Episode #37 - First Winter Living in a Tiny Home - Finding Wonders & Small House Christmas
We are new tiny house dwellers, and we are experiencing our FIRST winter living in a wooden tiny house on a farm! Our location is known for dynamic winter weather events including high wind, snow, freezing temperatures, lots of rain, and possible flooding… elements that will help us learn about our house and capabilities! This is also our first small house Christmas, and we are making an awesome tiny house Christmas tree and giving you our tiny house Christmas tour. Winter living in a tiny house is not easy, though we are finding wonders and appreciating winter wonders while we share our new tiny house lifestyle. We are wonder seekers sharing our first winter in a wooden tiny house. Click to WATCH the video!
During the months of December 2020, January, February & March 2021, we lived on a farm in northwest Washington state that had full RV hookups and spectacular mountain views, sunrises & sunsets, and incredible migratory bird watching opportunities. It was an unforgettable winter that we are excited to share in this video episode and the next three video episodes that will be coming in the next several weeks. Our first parking spot location for life in our tiny house was Oostema Farmstead Campground in Lynden, Washington.
In the last couple video episodes we towed our tiny house for the FIRST TIME and we set up our RV hookups and moved in... If you haven't watched them yet, here are they are...
Making dreams into realities and moving into a new home, are big life events. It just so happens, by some Christmas miracle, we happened to move into our new wooden tiny house one week before the magic inspiring holiday. We love the Holidays and all the joys of the season, so we aren’t about to miss one of our favorite times of year! This is our FIRST Christmas in our tiny house! We now live in a small space that is only 30 feet long and 8 feet wide, and we are about to get really creative with how we celebrate Christmas in a tiny house!
With help from a couple special friends, the idea and materials for our tiny house adapted Christmas tree is sprung. With some cut bough trimmings from some large evergreen trees, we are making a very special hanging mobile style tree that can hang fairly flat on our main feature wall. The wondrous scent of the fir boughs are wonderment inspiring. To us, an evergreen tree has always been a special Holiday tradition where we celebrate nature, winter time, art, memories, and the season of giving. Creating this space saving evergreen Christmas tree was a successful tiny house adapted creation. We cut five thin wooden slats of varying lengths, tied evergreen boughs to each one, and connected each wooden slat with wire to create the "Christmas Tree".
We even found room to set up our Christmas village in our tiny house up on the sleeping loft closet. Where there is a dream, there is a way. We love miniatures and creating little worlds within bigger ones. The storybook magic of a winter village with lights and snow is meaningful to us. We are making room for meaningful things and celebrations in our tiny house.
The simple human-made technologic wonder of colored LED holiday lights inspire us to smile. There is something whimsical and joyful about colored lights, and they are a delightful element of the Holiday season. For so many years, we have said, “ we are too busy to take the time to put up fun lights outside”, and this year we are saying, “we have the time and the will to put up the fun lights that we so enjoy”. Making time to hang some colored lights on our house is totally worth it! Creating an environment of wonderments is always worthwhile!
This is our goodbye to our beloved little camper trailer. In a few months’ time, she will be driving down another road with new people calling her theirs. You know there is that saying, that when one door closes, another one opens. There is also the dynamic of having more doors open than can be enjoyed. Preparing for and welcoming our new wooden tiny house on wheels into our life, has meant saying goodbye to our cherished 1986 VW Vanagon Syncro, our amazingly versatile and capable Ford Van, and now our retro travel trailer. Deciding to become traveling tiny house dwellers, doesn’t leave much space or use for extra vehicles and campers. Even if we had the financial means to keep this camper trailer, leaving our tiny house camped somewhere so we can go camping somewhere else with this little camper is not really in our vision, and now someone else can be enjoying her and making new camping memories.
Looking back over the last three years, we have had many memorable and very meaningful adventures with our travel trailer Quercus. Like her namesake suggests, she kept us as safe as an oak tree. (Quercus is the scientific name for oak trees.) Quercus was our lodging when we showed our art at arts festivals and shows throughout the region, she took us on an a remarkable adventure to the Oregon Coast, she made it possible for us to go on a road trip to visit family in a couple different areas of the interior northwest. Handling and experiencing a lifestyle with Quercus helped us decide to take the leap to become traveling tiny house nomads. We likely wouldn’t be here today with our tiny house, if it weren’t for our experiences with Quercus. We are thankful for everything Quercus taught us about ourselves and our capabilities.
Thank you Quercus for inspiring countless moments of joy, many cherished memories, and for giving us the courage to go big with a wooden house on wheels. May you be for your next chapter, the magic carpet you were in ours.
A friend shared some of her home studio space with us, and we began the new era of our many sewing projects…. From fabric headboard divider, to closet storage closer walls, to window curtains, so began our many sewing days. Being able to do our sewing projects in a little larger space than we have in our tiny house is so helpful. Friends really are wonderments to be appreciated.
Life in a tiny house inspires and necessitates efficient use of small spaces. When every square foot is a premium wonderment, creativity runs wild to imagine up helpful solutions. And when those solutions are implemented, the results can be quite heroic. We are really impressed with how much we can actually have with us in our tiny house.
The beauty of small space living is having things close at hand, even though it does often mean moving one thing to get to another. Likewise, living in a small space means that putting things away and keeping things tidy is a necessity, which means our home stays tidier than when we had more space in a big regular house.
Our little fur ball of puppy cuteness gets a bath frequently! When we designed our tiny house kitchen, we knew we needed a sink big enough to wash him in easily. Our single basin sink and pull down kitchen faucet are what we envisioned and now that we are living and using our house we are so glad that our kitchen is working how we hoped it would. Konane is now nice and clean, and we are going to dry him up and brush his curly hair. He is our little wonderment!
Our time at the farm showed us many awe-inspiring and memorable sunrises and sunsets, along with time to reflect on what special things in our lives seem to come and go like a sunrise or sunset. Making time to appreciate the whole sunrise and sunset of each day really does inspire great appreciation and wonder for our time here in this incredible world, and lets us greet the new adventures of our lives with wonder, and say good bye to others with grace and gratitude.
Each new day begins with a sunrise and concludes with a sunset. Observing and appreciating a dazzling morning sunrise or a vividly dramatic sunset often inspire us to feel great wonderment and awe. We all know how fleeting the moments of intense yellows, oranges, pinks, reds, purples, blues, and every color shade in between might last, and our eyes long to take in each gorgeously awe-inspiring moment. While not every sunrise or sunset turns out epic, it is the collection of all the sunrises and sunsets that we appreciate in our lives that fill our eyes and minds with wonder.
No sunrise or sunset lasts forever. They are fleeting phenomenon’s that come and go with the sun. Our lives are filled with so many meaningful things, that like sunrises and sunsets come and go from our lives. Embracing the fluidity of our lives, like the changing seasons, let’s us celebrate what means the most to us, turn our dreams into realities, let go of that which no longer fits in our lives, and appreciate every sunrise or sunset we are gifted to glimpse.
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Our adventures began with a simple enough sounding question, how to be happy in life? Our best answer, make life an adventure filled with wonderment and awe. We are now tiny house dwellers and we are going to tiny house America with our traveling tiny house on wheels. Before we hit the road though, we have winter to live through in our tiny house and some important DIY projects to complete up. We will be sharing all that with you in the coming video episodes. See you next time, friends, for more sharing of our tiny house story as we look for wonders small and grand!
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THANK YOU for your support & appreciation of our video productions & “finding wonder” journey as we create these video adventures! Appreciating and sharing life’s daily wonders is our passion, and now we will be living in a tiny house on wheels while traveling America appreciating & sharing wonders!
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and "Wonder DOGS" Uluru & Konane
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