TinyFest Midwest was this past weekend in Colfax, IA and it was soooo much fun!! Even though it ended up being a hundred degrees the whole weekend, which totally sucked at an outdoor event at the end of September, it didn't take away from the fun and excitement of the event itself...
Read MoreTinyFest Midwest starts tomorrow!! Come join us in Colefax, IA for all the fun. I speak on Sunday, September 24 at 1pm if you want to come see me. :)
Read MoreFeeling a little famous these days. :) For the first two years in Lil Blue, we were interviewed only a couple of times by some local magazines and featured a number of times on tiny house-related Instagram accounts...
Read MoreUnless you are a hardcore follower of the Tiny House Movement, you probably have no idea that it all began in Iowa (!) in the 1990s. Jay Shafer is the pioneer of this movement and he built his first tiny house in Iowa City, Iowa. And now...the movement is coming back to the area this fall! I am so excited to share that this September, Iowa will be holding a tiny house festival called TinyFest Midwest. And Jay Shafer will be a speaker there! I can't wait to hear him and maybe even meet him...
Read MoreAfter two years of living in a tiny house, we have had plenty of Tiny House Fails. Our composting toilet breaking and leaking was a big one, water freezing in our drain pipe during the winter, mold and too much condensation in the cold months, and bug problems on the farm are only the ones I've written about on this blog. The list goes on: cracking our hips on the ceiling as we try to make the bed, hitting our backs or butts on the shelf as we go up our ladder, somehow still managing to lose gloves and other important items even though we only have 160 square feet to look for something!
Read MoreIf you've visited this blog in the past few weeks, you might have noticed that I created a new page titled TIny House Tour. I finally had professional photos taken of our tiny house and posted them so you all could see the glory that is Lil Blue! Most of the photos I've taken on my phone don't do it justice. It's hard to take a good picture in such a small space without a good lens. I haven't posted many photos of our bathroom because it's the hardest area to try and photograph, but now you can all enjoy a full tour of the entire (tiny) space!
Read MoreToday is April 11 which means that it has officially been two years since we moved our tiny house onto the farm!! We made it! Two years was always our minimum goal to reach and we are so happy to celebrate this milestone today.
Read MoreI've been putting off writing this post...avoiding it really. I haven't wanted to write it and put it out there because it would make it real.
Read MoreA nasty virus has been going through my school and I've been knocked down by it for over a week. I had hoped to get out two posts this week, this one and my final "changes" post that I've been teasing you with. That one will have to wait until next week. I just haven't had the energy to write it yet. Hopefully I'm on my way to healing and getting back on my feet!
Read MoreFor the last half of 2016, Jordan and I worked on the tiny house to make adjustments and improvements to help us have a better, happier winter season. This year we enjoyed the most drawn-out, warm, beautiful fall ever. We delighted in keeping our windows open til late in the season, being outside more often longer in the year, and having Lil Blue continue to crawl with bugs....oh wait. We hated that last part. Living on a farm and in a tiny space means that we share our 160 square feet with lots and lots of bugs! Spiders, mosquitoes, flies, Lady Asian Beetles, and unidentifiable insects crawl along our ceiling (which slopes to inches above our faces at night), form webs over all of our windows and alongside our house, and form little pulsing hives to thrive during the winter in our shed.
Read MoreIn the last half of 2016, I decided I wanted to finally pick a path for myself. It has plagued me throughout my early adulthood that I have not been able to figure out what I want to do with my life. I am interested in many different things but that always seemed to cloud my vision rather than set me up for making a decision. I'm good at many things but don't feel like I excel in any one area--again, not helping me pick a path. But I was not happy in my job and was tired of feeling like I was floundering, so I did some soul-searching and finally felt ready to make a decision.
Read MoreThis time of year I get especially excited because Jordan's and my wedding anniversary is right around the corner (September 17). I have more fun with anniversaries than I do for just about any other gift-giving time and that is because I love celebrating with the traditional themes! Having a theme laid out each year gives us a challenge to be creative! It makes us think outside the box and have fun coming up with ideas that the other will love that we may not have thought of initially.
Read MoreWe have had some amazing thunderstorms this week in Iowa. It has been beautiful! Last summer, as we were just getting settled into Lil Blue, we seemed to have much more extreme weather. We had severe thunderstorms, tornado watches and warnings, rain and high winds all the time. That, as well as high heat and humidity---and no air conditioner! It was not fun. This year, the storms seem much more mellow, which is nice because then we aren't worried about blowing away! And we still get to enjoy the beauty of them. For this week's Friday Inspiration, I just want to show you some pictures of the beauty we've seen on the farm in these storms. We even had the most remarkable double rainbow!
Read Morejust finished a project I've been wanting to do for a long time and it wasn't hard at all! Originally, we painted a chalkboard on our bathroom sliding door when we moved in to Lil Blue. I loved the idea of having a chalkboard. I wanted to write out our weekly meal plan on it, or write notes and grocery lists, or just have fun with drawings and designs. But shortly after we moved in we realized we had no other spot in the whole house to hang our mirror other than on that door....covering up the chalkboard.
Read MoreI've got some shit to talk about. Literally.
In all my research for tiny houses, it looks like the majority of dwellers use some kind of a composting toilet. Which makes sense because then you don't need to worry about plumbing, having extra water, and hooking into some kind of sewer or septic tank. If you Google "composting toilet", you will see loads of different options for composting toilets. Ones that reduce mess or possible smell by using multiple compartments or turn cranks; ones that require electricity so it can heat up waste and condense it; and varying sizes including huge (and I mean giant!) thrones. These all range in price but can be up to over a thousand dollars!
Read MoreIt's already Friday again! This has been a busy week leading up to an even busier next week! We had a bit of an emergency bathroom situation today in Lil Blue. It will create a project for us to work on this weekend--you can look for that post next week. But for today's Friday Inspiration I thought I would share both a funny thing and a beautiful thing.
Read MoreI think every Friday should have an inspiration post. Whether it's funny or beautiful, it's always nice to start the weekend off with something inspirational.
Today I had a friend visit me at Lil Blue. The past three days we've been under a heat advisory. Yesterday, with the heat index, it got up to 115 degrees! Today, my friend and I sat in the coolness of my home (thanks to our small AC window unit!) and chatted together while being entertained by Foxy Brown. Then we headed out into the scorching Iowa heat and humidity so she could see and pet the farm animals.
Read MoreI have posted quite a few pictures on this blog of the exterior of our tiny house but have posted hardly any of the inside (other than my messy house post). I've had a lot of people ask to see the interior and are really curious about it. I've put it off for a year because I kept telling myself I was going to take better pictures. I figure I may as well stop procrastinating. Some things have changed since these photos were taken but it's better to give you all an idea of what it looks like in general and then give updates as we change things.
So here it is, finally, a tiny house tour of Lil Blue...
Read MoreIt's official. We have been living tiny for over ONE YEAR!!!!!! I can't believe we are already at that mark. In some ways it seems like our journey from how it all began til now started forever ago. And in other ways it feels like it JUST happened. We have now experienced every season in this house and on the farm, making us officially out of the transition period now that we have a better idea of what to expect throughout the year.
Read MoreWell, I have really dropped-the-ball lately on blogging. Not that I was that consistent before but now I haven't written anything in six weeks. We've had a crazy couple of months and my mind just hasn't been on writing.
April kept us busy with our awesome vacation to New York and Washington DC. Things with work amped-up for both of us and the rest of the month flew by! I was especially preoccupied with recreating the look of the farm's booth for the farmers' market.
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