Living Large In Our Little House

Here are the Living Large Links for this week!

When some peo­ple see a bal­loon release, they see happy col­ors float­ing through the air. The rest of us see a poten­tial dan­ger to wildlife.

Small houses are catch­ing on in Bangkok.

Our national parks are truly trea­sures, but it seems to me that vis­it­ing one with 4 mil­lion other peo­ple defeats the purpose.

Learn to live in 80-square-feet.

Blogger goes with Meatless Mondays, says sav­ing on meat helps off­set cost of buy­ing organic.

Another Tiny House suc­cess story.

How to choose win­dows for your tiny house.

This is the time of the win­ter that it really starts to get to me. We’re far enough out of the  hol­i­days and still eons from the begin­ning of spring that I start get­ting the win­ter blues, cabin fever or what­ever you want to call it.

I was speak­ing to one of our Living Large com­mu­nity the other day, inter­view­ing her for an arti­cle on liv­ing in a small space and I asked her if the win­ter wears on her too and she gave me an unequiv­o­cal “Yes,” as she began talk­ing about spring and her plans for her garden.

This win­ter has seemed worse for some rea­son, we haven’t had the deep snows most parts of the coun­try have expe­ri­enced, but it does seem like it has been cloudy and dreary more and that makes the short days of light seem even shorter.

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The results of a study released last week that showed preg­nant women in the U.S. have high lev­els of dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals in their bod­ies is no sur­prise to those of us who have been read­ing and study­ing the effects of envi­ron­men­tal chemicals.

What was sur­pris­ing is that some of these chem­i­cals, includ­ing harm­ful pes­ti­cides and flame retar­dant chem­i­cals were banned even before some of these women were born. It also is an “in your face” wake up call to the rest of us.

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Here are Living Large Links for this week. Living Large isn’t just about liv­ing in a small home, but liv­ing among nature, with our pets and liv­ing a more sus­tain­able life – so here are some links I think our com­mu­nity might enjoy:

A taser espe­cially designed for wildlife. Maybe it’s just me, but I would think you wouldn’t want to be close enough to a wild bear or moun­tain lion to taze it.

The New Normal: An Agenda for Responsible Living, a new book on sus­tain­able living.

It looks as if Rowdy Kitten’s Tammy Strobel and her hus­band, Logan, are tak­ing the plunge and build­ing a tiny home. Congratulations!

Cool nature pho­tog­ra­phy: An ele­phant on alert in Kenya

…And more of a hum­ming­bird

Choosing col­ors for small homes

Another good rea­son to love Ben & Jerry’s. They con­vert waste from mak­ing their ice cream to energy at their Netherlands plant.

Today’s first time home buy­ers are back to start­ing with small “starter homes.”

One woman’s small house story.

The ben­e­fits of going veg­e­tar­ian