Tiny House Blog

Here are three photos of my tiny house during Christmas. To make my house festive on the outside, I installed a string of LED lights along the roofline. It created an amazing “glow” effect and gave off enough light to make up for the fact that there is no exterior lighting anywhere near where the house sits.

As for inside, I wanted the perfect tiny tree. I bought a beautiful 14 ft. noble fir and lopped off the top 2 ft. With the bottom part of the tree, I lopped off all the branches and made a 10 in. wreath for the front door, and used the rest of the boughs for a greenery display that rested on the tongue of the trailer.

My name is Kerri Tuttle – I’m a scientist and writer. My husband, Geoff, and I live in a 700-square-foot house in Joshua Tree, California, known as “Casa Wabi Sabi” (I run a company by the same name: www.etsy.com/shop/casawabisabi) .

Moving from a 3,000 sq. ft. loft in the city to a 700 sq. ft. house in the mojave desert was no small feat. As you well know, we gave up a lot of frills when we made the transition to tiny house living, including eschewing annual Christmas tree and most holiday decorations. However, each year around this time, our nostalgic sides emerge and so we try to re-invent the holiday traditions for small-space living and in a manner that treads lightly on the earth.

My husband is a sculptor, and several years ago, he made a giant red star as one component of an art installation that he installed in a Sacramento, California art gallery. That star had been collecting dust ever since, but this year, the time seemed ripe to dust it off, add some bulbs, and hang it on the kitchen wall. Of course that got us both in the holiday mood, so I surveyed our living room. We needed something more, I decided, and so I started stringing Christmas lights on our tumbleweed (I’d collected it some time in mid-summer and had given it center stage on top of our curio cabinet). Then, in an inspired moment, I recalled some kanji flash cards that I’d purchased for an art project from a seller on Etsy, I quickly grabbed them, and Geoff and I took turns adding cards to the tumbleweed until there was only one left. That one we added to the very top. But first, we looked at the back to read which word ended up being the “tumbleweed topper.”

The card was ‘Megumi,” which means blessing.

Kerri Tuttle, (owner, Casa Wabi Sabi) https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.309264132434785.90514.286641701363695&type=3

Alice shared this with me and thought they would be a fun addition to a tiny house Christmas.

I made tiny gingerbread houses that are meant to be perched on the edge of a mug of hot chocolate.

I made a few versions to figure out how to make one that wasn’t so top heavy that it would flip off the mug. I also was interested to see how small I could get away with and still fit on both large and small cups. I generally followed the size of my The Mini Gingerbread House Kit (though, those pieces don’t fit together as nicely as I’d have liked).

See the article and full instructions at notmartha.org.

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.

[View with PicLens]

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.

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 speakthunderfilms@gmail.com 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!