Living Large In Our Little House

We found we have more in com­mon than our ancestry

Last week­end, we had guests at The Little House and it was awesome.

Mike’s mother, my Aunt Grace, was my mother’s best friend. His par­ents were also my Godparents, an honor in the Lutheran Church that is more than just symbolic.

We lived on the same block of post WWII bun­ga­lows and our dads worked for the same rail­road. While the neigh­bor­hood was gen­er­ally tight-knit, our fam­i­lies were even more so, vaca­tion­ing and cel­e­brat­ing mile­stones with each other.

I even learned this week­end that our fathers hand-dug the base­ment together that cre­ated the addi­tion to their lit­tle house.

After my mater­nal grand­mother died when I was a baby, Mike’s Grandma Quinn became my grandma too. And there were the cof­fee klatches, Mom and Aunt Grace could sit smok­ing cig­a­rettes, drink­ing cof­fee and talk­ing all day (Mom often recounted this is where they learned President Kennedy was shot).

Mike is four years older than me and we were both mid-life babies. Truth be known, his birth was prob­a­bly the inspi­ra­tion my mother needed to have another child when her older three chil­dren were almost raised.

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I will be on the radio today, talk­ing green with "The King." You can catch it at 12:30 CST on KCXL 1140AM/1160AM KCTO in Kansas City or you can catch it on the web.

I'm really excited today to present a guest post by one of our loyal read­ers, Alexandra Grabbe, an innkeeper of Chez Sven, a green B&B on Cape Cod. If you have ever had the desire to visit the Cape and can do so in April, Alexandra is offer­ing 10% off the room rate for Living Large read­ers. Just men­tion us when you make your reservations!

Chez Sven B&B

I’m thrilled to address the read­ers of Living Large in Our Little House, one of my favorite blogs.  My house is not as small as Dale and Kerri’s, but it isn’t big either, and I’m proud of that fact.

My hus­band Sven and I live in a tra­di­tional three-quarters Cape, in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, an old house that once belonged to my par­ents. We actu­ally have too much space for my taste.   I wanted to keep this mar­velous house in the fam­ily, so five years ago I started a green bed & break­fast called Chez Sven.

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Before I get to this morning’s post, I wanted to show you pho­tos of the real snow we got yes­ter­day. The Christmas Eve dust­ing was noth­ing com­pared to this snow, which mea­sured 4 inches and it is still snow­ing this morn­ing. This would be a good day for Dale to be retired and not have to brave the roads to work.

Now for today’s post…

We enter­tained in The Little House on New Year’s Eve, not because I really wanted to, but our neigh­bors have us down to their house quite often and my mom taught me it was nice to rec­i­p­ro­cate. Besides, Rae, our friend and neigh­bor told me it was time. “We’re com­ing down to your house next time we’re down,” she said. They still live in the city and are down at least twice a month.

I sug­gested they come down for din­ner on New Year’s Eve, but I also reminded her there’s a lot more room at their house.

“You know we don’t care about that,” she said. I know they don’t mind the small space, but at our house, it’s a bit tight and I think every­one must feel as if they’re in an air­plane seat when they’re try­ing to eat. Our small drop leaf kitchen table is just 21 inches wide with­out the leaves and 42 inches long. As well, it’s pretty hard to cook when there’s extra peo­ple in the house. Cooking in front of oth­ers makes me a bit ner­vous, even when I have plenty of space.

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