OOOPSY….I was wrong! In my last blog posting, I said to watch for my appearance this Friday on Channel 4 televsion. I will not be on that show until NEXT Friday, not this one. Sorry, my mistake.   

If you have read any of my blogs, I hardly seem go very long without mentioning our most exciting project in years, our HYBRID WONDERHOME. This is most literally a new “invention” in home designs. I hope that does not sound too much like me blowing my own horn (I know how to do that too) because while I say this is a new “invention” I am NOT saying it is a great or even a good invention, just “new“. The public will tell us whether I have designed something worthwhile or something worthless.

     At any rate, good or not, we will be finding out in just under 30 days when our HYBRID Wonderhouse, and two other nifty Miracle Homes, open to the public in Richfield’s Reflections Village development. In case you have not heard, Reflections Village is the main(if you judge by number of homes being built)site for this years 65th annual edition of the Metropolitan Builder’s Association’s Parade Of Homes. The way I see it, what better venue than the MBA Parade to showcase any new home “invention“.  There’s that word again.  For you newbies, let me explain this “invention” designation.

     In the World of home designs, there are several basic types of home categories. The short list includes 1-Story homes(ranches), 2-Story homes, and split level homes(that includes bi-levels and tri-levels and such). There is also the story and a half also known as the Cape style homes. This style usually puts the master on the first floor  and other bedrooms  upstairs(I have seen this reversed however), but NOT always.  Our HYBRID home falls  into none of the existing categories, which is what makes it somewhat of a new “invention”.  It  takes the master bedroom and, like many a cape design, puts the Master on the first floor. If this was a story and a half Cape, having a 1,500 square foot first floor would usually mean , when the upstairs bedrooms/bathrooms/halls, are added up, you then get about a 2,100 to 2,200 square foot home. If you were to finish the basement, you would get a home likely over 3,000 square feet in TOTAL finished area.

    This HYBRID , with first floor master simply puts the other two bedrooms/bath/halls, into the basement. Technically, by the current way that homes are judged, this HYBRID home would have to be appraised as a ONE bedroom ranch, since they would not likely count the basement bedrooms! Taking this another step, we have plans for a second HYBRID which puts all bedrooms in the basement technically making the home appraise as a NO bedroom home!

     Why would someone want such a home? Why would you want your secondary or ALL of your bedrooms in the basement? The answers are interesting and, I dare say, persuasive to most who have toured(by special appointment) the home.  If you want to get all the answers and a special tour of the home, you could stop on by this weekend from 1 to 4 at Reflections Village Miracle INFO DECK to make a “instant” appointment to see the home (to buy the home? It is for sale you know) or call our office any time to schedule a time to view the home.

     Another way to get your personal 3 or 4 minute mini-tour is to join me as I will be a guest on Channel 4 next Friday (not THIS Friday)morning on the Morning Blend Television show at 9 am. Yesterday, I was out at the HYBRID, video taping some footage for my appearance.  I will be making 3 such appearances in the next few weeks to show you all the progress AND on the final appearance the Friday before the opening(it opens Saturday August 21)  I will have a most special surprise that you and your family will not want to miss. It is “top secret” and a whole lot of fun only for this first grand opening weekend. In both Parade and Miracle Homes history, I guarantee,  we have never seen (or even heard of ) this before, so PLEASE stay tuned for this (kinda) major (and did I mention ,   secretive)announcement.

    As for today, we finally got the drywall sprayed and painted at the HYBRID and, humidity pending, we start hardwood floors tomorrow morning!  The exterior is coming along great and it is STUNNINGLY different from any home I have ever seen, mine or otherwise. Again, this is not to say BETTER, but I hope you will say it is. Every creative thing I have ever done leads to, allows the door to open to, the next creative endeavour.  The Grand Bay ranch we built several years back was a home that people saw as hard to beat creatively speaking. Our basketball court home in Oconomowoc was another home folks saw as a creative highpoint which was hard to beat. 

     I had visitors to our last years Parade offering, The Little-Big House (Ixonia) , that came in the front porch saying they didn’t think the Little-Big Home could beat the basketball(Park Bay) court home. When they came out of the home, they usually said that we had topped ourselves. I have a confident feeling that the HYBRID WONDERHOME is one that may top them all!

     Funny thing, whenever we do one of these “fantastic” type homes, folks inevitably ask what a “normal” version of the home would cost and where they can see one. The reality is that builders usually do not have the funds to produce a fancy and a not so fancy version of any single home, so the public is forced to try to imagine the fancy home without all the over-the-top creative thrills and frills. This year, we are not only producing 3 spectacular MBA Parade homes, we are also producing all three of these home in the more “normal” versions so you don’t have to guess. In fact, these homes are having their Grand Opening celebrations to coincide with the same dates as the Parade so if you like a certain one of our 3 Parade models, you can travel just 10 minutes away to see the normal versions!

      I think that is enough revelations for one blog entry. I hope you will take a golf cart tour of Reflection’s Village with me (I like to do the driving) this weekend or any time by appointment. Just call or , as I said, stop on by our special INFO-DECK right on site. Don’t be shy, it will be a blast!

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite

Hello All,

      As I write, I have just came in from the “field” (I have spent most of my waking hours this week seemingly in that same “field”) of overseeing our 3 homes we are building in the upcoming MBA Parade Of Homes.  I am exhausted and excited at the same time. I am now rarely going to bed before 2 AM  and I am still usually up by no later than 8 Am for meetings out at the Parade.

    As tense and as exhilarating as it now may seem, it will only get more rapid paced as we enter the final 5 or 6 weeks approaching our August 20 opening. One of our homes is now completely drywalled and has about half of the finish carpentry completed. Our second MBA Parade home  is almost ready for counter tops and carpet. We will be doing the landscaping starting late next week.  Our third MBA Parade home is just finishing the drywall and won’t be ready for finish carpentry to begin until the end of next week at the very earliest.

       The two big side projects that are seeming to consume a lot of creative hours is our “Story Tellers Lounge and our virtual reality in-home nightclub called “Club Wonder“.   In Club Wonder we have several sensory things happening at one time and they all need to be interwoven into a timeline to happen automatically. For example, we are projecting one curved 30 foot by 6 foot high video image around 3 sides of the room. The effect is to make you think you are sitting on a blue beach or in a green forest , or in an orange dessert, or in a purple hued city at night.  Each video scene is realistic (not unlike reality since it wraps around the viewer and is nearly in proportion to the audience. and changes to the next scene every 7 minutes. 

      When the scenes change, that means the color of the image (blue for the beach scene, for example) also is complimented by the lighting in the room substantially changing to that same (blue) color. The room seemingly changes color every 7 minutes. At the same point, we have different smells which are introduced into the club as well.

     The music in the club is being done both with a baby grand piano and alternating (without the piano) using recorded orchestrated music.  The color changes effect and video images, smells, and even the counter tops(which have lights inside them) each change and need to be synchronized to do so automatically. I have done complicated “shows” with multiple stages of action happening at the same time but this one is really touch technically speaking. Today,  I had several meetings with the masterminds involved. The end report:keep your fingers crossed and hope it all comes together!

     The next complicated items in this Wonder Home is the Story Teller’s Lounge. Here we have a simpler set of automation’s where our  Miracle Homes mascot character, Miracle  Mouse, has his own illustrated children’s book which we are bringing to life on a 55 inch flat-screen which begins each show by elevating out of a small stage area, ON CUE(we hope).  There are two other smaller 26 inch television flat screens which are directly over the bigger screen. All three of these televisions interact to “read” our children’s story to anyone who is willing to sit through the 15 minute full show.

     At some point in the show, their is a thunder storm sequence. During that sequence, we want the room lights to dim and the a few strobe lights to flash as thunder and lightening is heard and seen on the screens. One of the three screens has the books words which are highlighted as each word is read. This is a read-along experience. We are trying to blend books and videos together. Using another of this room’s devices, a mother can place  any book under the table camera next to the couch and each page appears on the screen as it is read the good-ol fashioned way.

     The hopes of this home, called our HYBRID WONDERHOME is that guests will have a series of wonderful experiences of which these are definitely two of the highlights. The more we can have our guests enjoy themselves and interact with the rooms, the more memorable their stay with Miracle Homes will be.  After all, as the wise advertising man once said,  folks don’t buy the steak, they buy the sizzle. Likewise, I always found that our real separation from the many other fine builders is that we excel in creating a sense of creativity and a spirit of innovation. This extends into everything we do!

     If you would like to get a preview of these MBA Parade Of Homes , Miracle Homes, we surely want you to see them this weekend. Per the official rules of the Metropolitan Builder’s Association, Parade participants ARE NOT allowed to show the homes in a public open house forum, prior to the offical opening.  That poses the problem however of builders  needing to show their homes in order to sell them . To see these homes this weekend so we might try to sell them , it can be done 2 easy ways. First, you COULD call our office at (262) 628-9091 and arrange a time to see them one-on-one with us. The second way is to come to the site at Reflection’s Village subdivision and go to our special INFO-DECK area. At that area, you can make your  immediate appointment to view these spectacular homes.  We did just such a one-on-one showing today(Friday afternoon) and I believe we had genuine interest in potentially buying one of the models. They sure seemed to enjoy seeing them AND getting a golf cart tour of the whole development with me. If you do visit, you may think your car can drive to see all the development’s sites but you would be really missing a lot. The various wide, paved walking paths are only viewable using your legs, bikes, or our golf cart.

     Don’ t miss the fun this weekend from 1 until 4.  Reflection’s Village is Wisconsin’s ONLY community of it’s kind.  With a pool/club house, extensive walking paths, a shopping district with a bank, shops and eateries, as well as a fishing pond and lush landscaping AND old-World charming homes, where else are you going to find this kind of lifestyle? Come and see for yourself , just off 175 in Richfield, a few blocks South of 167W(Holy Hill Rd).

     Thanks for bloggin’.

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite

       A  BIG  P.S.    I will be on Channel 4’s Morning Blend this coming Friday July 20 to give you a real pek at the Miracle MBA Parade “magic”! The program starts at 9 am.

     I returned from my California trip late Saturday and captured some nice video of some beautiful sights. As you may know, we are feverishly getting ready for our big 3-home unveiling at the MBA(Metropolitan Builder’s Association) 65th Annual Parade Of  Homes.  It was difficult to justify leaving town for even 1 day while we were installing and creating so many unusual and delightful things all at one time, but my son Sean only gets off two weeks a year with his accelerated college schedule, so we made the time to do the family minded thing and we were not sorry we did,

     There we were, on our way to see the sea lions on the beach and video them. The weather was so gloomy and chilly(yes chilly!) that I did not even shoot a single video clip of this scene. So we decided to head for Anaheim and Disneyland in hopes of at least finding “Nemo” AND the Sun. Sure enough, there it was!  One of the reasons I wanted to go to Disney to shoot video footage was that these creative folks recently opened what looked like the biggest new water fountain show on the planet, called Wonderful World Of Color.

     The show was 26 minutes long and it featured hundreds of amazing lighting, fountain, video screen, laser, and fire effects. The music was bold and exhilarating. The experience of getting to this show, was not. In order to get into the show, required everyone to first get in an early morning waiting line to get your  Disney Fast Pass  tickets to enter the show. This was a 45 minute to an hour long line. Then the day could be spent doing whatever we wished until the appointed hour of 6:45 or so. that was the time to return to the World Of Color waiting line to enter for the 9:00pm showing. In this case however, there was no real line but rather just a huge grouping or mass of standing people who stood behind a rope line with no real direction where the actual entry area would be. Then at about 7:30(as I recall) they released the rope and the mass swarmed over to several poorly identified small entries into various roped off cubical areas.  Just before we got to these cubes, we all handed our ticket/Fast Passes, to gate keepers who could not even look at the tickets due to the huge masses. I could have honestly handed them a business card and they would not have had the time or chance to stop anyone from swarming past them with the crowd’s sheer momentum.

     I was surprised to see that the next stage to this waiting game was to stand inside a roped-off area of about 15 by 15 feet and stand shoulder to shoulder to wait for the show to start. I had hoped for some comfy seats or at very least some hard bleachers but none were to be found.  That meant about an hour and a half wait to stand for the show to begin.  My family was tired and wanted to sit on the concrete, but this was frowned upon by the Disney personnel who were watching the flocks. I tried to get a good location to  shoot the video of the show. One Disney staffer told me that resting my camera on a pylon was permissible, then the next staffer told me I could not put my camera rig resting on any such area.

     I ended up sticking the tri-pod support into my belt top and it seemed to work. I asked the staffer if I could at least stabilize myself by leaning onto a temporary fence-type post which the ropes were attached to. They said these posts would stay intact and that my leaning on them would be fine. I even went so far as to ask a Disney manager if  he was sure I could lean on this post since I was assuming it would likely be removed near the show end to allow the crowds to do their mass exiting. While he said the ropes were going to stay and not be taken down(another Disney manager , who was to follow at 11), sure enough, while I had spent my 26 minutes shooting the show, the final minute they made me move to remove the post and rope so the crowds could exit. That meant that the finale would have  to be re-shot on another night since my camera(and me) had to move for the final moments. 

     The bigger reason for us having to re-shoot the video and re-live the standing and waiting experience all over again was that this how turned out to be a rather wet and misty experience, that made the camera lenses so wet that by the time the finale was playing, the camera view was poor and looking through water droplets on the lenses.  When the first night video shooting was over, I asked the family if the waiting and standing was worth the show and  they all agreed enthusiastically, that the show was worth all the trouble.

     It is always amazing to me that the power of music and images can be so powerful as to make humans feel so uplifted. It is that uplifted experience that makes us forget the hassles and troubles that have transpired to get to the  “goodstuff” in life. We humans seem to have the gift of putting bad or troublesome experiences behind us and move on to enjoy life.  One last “kicker” the Disney person who was in charge of our section told us earlier that when the show was over we would all need to exit to the far left or right. The actual exit turned out to be directly to the rear and center. Oh well, this is a new show and they are learning the ropes. At least they all seemed, for the most part, nice.

     Remember, I intend to bring this footage (in some form or another) to our big 30 foot wide , triple movie screens we will be having in our basement night club at the MBA Parade called “Club Wonder“. I previewed the video footage and from what I could see on my small monitor, the clarity and visuals were excellent!

     At the end of our Disneyland stay, Jacquie and I had talked to our second night (World Of Color) standing neighbors and they told us of a surfing championship being held only a short drive away. While the boys slept , early the next, last morning , of our trip, we set up our triple camera rig on the beach to shoot surfers on the waves. The visuals could have been great since it was interesting to watch BUT, again, the clouds were gloomy and overcast.

    Maybe the lesson is that long lines and waiting at Disney WITH Sunshine  beats beach and surfing or sea lions and docks with NO sunshine.  We did wear sweatshirts most of the time we were in California and I did get some great video of mountains WITH Sun. When we returned, the sun was shining and I was so glad to be back in Sunny Wisconsin where the lines are short, the sights are nice and the gas is cheaper, and now I can get back to creating some very special homes! Life is so good.

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite