I love driving around and looking at houses.  Sometimes I’ll put my kids in the car with their breakfast, drive-thru coffee for me and then drive around sipping coffee, looking at houses for as long as they’ll tolerate it. 🙂  I get more ideas and inspiration by driving around than I do from Pinterest or magazines.  The eyes need real!  For example, how cool are these wrapped trees we saw in some one’s side yard?  After experiencing The Blue Trees, we will be doing something similar to a tree in our backyard.

My phone is full of pictures like this, I’ve kinda become shameless when it comes to taking pictures now that I have this blog.  Lately, the best idea I’ve seen while driving around is a new (to me) treatment on brick.  Here is a new construction home in my neighborhood with the brick treatment that caught my eye, LOVE it:

After trying to figure out on my own what this is called, I finally just called the builder.  David of Horace Homes was very kind to answer all of my questions about his lovely home.  He said they called it a Slurry, basically it’s colored mortar troweled over brick.  Here’s a close-up:

So pretty!  If I were building a home, the exterior would be Slurried Brick, no doubt about it.  I love how soft and vintage it looks.  It’s smooth but you can still see the brick pattern underneath.  The best part is it’s not painted, the color is the mortar.  I even asked David what color the brick was underneath, he said it’s the same as the brick on the drive-way:

How and wow!  How is that ↑ under this ↓?  Beautiful and gorgeous job, tell it to your neighbor!!!

Here’s another beautiful home I found while driving around with a similar or same slurried brick treatment:

From what I’ve gathered Slurried Brick could also be called Mortar Washed or Sacked.  David said it costs about about 30% more than your regular brick and mortar.  I love it.  It’s unique, it’s understated and it’s beautiful.