Living Large In Our Little House

Today is World Turtle Day, so I think it’s fit­ting that we were able to save a box tur­tle yesterday.

Dale called me yes­ter­day morn­ing and said, “I have a box tur­tle in a box.”

Ok, I’ll bite. “Why would you have a box tur­tle in a box?”

“He was in our bath­room, and I’m going to bring him home and let him go.”

“In your bath­room at work? That’s weird,” I said.

“Better than the skunk they found in there a few years ago,” he replied.

It was a fine idea to bring the tur­tle here, con­sid­er­ing that there are busy roads all around his job and not only that, he works with some really imma­ture and evi­dently cruel people.

Some of the other men at his work tossed a huge snap­ping tur­tle around a cou­ple of years ago until it died.

When I told a friend about this, she said, “Grown men?” Yes. Sadly.

Continue Reading »

Photograph by Kevin Pieper for Mother Earth News

If you’ve been fol­low­ing the blog for a while, you’ll rec­og­nize the dog in the above pic­ture as our Sweet Sade Sue.

Living Large in our Little House has got­ten a fair amount of press over the years in pub­li­ca­tions such as Mother Earth News, US News, MSN Real Estate and Kiplinger.

Anytime a pho­tog­ra­pher has vis­ited for one of these sto­ries, Sweet Sade Sue has always been right there, ready to get in the pic­ture, just like she knows what is happening.

She is pretty pho­to­genic and, unlike our Emma was, she is not afraid of the camera.

I was talk­ing with a friend a few weeks ago and she sug­gested that one of our 6-pack should be our offi­cial mas­cot. Since Sweet Sade Sue is already semi-famous, I thought that to be a great idea.

Sade is also a pit bull, but we like to call her a pit­tie or a pib­ble, because like many dogs of this breed that are mis-characterized and demo­nized, she would have no idea what to do in a pit and would want no part of it anyway.

She’s a lover and just really is a 50 pound lap dog. Anyone who has vis­ited Our Little House with no impres­sions of pit­ties or the impres­sions they've got­ten from the media leaves here with a whole new view of these love bugs and typ­i­cally, they want to take her home.

Now that her past in another home is way behind her and she’s for­got­ten that she was dumped on the side of the road, she is a very fun lov­ing girl and has some very def­i­nite ideas about what Living Large is all about.

So, today, on our Facebook page, we’ve posted a meme with Sweet Sade Sue’s pic­ture and her first idea about Living Large. She tells me she would like to post a cou­ple of times a week.

We hope you’ll join us there, enjoy Sade’s posts and share them with your friends.

Do you have pre­con­ceived ideas about pit bulls, if so, do pos­i­tive sto­ries help change your perception?  

I know many of our Living Large com­mu­nity are pet lovers.

Since 2007, when ingre­di­ents traced back to China began mak­ing pets in the U.S. sick and killing some, I’ve been doing the same thing for our pets as I have for our own food: Reading labels.

If we didn’t have a 6-pack of res­cued dogs, I would def­i­nitely make our own pet food, but that is nearly impos­si­ble both finan­cially and logis­ti­cally with so many ani­mals in the household.

I do read labels on our com­mer­cial dog food, try­ing to keep it grain free and organic, with com­pa­nies I know source their ingre­di­ents in the U.S.

As for treats, I haven’t bought com­mer­cial dog treats for at least two years, when sto­ries started sur­fac­ing about those mak­ing ani­mals sick.

Stories such as this one from NBC that reports as many as 500 pets have died from jerky treats made in China, scare the day­lights out of me.

Continue Reading »

I would like to thank every­one for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the give­away for "The Organized Kitchen!" Nanci Bliss-Kelley, please con­tact me at ozark​moun​tains​.com with your snail mail address, you're our lucky win­ner! Congratulations!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A Rabbit with the Deer

OK, the secret is out. It really doesn’t take much to enter­tain us.

We haven’t bought each other “big” Christmas gifts for a long time. There was a time in our lives when we would spend hun­dreds of dol­lars on each other on gifts.

One Christmas dur­ing my cor­po­rate years, Dale gave me $500 worth of gift cards. I did have a really good time with them shop­ping the sales after Christmas, but we just don’t need “stuff” anymore.

Since mov­ing to Our Little House, dur­ing the hol­i­days we could afford it, we decided to spend only mod­er­ately and get some­thing we both could enjoy.

We do love watch­ing tele­vi­sion series and movies on DVD, so last year, it was a small (because who needs a big screen in a lit­tle house?) flat screen.

The only two things I really wanted is a 4-wheeler to go up and get the mail and a wild life cam.

Since we didn’t win the lot­tery, the wildlife cam won.

Continue Reading »