Green Living Home

Design student Peter Kraft from Germany has come up with a concept of expanding light bulbs. Titled Growing Lampshades, the installation of lights is inspired by the natural way light illuminates the darkness.

Kraft explained that when natural light changes the darkness, it happens as a gradual visual process, not suddenly like an electric light does. This gradual process was what Kraft set out to imitate by creating lamps that are expanded and distorted by a heating element inside the bulb, creating spectacular shapes and light games.

The bulbs are made of PET plastic and each bulb can be extended only once.

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RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment on Tuesday defining marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman, making it the 30th state to adopt such a ban.

With 35 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday, unofficial returns showed the amendment passing with about 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent against.

In the final days before the vote, members of President Barack Obama’s cabinet expressed support for gay marriage and former President Bill Clinton recorded phone messages urging voters to reject the amendment. Opponents also held marches, ran TV ads and gave speeches, including one by Jay Bakker, son of televangelists Jim Bakker and the late Tammy Faye Bakker.

Meanwhile, supporters had run their own ad campaigns and church leaders urged Sunday congregations to vote for the amendment. The Rev. B

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The world of garden sheds isn’t exactly known for its eye for aesthetics. If you want something modern and minimalistic you’ll have a hard time finding an outdoor storage shed that matches that description. Thanks to Italian brand De Castelli that isn’t a problem anymore.

COTTAGE N°1 by De Castelli is complete re-thinking of the classical cottage-box shape garden shed that you’ll find in many gardens. Most of those aren’t an element that perfectly fits in a gardens design. COTTAGE N°1 changes all that with attention to constructive details, functionality and easthetic impact.

These efforts by De Castelli’s internal Research & Develop department have now resulted in a Wallpaper* Design Award for 2012. W

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Takinogawa Gobo, aka Edible Burdock is a great option if you want to try a new and unusual, but easy to grow root crop in your vegetable garden this season. Here in Central PA burdock is a common weed that is used by some as a medicinal wild plant.

Add Gobo to the list of my other favorite plants with a wild and uncultivated background. They include lambsquarters, chickweed, stinging nettles, dandelions, and now burdock.

A Few Unknowns when it Comes to Cultivating Edible Burdock

From what I can tell gobo is very similar to, but a little different than the familiar wild burdock. I’m not positive how much difference there is between the wild plant and the cultivated variety, or whether it’s actually the same plant and it just grows differently when planted in fertile garden soils.

I do know that gobo is very easy to grow and will yield a productive fall harvest from a spring planting. It

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The two-year renovation of one of the pearls of modernist architecture, Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, was completed at the end of February. The villa remains as one of the most important European works of the world-acclaimed German architect Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969).

Built in 1930, the villa was declared an UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994. Its current owner, the city of Brno, began an extensive renovation project in 2010, which has resulted in the villa being as close to its original appearance as possible, enabling visitors to take a step back in history.

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