The Stars Shine at Our Little House
Susan, you are the winner of the one-year subscription to Mother Earth News! Please email me at fivecoat@ozarkmountains.com with your full name and snail mail address by 5 p.m. CST on Monday, August 30! Congratulations and thank you, everyone, for a great first year at Living Large!
One of the first things I noticed when we moved to Our Little House was how many stars there are in the night sky here.
There’s just as many in the city of course, you just can’t see them.
I’m the type of star geek who, when I saw the movie, “Titanic,” didn’t think about how cold and terrifying it must be for the character, Rose, floating on a piece of wreckage in the middle of the Atlantic.
I was thinking about how many stars she must have been able to see in that kind of darkness in 1912 while she was lying on her back singing, “Come Josephine in my Flying Machine.”
Happy Anniversary to Living Large in our Little House
The winner of the book, "Green Interior Design," is Frugal Kiwi! Congratulations, Frugal. You have until 5 p.m. on Thursday, August 26 to email me your full name and snail mail address. fivecoat@ozarkmountains.com The publisher will ship the book when it is released in mid-October.
In some ways I cannot believe it has been exactly one year since I launched Living Large in Our Little House!
In other ways, it seems like a lifetime ago. Life is like that, I guess.
Missing My Emma
I'm taking the day off from posting, as I am devastated over losing one of the finest dogs I've ever known.
Emma went missing sometime early Thursday morning, having gone out to roam with Sade and Chloe before the hot sun came back out.
Emma hates the heat and there was a 100+ heat index yesterday. I knew something was wrong as soon as the sun appeared and Emma did not. We've searched by boat on the shore and tromped through the woods and have only turned up a lot of chigger and mosquito bites.
In our search, we discovered that my aunt's elderly dog collapsed on Sunday and they had to help him make his transition to the next life later that day. Another neighbor's — more than 2 miles away — elderly dog disappeared two days ago, the second time he has tried to wander off to pass from this life (the first time this spring, he was found and nursed back).
It's been a long, hot and hard summer. Emma rarely wanted out until after the sun went down. Last weekend, our friend Mike, pointed out how hard it was for Emma to get around. It was true, at 11, she moved slower and her coat was no longer the shiny, healthy coat as evidenced in this picture taken nearly three years ago during our first full winter here. We were advised by our vet just on Tuesday to have two suspicious lumps removed from Emma's chest and leg.
I wrote on my K9 Cuisine blog how Emma once saved my life. I only wish I could have kept her with me forever.
Emma was my mother's favorite "Granddog" and if she is gone from our lives, she is now back with her Grammy, giving her a lot of nudges and in return, she is getting a lot of pets.
The Cookie Sheet Cabinet
When we recently visited some of our friends in Kansas City, they proudly showed off their newly remodeled kitchen. One of the first things she pointed out was her cookie sheet cabinet.
I took a new appreciation for the fact that I was at least smart enough to install one of these in Our Little House.
I don’t care how you plan, there’s always something you forget in a construction project. Our friends down the road even forgot to design a linen closet into their home although he is a builder and they’ve flipped several houses in their lives.





