Greetings from a frazzled sleep-deprived mother! I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend! I spent the tail end of mine with a teething toddler who also, evidently, has thrush. The perfect storm in toddler world. It's a good thing we're all family friendly over here at 3A because I've been a hot mess all day. But we'll make it out alive :)

So I bring you a brief not-so-hot mess (the very opposite, in fact) of a desert home for you to "ooh" and "ahh" over. 

Hopefully you've all heard of Frank Lloyd Wright. If not, google him right now and then return back to keep reading like "um, who hasn't? Of course I know ol' Frank." Well, two of his popular homes, Taliesin and Taliesin West gained a hip new sidekick (if you will) in 2009. 

A group of students at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture got to take part in what I'm sure made every other graduating class extremely jealous. They took part in building a modular, prefabricated passive home as a showcase of how to live simply and "off the grid." 

Passive homes, net-zero homes, LEED-certified homes--all are part of a growing trend in the architecture and design industry that puts focus on having a small carbon footprint, that is, using as little energy as possible. 

This is Taliesin Mod.Fab. 

My husband and I came across it in a book he pulled off the shelf of his architecture library at work. In an effort to become more familiar with the passive home design process (for our future home), this house provided a ton of great examples. It is, after all, a showcase home. I can't believe it was built 5 years ago. But then again, it takes trends a while to trickle down to the ol' set-in-our-ways South.

You can read more about it and see more photos of it here. It's currently open for daily tours.

Many houses like this one have very low energy bills, and in some cases, get money back from the power company at the end of the month. Even now that we live in a more energy-efficient home than our 1920s drafty cottage (where our energy bills were outrageous), I still can't imagine the freedom that must come from creating your own energy from the earth in ways that doesn't deplete it's resources. 

Why aren't we all doing this?!?

As residents of the South, wouldn't you love to come home to a naturally cooled and humidity-free home? My hair would sure like it! Until, of course, I went back outside. Then it's a different story. 

See ya back here next week (hopefully more awake)!