Where will Calgary's newest hot spot emerge?

People are always on the lookout for the next big thing, and that search extends to the world of real estate.

When it comes to reading the proverbial crystal ball as to which community will emerge as Calgary's next inner-city hot spot, the author of the blog The Everyday Tourist, Richard White, suggests one look north.

"The northwest inner-city communities are becoming much more urban and desirable," says White, explaining the growth of these communities has coincided with the relatively recent expansion of facilities like the Alberta Children's Hospital, the Foothills Medical Centre, SAIT and the University of Calgary campus.

Dual-master homes occupy important niche in Calgary market

Dual-master homes aren't a new phenomenon in the Calgary market, but they have long been popular among a growing cross-section of homebuyers whose needs cannot be met by a standard three-bedroom layout.

According to Wendy Jabusch, president of the Canadian Home Builders' Association-Calgary region, Calgary homebuilders have been building dual-master suites for roughly a decade, primarily in smaller home offerings.

"They would typically be in the small single-family homes, townhomes and that kind of thing," Jabusch said. "Certainly, in the apartment product, we've seen dual-master bedrooms for many years."

'A place for everything and everything in its place'

Over the past several months, I have been getting ready to move. And as I've packed up my life, I've realized every object has a story, whether that be who designed it, where it was bought, where it has been or how it has been used and by whom. This story gives the object more importance. It gave me a reason to keep it or chuck it.

Yet even if you're not moving, you should all be editing your objects. Don't think about it too hard about it. If you love something, keep it. If not, repurpose it, whether that be putting it in storage or donating it to charity. After all, one person's junk is another person's treasure.

If you have many pieces of one collection, (my weakness being cake plates), put them together instead of spread everywhere. Show them off as one. Or repurpose them take sea shells from past vacations and put them in a glass vase or crystal bowl lined with a handful of sand.

A sneak peek into this year's Home & Garden Show

If you could grow healthy lettuce with the same protein value as steak, would you? After all, according to Steve Solomon, author of The Intelligent Gardener, it's possible to grow lettuce with 20 per cent protein simply by mineralizing your soil.

Solomon mocks garden writers, myself included. He says, in a long and thorough way, most of us do not replace the minerals in the soil at the same ratio we take them out when we harvest plants.

So I decided to test my soil recently, and I got some bad news.

My problem is I am afraid to pollute the soil with excess fertilizers, so I add only natural ingredients like compost and worm castings. Solomon, who used to be an organic farmer, says compost is not enough. The soil system is broken and compost alone will not put our humpty dumpty soil together again.