Living Large In Our Little House

Outside of The Belle Writer's Studio

I had a request from some­one new to Living Large to write more about the Belle Writer’s Studio, my 320 square foot-studio office that is about 10 yards away from Our Little House.

It’s named for my mother, Betty Belle, whom I credit for the cre­ative side of my brain.

When we built Our Little House, we planned on build­ing another larger house, about 1,000 square foot to be our pri­mary res­i­dence, and Our Little House was going to be my writer’s studio.

Best laid plans.

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Late last week, while sit­ting in the Belle Writer’s Studio toil­ing away, I received an email with the sub­ject: “Nate Berkus Show.”

Thinking it was prob­a­bly one of the many press releases I get on a daily basis, I almost deleted it, but decided to open it up. I was sur­prised to learn that some­one at the home design show had taken a look at Living Large after speak­ing with Kent over at The Tiny House Blog. They wanted to speak with me about pos­si­bly fea­tur­ing Our Little House on the show for Earth Day.

I dropped every­thing, of course, and called the assis­tant, because this is usu­ally what one does when Hollywood, or in this case, New York comes calling.

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Kevin Pieper's Book, "Connecting with Nature"

Dale and I both are on the mend. Thank good­ness for mod­ern day antibi­otics that help kick infec­tions a lit­tle too ornery for our immune sys­tems to han­dle on their own.  Thank you, dear Living Large com­mu­nity, for the well wishes.

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One of the rea­sons we moved to this beau­ti­ful par­adise was to enjoy the nat­ural beauty of the Ozark Mountains. Of course, we do that as often as we can, but when we can­not, we have the won­der­ful pho­tog­ra­phy of a famous Ozarks pho­tog­ra­pher, Tim Ernst to enjoy.

Now, how­ever, we also have a won­der­ful book of pho­tog­ra­phy by Kevin Pieper to enjoy as well. Kevin is the local pho­tog­ra­pher Mother Earth News hired to pho­to­graph Our Little House for the story I wrote for them last year.

On Saturday, we had to get out and do some errands, so we stopped by a book retailer where Kevin was host­ing a book sign­ing. Kevin is one of the pho­tog­ra­phers I highly admire and I only wish my nature pho­tog­ra­phy was as beau­ti­ful as his.

While his pho­tos use no words, like every good pho­tog­ra­pher I know, his pho­tos tell a story just the same.

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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.

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