A family in Houston Texas has decided they want to move closer to their daughter's school, and have chosen to re-locate.

The untraditional family developed an essay contest with an entry fee to sell their house. 

They put together a website calling for entries and those that are interested submitt a $150 entry fee and an essay of 200 words or less.  The winning essay gets the house.  Within just a few hours of the website going live it crashed because of the amount of interest.

Picking a winner will be hard, but they will likely receive around 3000 applications by mid-June estimating a $450,000 value for a house that is appraised at just under $400,000.  Pretty gutsy move, but a sweet deal for the winner.  A nice 1056 square foot, 2 bedroom / 1 bathroom home with a  double car garage on a 5300 square foot lot for $150 and some creativity.  Maybe I should start selling houses using this method.

Have you ever wondered whether an expensive bottle of wine really tastes that much better than a cheap bottle?  It has been said that for the average person, drinking wine can an psychologically driven experience, influenced by labels, price point, bottle appearance and ever peers.

Take away all those factors and pour yourself a glass of wine, without knowing the price or looking at the bottle can you really tell the difference between and $85 bottle and a $8 dollar bottle.  Well a test was just recently conducted.  A group of about 20 people we gathered together in a room with 2 reds (Cabernet Sauvignon), and then 2 whites (Chardonnay). Testers recorded which wine they thought was the most expensive of the 2.  Here are the results:

THE REDS:  A Charles Shaw Blend Cabernet Sauvignon California, 2011 - about $8 and a Laurel Glen Cabernet Sauvignon, Sonoma Mountain, California, 2007 about $85. - Only about 38% of the testers correctly identified the more expensive wine and 62% preferred the cheaper variety.

THE WHITES: Glen Ellen Reserve Concanno, 2010 Chardonnay, California $8.00 and Cakebread Cellars Chardonnay, Napa Valley California  $65. - The verdict 60% of the tasters actually correctly identified the more expensive bottle but many comments suggested that there wasn't much difference between the 2.

So we have learned that wine drinking is a subjective art and don't judge a wine by it's price.  It has also been proven the most people will enjoy a bottle of wine much more when they are told it is expensive, even when compared to the exact same wine, but told that it's cheaper - go figure!!