Parade of Homes Day 4

Last weekend we finished up our tour of the Parade of Homes. We saved the grandest homes for last. They were all located in the valley up Ogden canyon in the mountain towns of Huntsville, Liberty and Eden. The valley is absolutely gorgeous and because of all the rain we have been having it is still very green. I would love to have a cabin up there!

Here is the first home we went to. We were told from a reliable source that this home belongs to the regional manager of the area Cabela's stores. This will be very apparent as we enter . . .
. . . the "game" room :)



This home also had a very large and spacious office, which of course Jayson loved.

And who wouldn't want to go to work in that office when this was your view from the window?! (Minus the Port 'o Potty of course, which is just there for the parade)

The layout of the Cabela's home, as we called it, was my very favorite of all the homes we went to. It was a very open floor plan, the upstairs was connected to the downstairs great room/kitchen area by a large loft area, which was open to the downstairs on two sides. Then the upstairs bedrooms were just off the loft area so it all felt very open and connected, which I really like. The thing that I have discovered about a lot of these big homes is that they are so huge and compartmentalized that if you are in one part of the house you are completely isolated from the rest of the house. I much prefer the open floor plans.

Here is the next house we visited (actually there was one in between, but I didn't take any pictures)

This home also had an incredibly gorgeous view of the valley.

Here we are enjoying the view. Just to save anyone the awkwardness of asking an embarrassing question, no I am not pregnant :) However, I am working on not appearing to be pregnant when I'm really not, you can check out my progress at the bottom of my blog.

This home won hands down for the most awesome shower. I was almost tempted to actually turn it on! We saw a lot of giant showers with only one pathetic little shower head (similar to the one we have in our dinky apartment!), which was very disappointing. If you are going to make a huge shower you had better make it worth staying in there for a long time.


These little kiwi birds were in the house as decorations. I thought they were funny so I took some pictures!












And finally the Synergy Mountain Retreat, as this last home was aptly named. To get the home we had to park on the street. Then rather than hike up that massive drive way in the heat we opted to ride up on the golf carts that were shuttling people up to the house! You can just make one out in the picture, it is rounding that second switchback.

I really should have taken more pictures in this house, but I didn't. There was just too much to take it. Here are a couple stats on the house:

9,958 square feet total. The list price in the parade magazine was $2,000,000 plus. We are guessing it was more around 4 or 5 million.

over 3,000 of those square feet were contained in the three levels of deck space! The deck also included an outdoor kitchen area, with a grill that Jayson was drooling over

"Desirable features" of the home included; wine cellar, elevator, steam/sauna room, and exercise room (the exercise "room" was actually almost the entire 2nd basement, yes that's right I said second basement!)

Also included "custom landscape design with native mountain plants, and cleverly-designed water feature" I think the retaining walls probably cost more than the kind of house we could afford!

Here is Jayson hanging out in the bath room, it literally was a room with just a bath in it. Out that large window is an incredible view, although I don't know how I would feel about bathing with such a view because I'm sure the view in is just as accessible :)

They had a bunch of very unusual fans in this house, I wish I had taken pictures of all of them. Here are the fans that were up in the loft area.

They also had a lot of unusual "plumbing" I guess you could call it. By "plumbing" I am referencing sinks, faucet fixtures, and toilets. This sink was kind of cool, but a lot of them were just too "unique" to really be functional in my opinion. I don't think we saw a normal toilet in the entire house either, one bathroom even had a square toilet!

Here is the "cleverly-designed" water feature. It actually was kind of cool, it ran out of the steps leading up to the front entrance.
And finally here is a little movie for your viewing pleasure. The trees weren't actually purple, that is a special effect put in by our digital camera :)

So here is the end of our adventures in the 2009 Parade of Homes. If you made it through this super long post congratulations. Per a request/suggestion I will be doing one final post highlighting what I definitely want and don't want in a future home after going to the parade. Stay tuned!