” and strange and abandoned buildings around the world:

The residence is realized as a series of octagons, connected by a central living area, with a sunken conversation pit, fountain and fire ring centered under a large skylight. The present owners have an actual Sputnik spacecraft hanging under the skylight. The center of the roof is raised with a flat roof around the perimeter. The beautiful doors have Italian ashtrays as stained glass. The residence sits on a large heavily treed lot with a thirty foot by thirty foot reflecting pool, as well as a swimming pool.

Polka-dot lawn, originally uploaded by riddle.

Super fabulous painted lawn of artist Beth Thom of Austin, Texas. She has a website called http://www.polkadotlawn.com/. What a great way to deal with a dormant brown lawn in the heat of Texas.

I know nothing about this place but am morbidly curious as to why, why, why they decorated it in this fashion. More photos at Dangerous Minds:

This is an awesome Powerpoint slideshow of the Thousand Islands area that straddle the U.S-Canada border in the Saint Lawrence River as it emerges from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario.

The number of islands was determined using the criteria that any island must be above water level for 365 days per year, bigger than one square foot (roughly 900 cm²), and support at least one tree or shrub. The area is very popular among vacationers, campers, and boaters, and is often referred to as the ‘fresh water boating capital of the world.’

Be sure to press “Full Screen” to view this, as it’s quite stunning:

Jay Shafer takes you inside his tiny 100 square foot tiny home.

Jay’s Tumbleweed House was so successful, he went on to start a company that specializes in building these sorts of tiny houses or selling you the plans so you can build your own Tumbleweed House.

August 16th will be the 33rd anniversary of Elvis’ death, and I thought what better way to celebrate “Weep Week” than to write about Elvis Real Estate.

Reno Fontana lives in one of two homes owned by Elvis when he died. The first, of course, is Graceland in Memphis. The second is the home in Palm Springs on Chino Canyon Road that Elvis and Priscilla bought on April 14, 1970.

When Reno and then wife Laura were looking for a bigger house, he was thumbing through real estate magazines on a Friday night when he saw the Chino Canyon home listed. He called at 9 a.m. on Saturday. “Is it really Elvis’ house?” he asked. Assured it was, he responded, “I’ll be right there, and I am buying it.” He bought the house sight unseen for $1,275,000.

“When we moved in, within a matter of hours on the first day people were stopping by taking pictures,” Fontana relates. “We were so thrilled to say, ‘Would you like to come in and see the house?”‘ The Fontanas don’t share most homeowners’ objection to having a lot of strangers coming into their house. “Even though we own the house, we like to think we are caretakers,” Reno says. “It’s open for Elvis fans.”

For the first few months, they invited people in for free. One day, after touring the home, a gentleman said, “It’s really gracious of you, but here’s $50.” After that, the Fontanas fully realized the value of what they had. Ninety percent of the furnishings belonged to Elvis. “You are not just seeing a house he used to live in. You are seeing a real part of his life,” Fontana says.

Because of his dedication to Elvis and Elvis fans, Fontana has researched and gotten confirmation from people who knew Elvis, and obtained written authentication whenever possible. He has a copy of the house title signed by Elvis and Priscilla Presley in 1970, when they bought it for $85,000. The Presleys were not the only famous owners. In 1960, McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc purchased the house; and in 1981, Frankie Valli bought it for $750,000. In 1986, Valli sold it to a Japanese corporation for $2.2 million. From then until the Fontanas purchased it, the home was open for a few weeks.

Elvis Chino Canyon Road on Zillow

The house on Chino Canyon Road is not the only piece of real estate that Elvis enjoyed in Palm Springs.

In 1967, Elvis and Priscilla were to be married by the pool in the backyard of the house. But the arrival of friends and family tipped off then-leading gossip columnist Rona Barrett (who also lived in the neighborhood) that a wedding was imminent. As the media descended upon the house, Elvis and Priscilla changed plans, deciding to get married in Vegas. In the middle of the night, they snuck into an alley behind the house, where a limo took them to Frank Sinatra’s learjet. They were married in the Aladdin Hotel.

The next day they returned to honeymoon in the Palm Springs house, which is how it got its nickname as the “Elvis Honeymoon House.”

Zillow’s estimate of Elvis’ Honeymoon House

This beachfront home’s dramatic pool lights up in vivid shades of blue and purple, creating an incredible setting. The pool features an adjustable swim current for when you want to break a sweat, plus a champagne-glass spa when you just want to relax. When it’s time to dry off, this amazing outdoor spot also has multiple balconies and a private rooftop deck for sun bathing. And the price has just been reduced to only $9.9M!

‘kettle house’, originally uploaded by BizarreRecords.

I’ve always loved this image of the Kettle House in Galveston, Texas.