The kick off: A Super Special Sunshiny Day at Offbeat Homes

The best of Offbeat Homes:

• June 2007
• July 2007
• August 2007
• September 2007
• October 2007
• November 2007
• December 2007
• January 2008
• February 2008
• March 2008
• April 2008
• May 2008

Thanks:

Offbeat Homes would like to thank…

Thanks to these great b5 media blogs…

Best Offbeat Reader Comments of the Year

Thanks for hanging out for the celebration. Coming up this week, I’ve got something pretty cool planned here at Offbeat, so stick around.

Post from: Blisstree

Offbeat Homes Year Anniversary Wrap

The Powerlight Office Space – I love this space. Also I rarely blog about offices, so this was a good break.

I’d like to live, under the sea… – Senosiain Arquitectos creates some of the most unique work I’ve ever seen.

Offbeat Play Structures for Your Unique Child – I love cool kid play structures.

My New Favorite Real Estate Website! – I’ve been spending a lot of time here, so I have to say this is one of the favorite four.

Post from: Blisstree

The Best of Offbeat Homes: May 2008

Antonino Cardillo’s Vaulted House – I pretty much adore everything Cardillo creates. The colors, the lines, the minimal factor.

Outstanding Offbeat Organic Beauty – the Work of Robert Harvey Oshatz – His work is so amazing.

Arte Luise Kunsthotel – This hotel may be one of the best in the world. I love the whole idea of themes by artists.

 The Most Stylish Blogger Spaces In the World! – So far, a theme day post hasn’t made the top four in any of the months this year. However, I really liked the show your office theme day we did here at the Lifestyles Channel. It’s cool to see where other bloggers work.

Post from: Blisstree

The Best of Offbeat Homes: April 2008

I double dare someone to build an entire house out of these… – I really like shaped and nicely designed bricks and other building materials. If you’ve got kooky building supplies, you might not even need a weird home design to pull off an offbeat home.

Classic Offbeat Homes: Favorite Posts of Spammers – I more like this post because someone emailed me later and had some ideas about why “Eating the Biscuit City” was so popular with spammers. Um, the ideas are not G or even PG rated, so I won’t be posting them, but let’s just say it sort of made my world more amusing.

Best Site of the Week for Touring – Faces in Places – This post wasn’t exactly about houses. However Faces in Places is so darn cool, that I just love this post. It makes me happy. I love surprised houses.

Freitag Flagship Store – I just think this structure is genius. Simple, yet really attractive and hip.

Post from: Blisstree

The Best of Offbeat Homes: March 2008

That said, when Offbeat readers leave comments they’re usually fun, nice, and smart. This isn’t the sort of blog where you get a lot of miffed off folks leaving mean comments. Readers here are nice and chill, with interesting things to say. I thought that for the Offbeat year anniversary, I’d point out some of my favorite comments from the past year.

My first official Offbeat Homes comment (post): Was from a favorite blogger of mine, a certain Crabby McSlacker who said, “Jennifer, I’m sorry, but if you think that’s a house you’re not dealing with a full deck. Okay, guilty of incredibly lame comment. What can I say, its bedtime. This looks like a fun site, and I’ll be curious to see what trouble you get yourself into over here.”

I’m not sure that playing with a full deck is an Offbeat blogger requirement (thankfully).

The award for the most amusing comments overall goes to: Angelique

When Angelique stops by she always leaves great comments. She’s funny and hyper, and I adore it. I love how she always ponders her own issues in comments. She never fails to crack me up. She’ll insert random thoughts like…

“I would end up eating the gummi bear rug then blaming it on the cat when my four-year-old came downstairs and wondered where it had gone.”

“I’m still mulling over someday living in an “elfin glen” shelter you highlighted a week or so again. I wonder if it comes with a year’s supply of Keebler cookies?”

Hmmm? Do you think that Angelique likes treats? But not chocolate, a fact she also noted in a comment.

Most Offbeat comments:

Marye is likely the person who has left the most Offbeat comments. I didn’t count, but since every other Offbeat comment has her name on it, I’m taking a wild guess. Marye is way funny. She always cracks me up, or takes a nice pro-green stance. Marye is often as random as Angelique, and loves almost as many houses as I do. Marye also tried really hard to make “grok” a household word with me. Not that we managed, but we tried, so props to her.

Best comments in total on one post: The Teenage Dream Pad didn’t have the most comments of any post here at Offbeat, but each comment was awesome. People talking about their treehouse dreams and their youth, folks offering funny treehouse ideas, and just all sorts of sweet things.

Honestly, I think the number one best Offbeat comment ever was on that post. It was from Judy who said:

“Thank you for sharing this , I was describing it to my dad who is 68 and has lost most of his sight due to a stroke and it brought tears to his eyes , remembering when he was a little kid and his dad and himself built a treehouse. What it is to dream !! Thank you again for sharing!!”

Such a great comment!

Lastly:

There is no way to point out all the great reader comments here. So along with the folks above, here’s a little round up of some of the readers who have left oodles of comments, ultra nice comments, taught me something new with their comment, or just been super funny or memorable. Of course I love all reader comments… If I miss you, it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate you, I just can’t possibly sort them all.

• Linette
• Noreen
• Amy
• Nick
• Heather
• Jessie
• Mark
• Lindsay
• Evan
• Julie
• Peggy
• Jen / domestika

[image via: cafe-ole]

Post from: Blisstree

Best Offbeat Reader Comments of the Year

Offbeat is part of the b5 media network, so it’d make sense that some of my traffic perks come from various b5media blogs. What’s always surprising to me is which b5media blogs seem to send more traffic this way. You’d think it would be the oddball blogs, or blogs related to houses, but it’s not usually.

In any case, I rounded up a list of b5media blogs that send Offbeat a lot of nice traffic – for which of course, I’d like to say THANKS! If you’re an Offbeat reader, you should absolutely check out some of these blogs…

By far, the two b5media blogs that send Offbeat the most traffic are Baking Delights (mostly due to this insanely popular cookie post) and Simply Thrifty. Thanks Marye and Deb!

Other blogs that send good traffic my way include some that you’d think, because the topics relate, and some surprises, which I’d never have guessed unless I saw my stats.

Unplugged Living

Mother Earth’s Garden

Keeping the Castle

Parents Behaving Badly

Declutter It (yes, before I wrote it)

Problogger

Macro Cats

Cooking Gadgets

Foodie Obsessed

Copyblogger

Hankering for Yarn

Junk Creation

Career & Kids

Layers Upon Layers

I guess the food and writing blogs surprise me the most (not related at all). Still, whatever works! Thanks to my b5 pals for the links and for having blogs that for some reason make folks say, “Hmmm, I should click on Offbeat Homes.”

Post from: Blisstree

Thanks to these great b5 media blogs…

Robert Bruno Steel House – sort of one of those perfectly offbeat homes.

Impractical Architecture – Specht Harpman has done so much wonderful stuff not to mention the zero house, it’s hard not to list them as a favorite.

Classic Offbeat Homes: Holiday Lights – I didn’t write this post, originally, but every time I see it, it makes me smile.

Hilltop Ocean Views at Casa Buzeta – just too beautiful.

Post from: Blisstree

The Best of Offbeat Homes: December 2007

Here’s August 2007…

50 Fresh & Juicy Slices of Offbeat Home Decor – this post is maybe the most popular post I’ve ever posted, at any blog, ever. What makes this post unique, is that along with my readers, I like it too. Usually I think a post should be popular, and it’s not, or my readers here LOVE a post that totally surprises me. This post makes everyone happy. And it’s cool.

HGTV Design Star Contestant Josh Johnson (”Sparkle Josh”) Chats with Offbeat Homes! – Josh was so nice; it really surprised me; I guess I misjudge people on TV, or, at least some of them. Plus I was way obsessed with Design Star season two, so this was a fun post to write.

10 Reasons Why Building Your Own House Sucks – I finally got this rant out of my system.

Treehouse Bling – if you don’t like treehouse bling, I wonder about you. Really. Treehouses rock. Even the overly expensive ones.

Which of these August finds was your favorite?

Post from: Blisstree

The Best of Offbeat Homes: August 2007

If you said “I bet it’s Jennifer” you’d be correct. Today marks my one year anniversary here at Offbeat Homes.That officially makes me the longest-term Offbeat Homes blogger ever! Offbeat has had other very cool bloggers; Kevin, Ingrid, and Adam, but no one stayed a year. Go me.

Of course, Offbeat is not a hard place to stay because I adore this blog. Since I started here last June, Offbeat has gained some nice momentum and readers just keep on increasing. And that’s not a pat on my own little back, believe me.

Not to sound like an Oscar’s speech, but many people have helped to make Offbeat a success and a great place to blog. From other home and architect bloggers, to my great (but often silent) readers, to the other bloggers here at b5, and of course to all those architects who just keep on building wacky structures.

That said, Offbeat is way too cool for one anniversary post; we’re going to celebrate all week long. We’ll take a look back at the best structures from each of the last 12 months (thanks to Marye for the idea), visit some of my favorite architect bloggers, see who sends me the most link love, and find out just who some of these Offbeat readers are.

Maybe I’ll even finish the category clean-up. I really tried to finish – I wanted Offbeat to look all spiffy for today. I’m even halfway done. Oh well; you know in Mexico they say perfection in houses is not beaty – that every beautiful structure should have a flaw, no matter how small. Maybe we should all live that way.

In any case, it’s all the best of Offbeat all week, so stick around.

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

A Super Special Sunshiny Day at Offbeat Homes