Pine Top Holiday Decorations
Back at the first of December I invited you to share your photos of decorating your tiny house for the holidays. Today I will share six different posts that were sent to me. I hope you enjoy them as much as I am. I also want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!
Travis & Becky from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. See our previous post on Pine Top Homestead here.
Well we did a few things to our homestead, including adding a shop building for me to our place and added a raised area for parking for a future carport area. We continue to build as we go. I’ve taken some time to decorate for our first holiday season in the new place. I added some lighting to the front of the house and added two holiday solar lights to our carved bears of our entrance. Yes, I carved those.
Actually, that’s what I do for a living. I’m a full time chainsaw carving artist and do carvings of all sizes. Like tiny houses I love doing tiny bears that make perfect gifts as well. I attached a sample photo of one that is a black bear I do that can decorate any tiny home. He is only 12″ tall and 8″ wide. I will soon have a page folks can visit to see my work. I do every carving one at a time and each one is different making it a true piece of rustic art.
Becky and I love our homestead here in the Ozarks. We wish you and yours a very happy holiday season.
Decorating your Tiny House for the Holidays
It is that time of year when most everyone gets involved in making their home festive for the holidays. I would like to see what you do to make your tiny house festive and share it here on the Tiny House Blog.
Here is what I would like you to do. Take photos of your decorated tiny home, interior, exterior, or both and send them to me at tinyhouseblog [AT] gmail.com. Also include a short paragraph explaining what you did to your home. I will then pull together a post showing off everyone’s home and share it with you on the the Tiny House Blog.
Please have all photos and descriptions to me by December 20. Thank you for your participation.
“TINY”: A (short) Documentary about Living Small
Guest Post by Merete Mueller, co-director and producer of the film.
“TINY: A Story About Living Small” is a short documentary about Christopher Smith’s process of building a tiny house from scratch with no building experience in the mountains of Colorado. The film also follows the lives of other families around the country who have downsized their lives to less than 400 square feet.
The project began back in February, when Christopher, also co-director, impulsively bought a plot of land with the dream of building a small cabin from scratch, himself. That cabin turned into a tiny house on wheels when he learned that building codes in Park County, Colorado would require him to build a house of at least 600-square feet. He realized that a house on wheels would allow him to bypass these laws, and the more that he learned about tiny houses, the more he liked the idea of minimally impacting the land he had bought by simply parking his small home on it, instead of digging a foundation into the ground.
Christopher, who has a background in filmmaking, happened to be looking for a film project at the time and I (Merete—the other half of the “TINY” team) nudged him to begin filming his building process. I remember seeing his excitement about establishing a home for himself—on his own terms and of his own design in a landscape that he
loves, and realized that his story of would be a great way to tell the larger story of the tiny house movement, profiling others who feel that living smaller allows them to have more satisfying, comfortable lives.
Nine months later, the exterior of the house is complete and the interior is well underway (the project has taken much longer than we expected, but we think it’s reasonable to say that it will be complete by January of 2012). In addition to building, we’ve also travelled around the country interviewing other tiny house owners, like this visit with Daniel Aragon in Telluride, below:
We’re interested in the ways that downsizing allows people to live more sustainable lives—both environmentally and financially. But most of all, we’re interested in exploring the idea of “home”—how we find and create the places where we feel most comfortable and at-ease.
After all, Christopher’s process of constructing his own tiny house is as much about building a life that feels right, as it as about the house that will contain it.
The filmmakers behind “TINY: A Story About Living Small” visit Derek Diedricksen, the micro-architect and author who has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Readymade and MAKE Magazine.
If you would like to share your own experience of living small with us, or know of a tiny house that we should profile, please email us [email protected] and let us know!
TINY on Kickstarter
Right now until December 15, we’re running a fundraising campaign for the film on
Kickstarter.com.
You can visit our project on Kickstarter and choose from a variety of rewards—including an invite to the online premier of the film, a signed DVD, access to special “Behind the Scenes” footage, even a weekend in the tiny house—in exchange for backing our project. All of the money that we raise will go towards post-production costs of the film editing, recording the original score, sound editing, and sending the film to a finishing house.
Please visit Kickstarter now and help us make us bring the experience of living small to as many people as possible!
What’s One Word?
Yesterday for fun on the Tiny House Blog Facebook Fan Page I decided to ask a simple question to see what kind of responses you, my readers would share with me. Here is the question: “What’s one word that describes a tiny house?”
When I pulled this post together last night there were 148 responses. There were a few duplicates so they were removed. It was so much fun to read them and I wanted all of you to have a chance to see them and to add your answer below if you choose.
Here are the answers:
- Cozy
- Smart
- Precious
- Efficient
- Love
- Plenty
- Simple
- Claustrophobic
- Dwell
- J/K
- Zen
- Home
- Revolutionary
- Um…tiny?
- Easy does it!
- Harmony
- Compact
- Organized
- Sufficient…Cozy…Enough…Bliss
- Comfortable
- Cute
- Freedom
- Kindness
- Sustainable
- Sweet
- Gemütlich
- Perfect
- Affordable
- Bijou
- *tiny* (with sparkles)
- DEBT FREE
- Home
- Snug
- Possible!
- Intimate
- yeah
- just right… charming
- Liberating
- Micro~cosmic man!
- Tiny
- Snugly
- Smart
- Innovative
- Uncomplicated
- Homey!
- Freeing
- Peace
- Responsible
- “Compact?” “Efficient?” In the end, “enough”…
- Serenity
- Enough
- Simplicity
- Functional
- Delightful
- Safe
- Oomblegok
- Awesome!!!
- Unshackled
- WANT!
- Life
- Independence
- Practical
- Enough
- Heaven
- Large! Wait…what?
- Adorable
- Sweet
- Soothing
- Spacious
- Supplementary
- Plenary!
- Plenty
- Absolute
- Efficiency
- Comfy
- Casita
- Complete
- Bliss
- Doable
- Special
- Footprint
- Cozzzzy
- Modest
- Grand!
- RV
- FUN!
- Home
- Inspiring
- Green!
- Amazing
- Love
- Enveloping
- Escape
- Sanctuary
- Innovative
- Shed
- Shelterrific!
- Magical
Tiny Houses of the Historic Northwest
Zol Fox emailed me an interesting article showing some of the logging history of the Northwest and included in the email a couple of pictures of tiny houses built from hollowed out logs.
The size of the trees that were taken down in the Northwest 150 years ago is something impressive. We are not likely to see anything like this in this area ever again. Below I’ve shared a few of those photographs.
A hollowed out log became a mobile office.
Hollowed out logs were used to house and feed the crews.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this shared piece of our history.
CJ just sent me some photos he took at St. Augustine, Florida, he says: These were taken with ipod, so quality is not the greatest but they fit nicely with your post today.
2011 Solar Decathlon
by Mike Love
The 2011 Solar Decathlon in Washington D.C .was very well attended the day I visited, with a significant number of teenage groups from schools not in the Washington D.C. region. I spoke with a group from Richmond, VA and another from Roanoke, VA. The weather though overcast with passing showers did not dim people’s attitudes about the event. I was surprised by the engagement the school groups showed in asking detailed questions of the competitors in various houses… such as their reasons for competing, design philosophies etc.
Photo Credits Mike Love
The competitor’s I spoke to were extremely well prepared, either answering my questions directly, or steering me to an individual who could better address my question. I found many of the students were pursuing Engineering and Science disciplines in college in addition to the expected Architecture graduate and post grad students. Most groups had their houses set up to direct traffic along a defined path to encourage traffic flow, so the long lines kept waiting in line to a tolerable 5 minutes on average. Continue Reading »
Tiny Houses on the Prairie
“Oh Snap! Homesteader Postcards, the Facebook of 1906″ an article written by Heather Murphy at the Slate website features some really unique tiny homes built by homesteaders out on the prairies.
The images in this gallery were gathered over a period of 20 years by snapshot collector Michael Williams. They are featured in his book, Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America and at The Life and Death of Buildings, an exhibition currently on display at the Princeton University Art Museum.
Williams who spent over 15 years gathering these pictures at flea markets, antiques stores, and postcard fairs. The images were taken in South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana. Improvements were required by the homesteaders and those improvements were made using, tar paper, sod, bricks and wood. It just had to be sturdy enough to stand.
Click here to read the full article and see the slide show showing closeups and explanations of each postcard.
