Living Large In Our Little House

Oil to Electric Converted Lamp

I love dec­o­rat­ing with light­ing. I think choos­ing the light­ing when we built The Little House was more fun than any other part of the build­ing process.

When we picked the free­stand­ing lamps for The Little House, of course, there was lim­ited space, so we only put one larger free­stand­ing lamp – one with a bear – and a smaller one with bears that I found at a log cabin expo.

Since The Little House was already com­pletely fur­nished when we moved here full time, I could only choose one more lamp to place in the bed­room and I chose this unique oil-converted-to-electric lamp that belonged to my mom.

The lamp was one of her antique sale finds, the kind that would take my mom and dad and me to small rural towns sur­round­ing the Kansas City area. On Sundays, my par­ents would get up early and scan the morn­ing paper for sales and auc­tions and off we would go. More often than not, Mom would come up with some find to bring home and restore.

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There are days when head­ing to the mail­box is just a drag. Bills and more clut­ter fill the space. Then there are days when the mail­box is full of won­der­ful sur­prises: Checks owed to me, and almost as excit­ing is one of two cat­a­logues I love, or one of two magazines.

I really hit the jack­pot if a check is in with one or two of my favorite pub­li­ca­tions! Living smaller is about choos­ing only to keep the things you love. For the sake of the envi­ron­ment, I’m also a big advo­cate of fewer cat­a­logues, that’s why I main­tain a free account at cat­a­logue choices, a web­site that allows you to reg­is­ter cat­a­logues you don’t want and con­tact the com­pa­nies for you to have them stopped. I’ve reg­is­tered to halt all but two of my favorites: North Style and Black Forest Décor. As well, I’ve stopped all of my mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tions with the excep­tion of Country Living Magazine and Mother Earth News.

Now, we all know I don’t need any­more stuff, but a girl can still look!

North Style was once a 50/50 mix­ture of clothes and home décor (and I bought plenty over the years), but has a big­ger selec­tion now of cloth­ing. I love black bears. I have them on my shirts, my jack­ets and my paja­mas. We have black bear lamps, sheets, the lit­tle guy hold­ing the sign in the photo and din­ner­ware, and most of it came from North Style. My mom gave us many of the things we have dec­o­rat­ing The Little House. After we built it, com­ing up with a Christmas list of ideas for her was no problem!

North Style is where I’ve bought most of my “Life is Good” cloth­ing and hats. I also have a tiny log cabin charm neck­lace that I love, which reminds me of The Little House. I wear it a lot when I’m away from home.

I miss brows­ing the home décor there – and there are a cou­ple of things they still carry that I hope to one day buy and fig­ure out where to place — but that’s why I’ve kept the Black Forest Décor cat­a­logue. This is my “ulti­mate dream” cat­a­logue, as most of the items in there are too expen­sive to even allow in reg­u­lar dreams. J

If I don’t have a “Dream Book,” as my mother always called cat­a­logues, there’s noth­ing bet­ter than hav­ing a cur­rent copy of Country Living Magazine or Mother Earth News.
Country Living Magazine is a fam­ily tra­di­tion. My mom started tak­ing it when it first came out in the 1970s and used the pho­tos and tips to first dec­o­rate our lit­tle green bun­ga­low and then the 1920s brick Tudor they pur­chased and restored when I was a teen. I’ve taken Country Living ever since I got my first apart­ment. Receiving a copy of it is like vis­it­ing an old friend each month. I love sit­ting on the party deck on a warm sunny Saturday after­noon and savor­ing each page.

Mother Earth News has been around for a while and when we built The Little House, I began sub­scrib­ing to it, and what a great mag­a­zine! Full of advice for home­stead­ers who live in the coun­try or oth­ers who just wish they did, I haven’t received a copy yet, in which I didn’t find some great arti­cle with good tips.
My mag­a­zines and cat­a­logues give me some­thing to look for­ward to when peer­ing into our big, rural mail­box and any day I find one of them there, is a good day.

Today’s Question: My mag­a­zines get a new life as I donate them to the county nurs­ing home in hopes some­one else will enjoy them as much as I do. When I’ve looked at my cat­a­logues about a dozen times, they go to the recy­cling bin. Where do your mag­a­zines and cat­a­logues end up?