Month: December 2014

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

~ chelsearedmond ~ 6 Comments

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Typically getting in the Holiday spirit for me involves a few key things:

1. The Christmas tree hunt– This is by far the most important tradition, and was practically law in our family growing up.  We have never set foot on a Christmas tree lot or tree farm in all of my existence, well there was the year my mom came home with a tree from a lot, we were stunned and confused.  Anyway… we like to forget about that year.  The weekend after Thanksgiving we get a $5 permit and head to the forest to find an inevitably  homely looking tree with tons of natural charm.  This year was no different except the tree was about 1/4 the size.  Adam even felt the need to yell “timber” as he sawed down the little Doug Fir using a plastic butter knife or something with similar strength.

2. Collecting insane amounts of evergreens, sticks, pinecones, red berries and other natural flora to make wreaths out of, or simply drape on any open surface that can use a little Christmas cheer.  This had to be toned down quite a bit  this year due to size restrictions and lack of surface area but was still possible.

3.Making and decorating sugar cookies –This one was not achievable in the tiny house, in-fact sometimes it barely feels possible in a regular sized kitchen; the rolling, cutting, baking, frosting assembly line moved to my sister’s house this year.

4.Giving>Getting – This may sound cliché but nothing makes the sentiment “it is better to give than to receive” more true than living in a tiny house!  Each year we like to do something for people we don’t know.  Usually we take cards and Christmas cookies to homeless people.  This year we tried something new.  We “adopted” a family through a local charity and based on the information given about their situation and needs we bought items for the family.  The idea was to focus less on buying and receiving gifts among our families and instead help out a family who really needed it.

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Charlie Brown could see the beauty

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I want to prepare you for what you are about to see…if like me, you imagined living in a tiny house as an opportunity for a simple, minimal lifestyle where everything has its place, then you are right, but that Feng Shui can be thrown out of whack REAL FAST.  Let me reveal a glimpse into the reality of living in a tiny house, or at least my occasional reality.  You see, everything may have its place but what happens when you have 15 Holiday packages to create for instance?

This does…

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BEFORE and…… AFTER

I usually just laugh and send a picture of the chaos to my co-workers.  Doing any kind of project is tricky, and for my job I often have them.  When I have tasks for work like organizing 30 pairs of demo running shoes I do it at a friend’s house.  This hasn’t been a problem necessarily, just a change, a slight inconvenience.  The silver lining is spending more time with friends!

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Christmas morning sunrise

Christmas was different this year, not just because we had a smaller tree or less presents for each other, but because we woke up Christmas morning on the North Shore of Oahu and the day before Adam had no clue we were headed there!  We had to cancel a two-week vacation we had booked to Peru when Adam took the job with Portland, we paid a change fee to the airline and had to use the vouchers before February.  He had 4 days off at Christmas and we decided to use them for a mini-vacation.  Two weeks before I saw that flights to Hawaii had dropped in price and I asked Adam if he was ok with me surprising him with a location, he is always up for these kind of shenanigans!  I packed our bags and kept it quiet.  He didn’t find out until I met him in the car wearing a snorkel as we headed to the airport on Christmas Eve.  Though it didn’t feel like a typical Christmas, eating at a food truck for Christmas dinner and basking in the sun turned out to be a special way to celebrate without the distraction of presents and production of a big dinner.  We missed our family but it was just what we needed.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!  2015 is full of possibility and we hope good things come to you whatever they may be!!!!

If you build it

~ chelsearedmond ~ 14 Comments

While making this slideshow I realized we purchased the 8×22′ trailer that our house sits on February 25, 2014.   July 16, 2014 was the day we pulled it from Eugene to Portland where we now live.  It is amazing what you can accomplish when you have no other option. We decided the best way to make this dream happen was to allow ourselves no other option.  It was Tiny House or the streets.

Let me back-up a bit…Portland has been our home for the last 7 years, but in 2013 Adam was hired by the Fire Department in Eugene, OR, it was an exciting opportunity coming from a smaller Department outside of Portland and he took the job.  During the first 6 months I stayed in Portland but eventually moved down too.   Though we didn’t plan it this way, the house we rented was an ideal situation for building the tiny house.  We started building it with the goal of finishing the following winter.

Adam was building on his days off and I would help when I was able.  In June he got offered a fairly unexpected position with Portland, a month before he would need to start.  It was not an easy decision, he loved the people he worked with and it meant another dreaded fire academy along with canceling our big trip to Peru we had booked in September. Portland felt like home to us and this had been his dream job for years so he couldn’t pass it up.  This meant we had 30 days to either finish this house or find a place to live.  We decided this would be the perfect year to live full time in the house, he would be busy with academy and we would save money, plus where the heck would we put a half finished house.  At first we looked at places as backup and quickly decided we were not going to consider anything else because it was distracting and didn’t get us any closer to the end goal.

I am good under pressure, I do my best work in -fact, but this was a whole new level of pressure.  Not only was the house just a wooden shell with no insulation or electricity but we had no idea where we would put it in a month when we moved it to Portland.  We would joke about the Wal-Mart parking lot or parking it down by the river but even those were looking like real options two weeks before the move. Adam was working from the second he got up until late at night, on days when I was home I would do the same, friends would help out some days.  We were making progress.  My family came down for the weekend and my uncle ended up staying the entire last week working as an unpaid saint sent down to help us not be homeless, don’t think we would have been here without him!

One week until our move date, I was in Utah for work, Adam doesn’t panic and he was panicking.  I told him “if you build it they will come” He may not have been amused by the Field of Dreams reference at the time but I truly believed I would find us the perfect spot in less than a week.  It was the least I could do while he was  working around the clock to finish while I was away for work.  Calling him with the news that I found a place was exciting, but the fact that it was  basically in our old neighborhood and on a half acre right against a 90 acre park was a proud moment.

The grounds on which the mansion sits (we could have just moved into that little playhouse I suppose)
The grounds on which the mansion sits (we could have just moved into that little playhouse I suppose)

I know many people living in tiny houses spend months downsizing, unfortunately  with the unexpected move and desperate need to finish the house we had not gotten to this step, or even began packing our 1,400 square foot house at all until the DAY BEFORE.  Moving is already a pain but this move will make all stressful moves feel like a sunny picnic in the park.  It was one of those times you look back on and don’t know how you did it.  There is the sheer terror of taking your 10,000 lb home down the freeway for the first time without knowing if it would fall apart.  There was also the fact that after two solid days of no sleep Adam would be starting his new job.   It wasn’t pretty but we did it and for that we are grateful.

It has been five months already and living here has been the easy part.  It has never felt too small, even when we bump into each other in the kitchen or hit our heads in the loft. Despite all of its flaws and extreme tiny-ness this house feels like home to us.  It surprises me everyday how much I love living here.