Botany Bay Plantation, a 4,630-acre tract located on Edisto Island, is now open for public access.
The ecologically and historically significant property was privately maintained until recently by former owner, Margaret Pepper. The late Mrs. Pepper preserved the natural integrity of the land and fostered a diverse array of habitats including maritime forests, salt marsh, tidal creeks, freshwater ponds and hammock islands. The tract is now managed by S.C. Department of Natural Resources (DNR) as a part of the agency's Wildlife Management Area (WMA) program. DNR's stewardship of the property will continue Peppers' customary legacy towards enhancing habitat for all wildlife species while providing public access including compatible educational and recreational opportunities and uses of the land.

Recreational opportunities on Botany Bay Plantation WMA include seasonal hunting, catch and release fishing, birding and an interpretive driving trail.

DNR staff has been monitoring activities since the recent opening of Botany Bay Plantation WMA. The area's first public visitor, Hal Currey of Sullivan's Island, reported to have seen or heard 43 species of birds. Currey said, "You can find beautiful woods, freshwater ponds, brackish ponds, salt marsh, beach-front, tidal creeks, spectacular trees and views." Currey also expressed his gratitude towards the previous landowner and praised the donation of the property to the state, a move that allows all citizens the opportunity to visit an area sustainably managed for wildlife while allowing for public access and appreciation.

For the complete article see http://www.dnr.sc.gov/news/yr2008/july14/july14_botany.html

In the early days of the Festival, it cost fifty cents to attend the Beauty Pageant, one dollar per couple to attend the Water Festival Ball (which was later changed to the Commodore's Ball) and two dollars to attend the Regatta Ball. The first weekend featured two days of sailboat races and the Regatta Ball. The following weekend begin with the Beauty Pageant on Friday where the Queen of the Carolina Sea Islands was crowned. The parade and ski show put on by the Beaufort Water Ski Club and an air show was the second weekend highlight in addition to the Water Festival Ball. All events were held on or adjacent to the municipal parking lot, and in case of inclement weather (we never use the word "rain" when speaking of the Festival), the pageant would move indoors to the Beaufort Elementary School and the Balls would be held in the Community Club.

As the years went by, the Festival began to draw more and more people to Beaufort from other parts of the State and on a national level. Events such as fishing and golf tournaments as well as a craft market, antique show, and art show were added to the line up so that the Festival had something to offer for every age and interest.

Over 400 volunteers work long hours to bring the events to the Festival. The Festival is able to offer our first class entertainment at such reasonable prices because of our loyal sponsors.

COMMENTS

This year the festival runs from July 11-20 with a variety of events and shows.  For more information on the festival and events visit http://www.bftwaterfestival.com/cwo/Home  There is something for everyone in the family!

-Jill Moylan

The Nick specializes in "appreciation of media arts in the community by presenting a wide variety of alternative films and sponsoring media arts events and educational programs." 

COMMENTS

The Nick is a great place to see a movie outside of the commercial theatres in the area.  For more information on shows and times check the Nick out at www.nickelodeon.org

-Jill Moylan

In many locations, buyers will find a glut of new homes, more motivated sellers, foreclosures, auctions, short sales and other market conditions that can make it a really good time to buy.

That doesn't mean throw caution to the wind.

Here's how to begin to navigate today's housing market, step-by-step, and make a good deal without getting taken.

Staff report

On July 6, the Edisto Island Historic Preservation Society will hold its annual festival 5-9 p.m. on the grounds of the historic Prospect Hill Plantation (circa 1792), 2695 Laurel Hill Road.. The festival will feature food, beer and wine, children's activities, artisans, a bluegrass band, and a huge fireworks display as the grand finale.

Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the gate. Children ages 10 and under are admitted free. Tickets can be purchased at the Edisto Island Museum, The Edistonian, Fish or Cut Bait Gallery, King's Market, Main's Market and A Shore Thing, all on Edisto Island. The event will take place rain or shine, and no pets or coolers are allowed.

Events being held Saturday, July 5th

Theme: Rockin’ in the USA

July 4th Boat parade at Noon

Enjoy the patriotic display as locals and visitors decorate their boats in ways that will leave you amazed!
Viewable from the park sites at the Lake Murray Dam or by boat!
It is FREE to be a part of the fun…register online,

at the Lake Murray Visitor Center or by phone at 803-781-5940 by June 25th!

Click here to learn more about registering for the 2008 Boat Parade.

8:00 PM: Patriotic Concert

Featuring the Lake Murray Symphony Orchestra at Dreher Island State Park. Nothing is sweeter at Independence Day than the patriotic music we all love! Dreher Island State Park is the perfect place to enjoy the show and hang around for the fireworks! Bring a chair or blanket!  Admission is $2 adults; $1.25 SC seniors; with age 15 & younger admitted free.

DIRECTIONS: Dreher Island State Park is 30 miles from Columbia and 12 miles off I-26 (via Chapin exit #91).
Follow the visible brown State Park signage for easy navigation.

South Carolina’s Largest Fireworks (approximately 9:15pm)

From two great locations: Spence Island & Dreher Island. The show is choreographed to a patriotic concert that will air simultaneously on the Citadel Broadcasting Company stations: WTCB/ B106.7FM and MAGIC 98.5FM. Both Park sites at the Dam will be open until they reach capacity. (Park Admission: $3/car or truck; $2/motorcycle)

BEST VIEWING FOR THE FIREWORKS:
Viewing is best from either Park Site at the Lake Murray Dam, from Dreher Island State Park or from the water.

IMPORTANT TO KNOW: All normal fees will apply at the park sites and all boat launching sites and Marinas on Lake Murray.

The fireworks are funded through our efforts at the Taste of Lake Murray each year! Mark your calendar to help raise
the funds next year on March 26, 2009, learn more at tasteoflakemurray.com

They had selected her from the seven they interviewed as the best qualified to renovate their 1820s colonial-style farmhouse north of Boston. She was well-educated, had extensive experience and came highly recommended. So who were they to question her design?

Still, there was the nagging question of the garage. She wanted to put the garage doors at the back of the house, where a car would have to drive past the house to park. Although it was a better design and hid the car from the street, it would mean paving over some of the backyard and would add to the cost of the remodeling. Ms. Lund and Mr. Coccoluto preferred to put the garage doors on the side of the house where, they acknowledged, it might look boring but it would be easier to reach.

They consulted Bruce Irving, the former executive producer of the television show “This Old House,” who now works as a remodeling coach based in Cambridge, Mass., helping homeowners negotiate the challenges of renovation. Mr. Irving recommended that they talk about their feelings with the architect — “You don’t want to end up with a house that makes you feel uncomfortable,” he told them — and after some cajoling, they agreed. They expected her to grow angry and refuse to change the design. To their surprise, she quickly agreed with the changes and redid the blueprints within 10 days.

For the rest of the article please visit  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/garden/13coach.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Calling+in+the+house+therapist&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Comments

With more and more people looking into remodeling it is important to find a designer who will listen to your ideas and feelings about the project.  They are there to fill your wants and needs.  After all, YOU are paying them for work done on a house YOU are going to live in, so don't be scared to make your desires heard!

'Sell this house' shows still popular, but

don't always have happy endings

By Brian Stelter
The New York Times

Article Last Updated: 06/17/2008 12:26:15 PM MDT

Much of the nation's housing market is collapsing, but television shows about housing are booming.
The audiences for HGTV and TLC, the two channels with the most "property programming," have grown steadily during the past three years. The reason appears to be their shift in focus away from buying real estate as speculative sport to more educational and emotional shows.
''If anything, there's more interest than ever before, because of what's going on in the market,'' Jim Samples, the president of HGTV, said.
HGTV's prime-time schedule - built around the shows ''Designed to Sell,'' ''House Hunters'' and ''My House Is Worth What?'' - now average more than a million viewers every evening.
Shows that were hallmarks of the bubble - such as ''Flip That House'' (TLC) and ''Flip This House'' (A&E) - are still around, but have been retooled with less-than-happy endings. The TLC episodes are repeated several times each week and still draw an average of 700,000 viewers a showing.
''People loved comedies during the depression, too,'' said R.J. Cutler, executive producer of ''Flip That House.''
New shows, such as ''Date My House'' on TLC, highlight the emotional aspects of home-buying (prospective buyers can spend a night or throw a dinner party in a home to ''date'' it).
So even though housing may be a depressing subject to talk about, watching it is another matter.
Brant Pinvidic, who until recently oversaw TLC's programming, knows first-hand why such shows continue to draw audiences.
He recently finished building a house outside Los Angeles , but now he cannot sell his old house. So when Pinvidic describes the questions TLC's shows try to answer - ''What would I do to sell my house? What could I do to pump up the value? How could I sell it quickly?'' - he wants the answers himself.
''A few years ago, viewers were wondering 'what's my house worth,' with an exclamation point. Now they're saying it with a question mark,'' Pinvidic, who left TLC to start his own production company, said. ''The audience has a different attitude toward housing now, but they still care deeply about it.''
Last year, with the housing market slumping, programmers at HGTV doubled their orders of ''House Hunters'' and ''Designed to Sell,'' two shows offering advice on buying and selling decisions.
Susan Miller, of Louisville , Ky. , considers herself a student of HGTV. She said the channel offers her family advice as it sells a small rental house and searches for a vacation home.
The shows ''have taught us that investing a few hundred dollars in repairs, painting and accessories can yield thousands of dollars from the sale,'' she said.
While Miller has not sold the rental house yet, she says she nevertheless takes guilty pleasure from seeing $50,000 living room makeovers on HGTV's ''Divine Design,'' and $500,000 homes on ''What You Get for the Money.''
No show can relieve real frustration with the housing market, though. Ashton Crew tuned into HGTV about a year ago as she tried to sell her home in Ankeny , Iowa . ''I thought, in this market, any suggestion could help,'' she said. But she was disappointed.
''I found myself starting to resent the shows a little, thinking their advice a bit too simplistic,'' Crew said. She recently decided to take her home off the market.
Striking the right note in a down market is difficult, programmers say. ''Negative content does not resonate with the audience,'' said Eric Black, the director of programming for TLC. ''Viewers want to take away a warm feeling.''
To that end, TLC introduced an upbeat trivia and home decorating game show called ''Your Place or Mine?'' on June 8. Even ''Real Estate Rescue,'' a show in development about people who cannot pay their mortgages, strikes an optimistic tone by presenting the homeowners with potential ways to get out of the crisis.
Comparing the 2005 and 2008 episodes of housing shows offers a shorthand version of the downturn of the housing market.
On ''Flip That House,'' a three-year-old series, the opening scenes summarize flipping in five seemingly easy steps: ''Find a bargain, clean it up, make smart upgrades, add sparkle, get it sold quickly.''
But a warning was added to the episodes in February. ''The following program features real people taking risks with real money,'' the narrator intones. ''Flip at your own risk.''
As the producer Cutler said, ''many of our episodes are cautionary tales.'' More than 100 episodes of ''Flip That House'' are in circulation now, and they have been shown a total of 2,000 times between TLC and a sister network, the Discovery Home Channel.
In the newer episodes, the people featured face more substantial challenges and take greater risks. ''There's a higher likelihood of failure,'' Cutler said.
At the end of one January episode, Chad Sloan, an experienced house-flipper, is shown grinning ear to ear as he adds up the $170,000 in projected profit from a five-bedroom, three-bathroom house in Columbia, S.C. ''Let's go find a buyer,'' he tells his real estate consultant. ''I'm sure we can run one down, maybe this afternoon,'' the consultant responds.
But the show ends ominously. '' Chad 's house has been on the market for eight weeks,'' an on-screen graphic reads.

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_9587491

Comments

Although the appreciation of homes in Columbia has moderated somewhat over the past 2 years, sales of homes in downtown Columbia have remained strong, and values are steady. My personal sales this year to date are up over 60%, setting us up for a record breaking year.

--Jill Moylan

Americans have heard the bad news about the housing market from the press, their neighbors and their real estate agents. Now they're hearing it from former Bachelor Bob Guiney. "The real estate market has come screeching to a halt!" he cries, over the sound of squealing tires, at the beginning of TLC's Date My House. On the new show, anxious sellers stage overnight "dates," in which potential buyers spend the night at the house, the better to "seduce" them into making a "long-term commitment." (The sellers themselves are not thrown in as part of the date package. But let the market drop another 10%, and we'll talk.) "It's time to stop thinking of home sales as being on the real estate market," Guiney says, "and start thinking of them as being on the dating market."

If it all sounds a little sleazy and desperate, it meshes perfectly with the sleazy and desperate era of the subprime-mortgage fiasco, credit crisis and housing bust. If the economy of the '70s is back, the show seems to say, then let's bring back the mores of the '70s! Throw a key party--this time with house keys!

Date My House--and HGTV's Sleep On It, which has essentially the same premise--points up the shift in power between buyers and sellers. During the housing boom, it was the buyers who were afraid they might have to date (i.e., rent) forever. Your house was a coy Victorian maiden with eager suitors queuing up in the parlor. Now it's Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, facing squalor and destitution should it fail to find a suitable match. It's a contestant on The Bachelor, competing with a crowd of others and pining for a private date and a rose. The buyer, it hears over and over again, is just not that into you.

Early this decade, TV both profited from and stoked the obsession with real estate. TLC's Trading Spaces became a phenomenon. Real estate magnate and '80s relic Donald Trump reinvented himself as a prime-time star on The Apprentice. HGTV went from being an obscure channel to being one of the most popular destinations on the dial.

With the change in the psychology of home-owning--from the house as shelter to the house as investment, retirement vehicle and personal ATM--came a shift in home shows' focus. Out of fashion went renovation programs like This Old House, about restoring details and loving a home for its character. In came playing the real estate market. Sell This House!, My House Is Worth What? and many more flattered the smug certainty of homeowners and speculators that their home equity would shoot endlessly up like shares of Google. HGTV, TLC and their ilk may not have created the real estate bubble, but they certainly supplied some of the hot air.

With the U.S.'s boomiest burgs going bust, these shows already seem as dated as wall-to-wall shag carpeting. Watching a rerun of House Hunters shot two years ago is like opening a time capsule. The sellers are swaggering; home prices are rising by the minute; the buyers are under pressure to decide!, decide!, decide! before another house flies off the market. Who are these confident sellers and brokers, you wonder, and what prosperous, optimistic nation do they live in?

Newer home shows are starting to tap into the anxiety sweeping America's culs-de-sac. HGTV's upcoming Good Buy, Bad Buy? starkly puts the worries of buyers about overpaying in a falling market: "Buying a house is the biggest financial risk you will ever take." (Of course, this being HGTV--whose viewers are mostly homeowners and whose advertisers cater to them--you don't see anyone deciding to simply sit out the market and rent.)

Yet much hasn't changed. Even with prices falling, Americans still view their homes as financial instruments, not just places to live. Where else are they going to make their money? 401(k)s? Not likely--the stock market is down, thanks to the credit misfortunes in the housing market. Work? Ha! The New York Times reported recently that the economy is concluding its first long-term expansion in which the average American's postinflation income actually decreased. Jobs are declining, but many homeowners can't move to cities with better prospects because they can't sell their homes.

So Americans still fixate on the dollar value of their houses--we're literally too invested in them not to--and most of HGTV's top-rated shows are still about buying and selling. You'll know that the bubble-besotted housing culture has really changed when the home channels stop focusing on houses as commodities to flip, invest in or date and start looking at them as places to live in.

At that point, it may finally be time to buy.

Comments

--Jill Moylan