Living Large In Our Little House

I'm ready for scenes like this one again

and leav­ing scenes like this to memory

Today, the weather came in like a lamb. Let’s hope it stays and ush­ers March out the same way.

The weather hasn’t really been coop­er­a­tive, but it is March 1 and around here, that is sup­pose to mean that spring is just a few short weeks away. Many peo­ple start plant­ing here by April 1.

I’m going to be using half of my friend and neighbor’s gar­den this year to plant some toma­toes and other veg­gies. However, I will have to get with them to see exactly when they plan to start plant­ing. Our soil here on the side of the moun­tain is not good for plant­ing and our friends at the top of the moun­tain offered part of their huge gar­den area.

I do know I’m ready to look toward spring and our to-do list that will take us out of the house.

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“Are you ner­vous about next week­end?” My friend, Rae, from the present asked me about my impend­ing slum­ber party with two friends from my past.

I shrugged. “No,” I won­dered, should I be?

“I have known Shelly (left in the photo) since Kindergarten and Lora since junior high, why would I be nervous?”

“Well, 27 years is a long time,” she said. “You don’t really know them anymore.”

I thought about her ques­tion all week.

Was I liv­ing in a time warp, hop­ing that when I met these two peo­ple again in my dri­ve­way that things would be as if we had parted for a shorter period of time than nearly 3 decades?

Yes, 27 years was a long time and in some respects, it does feel like the life­time ago that it was. Still, I couldn’t make myself feel ner­vous. Continue Reading »

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?

A pho­tog­ra­pher came to shoot our house on Friday, as a photo spread of our spread is going to accom­pany a story I wrote on The Little House for a mag­a­zine and we talked about how to present the pho­tos so it isn’t con­fus­ing to the read­ers which build­ing is which.

There are so many build­ings here, I think it can be a lit­tle con­fus­ing to those just try­ing to pic­ture it, as The Little House looks a lot like The Belle Writer’s Studio and the two metal build­ings also look the same.

My hus­band likes to tell peo­ple, “We don’t have the biggest, but we have the most!” I’ve dubbed the drive down the wind­ing dri­ve­way, “Campbell Town,” and have even thought of get­ting some of those old time signs to label the build­ings to add a lit­tle fun and fla­vor to the place.

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