Dog Days Of Summer - August 2018

Well we blazed through July and now we are into August and two of the toughest months of the year if you are in Arizona. Summer is just half over by August 1^st as we have really until Halloween before we truly erase the 100º temps. We all know that, but never want to fully acquiesce to that fact and hence why we schedule our Candelaria Design Tour Italy for September. It’s the perfect time to escape.

Speaking of our Italy Tour, this will be our 15^th Tour Italy and our 17^th Candelaria Design Tour overall now that we have added Spain. This will be our biggest group ever with 23 travelers making this year’s journey and we kicked it off with two fantastic Pre-Trip Dinners the first at Tomasos’s and then the second at our home for those that could not make Tomaso’s – yes and all included in our tour package!

We have travelers coming from Long Beach, Denver, and as far away as Orlando, Florida! Our tour departs on September 12^th where we will fly into Florence for two nights and then we will take our convoy to Umbria and our agritourismo farmhouse compound which will act as our hub for a week of exploring Umbria and Tuscany. From there our convoy will drive across Italy to Venice where we will ditch the cars and get on a water taxi to the Hotel Danielle switching from the rustic farmhouses to utter luxury. Three nights in Venice and then its by train to step it up even one more notch with a grand finale at the Villa d’Este on Lake Como where Isabel’s and I will celebrate our 5 year anniversary at the very spot we tied the knot on the last day of our Candelaria Design Tour Italy 2013! You never know what might happen on this year’s tour but I can tell you we have a real exciting group going! Follow us here on our blog, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. We are planning quite the coverage of this year’s journey.

I am typing away from 30,000 altitude somewhere over Kansas on my way back from a weekend in Egg Harbor, Wisconsin where we are just starting the long range master planning process on an amazing property right on the lake for clients we did work for in Cupertino, California. Such a cool project and wonderful people How about someone that cooks for me!!! Now we are talking! My Associate, Damon Wake joined me and we measured, sketched, and ventured in basements and crawl spaces to get all the data we needed. Of course when you work hard, you have to play hard so we made sure we did get some down time in!

Meanwhile, in July I did make it to my 40^th High School Reunion in Durango, Colorado! What an kick that was. Reconnected with a lot of wonderful classmates and was able to say a final farewell to one of my all time favorite teachers, Mr. Bruce Branson. I was fortunate enough to visit him Saturday morning before our reunion picnic and he passed on the following Thursday. Again as I have said so many times in these blogs every moment is to be cherished and that visit was one I will never forget. The reunion was another great memory and had the wonderful opportunity to reconnect with a lot of classmates I had not seen in years. Very special for sure and I even had the opportunity to prepare my paella for a group and their mothers the night following! Again – all great lasting memories!

Plenty going on at Candelaria Design that is for sure. It has been one of the busiest summers I can remember and I get the feeling this fall will just keep it going. We currently have projects going in 8 states and all over Arizona from Tubac up to Flagstaff and some unbelievable projects right here in Phoenix and Scottsdale.

Make sure to check out our beautiful home in the summer edition of Country French Magazine now on the newsstands nationwide. We are also excited to have been ranked #14 in the nation and number one in Arizona for luxury residential architectural firms by Bond Custom using a criteria of cost per square foot of projects, total square footage of projects, number of awards received and gross billings. Very proud of my amazing, and unbelievable hard working team. They have been cranking all year and especially all summer. It seems I can swing by the office any time day or night and there is someone there burning the midnight oil. They are all proud of their work and the WOW’s prove it!

We look forward to what we have under construction, especially several just wrapping up – some in design and construction for over twelve years, and wait until you see what we have on the boards! Get ready – its going to be an exciting and very productive second half of the year!