Simple living

Standing at the Crossroads…

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Laura

My cousin, a journalist in Toronto shared this last evening.  It is such an interesting film I thought I would also share it with you.  It is not directly connected to Tiny Houses, Food, Art, Music, Nature, Animal Rights, Consumerism or any of the other topics that are important to me.  Yet this film has everything to do with all of these topics.

It is a full length documentary of one hour and once it starts you will want to watch the entire thing, so give yourself the time to sit down and think about it.

The paradoxes within this film are so huge but never directly mentioned… Do you see them as well?

This is a tree back at the foot of the escarpment. I must have walked right past it a hundred times and never noticed it. Even though life is slow paced sometimes I don't see the trees, for the forest. I share this today because I found this film to be the same sort of paradox.

This is a tree back at the foot of the escarpment. I must have walked right past it a hundred times and never noticed it. Even though life is slow paced sometimes I don’t see the trees, for the forest. I share this today because I found this film to be the same sort of paradox.

 

Categories: Art, Environmentalism, Family, Food, Materialism, Money, Nature, Open your eyes, Simple living, Sustainable living, Tiny House Ontario, View, World | 2 Comments

Changing Flowers

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Laura

In early September I took a photo of some flowers that were blooming along the edge of the fence at the tiny house.

Carrie's flowers

Tiny House and Porch – The house has a relatively HUGE cloth porch, the perfect place to sit outside but be free of biting insects that are plentiful in the Ontario forest.

When I arrived back four weeks later, on the last day of the month I found that it was fall in the area.  I also found that finally my dahlia had bloomed.  The flower is so huge that the plant could not hold it up, so I posed it for the photo.

Yellow dahlia

The sunflowers were eaten quite some time ago by the little garden thieves but one sole teddybear variety did not become a midnight snack.  I was surprised to find it there, hanging like those in J.E.H MacDonald’s  “the Tangled Garden”. It might be fun to paint this one.  The natural world is alive with change.

THO Tangled Garden

Categories: Forest, Magical, Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Simple living, Tiny House Ontario, View | 4 Comments

Another Angle

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Laura

A while ago one of my readers asked me why I don’t show other angles of Tiny House Ontario.  The reason is much more simple than you might think.  Just five feet in front of the house begins a thorn bramble.  It runs due East to West and makes stepping far enough away from the house to get a photo sort of tricky.

The bramble is dense.  when I stand on the other side of it in the clearest area about 30 feet from the house, after half of the leaves have fallen this what you can see of the house.   Can you see it???Tiny House Ontario from the South

Categories: Forest, Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Simple living, Tiny House Ontario, View | 13 Comments

A Spy!

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Laura

Have you ever been busy doing something and felt that someone is watching you.  Well, I have.  As a matter of fact it happened to me just this morning.  Fortunately, I caught the watcher on camera, so I have proof!

Spy

Categories: Forest, Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Tiny House Ontario | 7 Comments

What a Porch!

Posted on September 8, 2013 by Laura

As you all know, I love my cloth porch.  It is the room that I use the most, but it was built on the fly and it is not exactly a pretty addition.  When I added the boards last winter I purchased them with the intent of actually using them as a roof when I restructure the porch so that it actually looks as nice as it functions.

I am most interested in timber framed logs because I have easy access to this material and I have done a couple of workshops on how to build these things.  The material is of course the maples that fell in last year’s drought.  They will be good and dry by next spring.

While googling today I came across a fantastic looking but huge porch which is attached to a tiny house.  Well… it is actually not a tiny house… but a swimming pool change room at a McMansion, but it could just as easily serve as a tiny house.  I know I could live here easily!

pool house timber frame Do you think it is still a tiny house if you have a HUGE and decadent porch?  I think it would have to count in the square footage.

Categories: Cloth Porch, Ontario, Simple living | 2 Comments