Living Large In Our Little House

Last sum­mer, I finally broke down and got an e-reader, my Kindle.

I’m the type that loves books and the feel of them, but get­ting an e-reader seemed the per­fect choice for some­one who loves to read, who doesn’t have easy access to a good library and who has lim­ited space.

I sur­prised myself and found I love my Kindle.

I chose the Kindle 3G because it was rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive. I didn’t think I needed color as I really wasn’t think­ing of get­ting my mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tions on it and I really didn’t need any­thing with email.

How a year has changed my mind.

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Beer Butt Chicken doesn’t really sound too appe­tiz­ing, this is where you place a chicken over an open can of beer and cook, but I have been yearn­ing to try this for a long time.

I’m a big chicken fan at Our Little House, espe­cially roasted chicken.

You know how some­times peo­ple say a girl finds hus­bands who have sim­i­lar traits of their fathers?

Dale has more than one trait sim­i­lar to my dad’s and one is a mutual dis­like for chicken. We rarely had the bird at home when I was grow­ing up.

Dad grew up on a farm in Arkansas where his mother lit­er­ally rang the bird’s neck, defeath­ered and dressed them herself.

Somewhere along the line, Dad found he had an aver­sion to feath­ers – maybe grandma didn’t get them all plucked – and always said he could “taste” the feath­ers any­time he ate chicken.

This came from a man who, upon find­ing a hair in his food or hear­ing any child­ish talk of vomit, poop or even ani­mals, would slam his fork down and get up and leave the table.

For a tough guy, he was pretty squea­mish when it came to his food and this lim­ited table conversation.

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The Belle Writer's Studio solved our issues regard­ing work space and privacy

In case you missed it, Kent started a con­ver­sa­tion over on his Tiny House Blog last month about how to con­vince your spouse to live in a small space.

I didn’t have time to join in the dis­cus­sion, but wanted to make a few points about liv­ing small and mak­ing it work for two people.

For us, there was no “con­vinc­ing,” nei­ther of us actu­ally thought we would be stay­ing in a 480-square foot space and if we had known what we know now, I doubt either of us would have made the move.

Truthfully, I told my aunt a few months after we got here, “I can­not live in this small of a house!”

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JT, your name was drawn for the copy of The Muffin Tin Cookbook. Please email me at fivecoat@​ozarkmountains.​com with your snail mail address by Wednesday, April 11 to claim your book!

Iris in front of The Belle Writer's Studio

Breaking a life­time of habits isn’t always easy and this we have found true with break­ing the habit of using paper towels.

Our moth­ers came from the era of all of these won­der­ful inven­tions that would make life more con­ve­nient: Paper tow­els, microwav­able meals, dish­wash­ers, processed foods, dry­ers, dryer sheets, etc.

Of course, no one ever explained what impact these things would have on the envi­ron­ment, if not our health.

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