Living Large In Our Little House

On the 4^th of July, we went over to our neighbor’s house for the tra­di­tional bar-b-que and potato salad. They then sug­gested we go over to Bull Shoals Dam in their boat and watch the fire­works dis­play over the water.

I know, fire­works aren’t envi­ron­men­tally friendly, but see­ing them over the water was some­thing we had never expe­ri­enced. Part of the whole expe­ri­ence of mov­ing to Our Little House in a new area is to expe­ri­ence new adven­tures. Lack of jobs and money have pre­vented us from doing things for a few months and now we’re work­ing so hard, time is an issue.

The boat ride was pretty rough, bass boats don’t do well trav­el­ing at fast speeds on water­ways with a lot of traf­fic and once we reached the dam area, it looked like a float­ing city.

The fire­works, how­ever, were spec­tac­u­lar. Seeing them over the water really was an experience.

We made our way through the crowded rough waters back to our sparsely pop­u­lated side of the lake. The night was pitch black and Fred was still cruis­ing at a pretty good speed when I saw a shadow fly across the deck and hit my life jacket and land in my lap.

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You know the old adage that all it takes to get some rain is to wash your car? Well, here at Our Little House, it seems all we need to do to get some rain is to do laundry.

I had been putting off the chore each day this past week, as it would cloud up every time I began to throw the first load in. I hang most of our clothes out for sev­eral reasons:

• I don’t like shrink­ing, tight fit­ting clothes
• Not run­ning the dryer saves the environment
• It also saves money on electricity

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Mondays on Living Large in Our Little House will gen­er­ally be for tips in liv­ing in a small space. Heather sug­gested the other day that I pub­lish my husband’s fam­ily taco sauce recipe. We usu­ally use store bought canned toma­toes, but I will be mak­ing sev­eral batches from fresh toma­toes in the com­ing month to can. Since liv­ing smaller usu­ally means liv­ing sim­pler and more fru­gally, mak­ing your own sauce falls into the cat­e­gory of a small liv­ing tip.

Enjoy!
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Photo by Mary Nida Smith

One thing I love about Our Little House being so far out in the coun­try is the quiet.

I can sit in the morn­ing, as I have all this week, on the party deck or on the cov­ered front porch with the Fearsome Four, read­ing the news­pa­per and drink­ing cof­fee with noth­ing but the occa­sional buzz of the hum­ming­birds com­ing for a drink off of the feeder.

However, this sum­mer, there’s been an unnat­ural hum ring­ing through the moun­tains that the dogs have even noticed.

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