Snow Days *

December 23, 2015 / erin / 1 Comment

We’ve had a very nice string of snow days and cold weather here, which has been the perfect excuse to work away on the trailer! FINALLY! I am so excited to show the progress we have made, and it totaled 4 days of work! (More like 3 1/2)

First thing we had to do was finish up the drywall and muding process. If I never see drywall again I will be a happy camper!

While we waited for the mud to dry and Ben ran off on errands, I got to work with sanding the floors down once and for all.

There was this patch in the floor that was coming up and could cause some major splinters, so we tore it up and patched it with the original trim we ripped out of the trailer.

Seemed to do the job just fine, and it was seriously the perfect fit! So far, we’ve gotten away with working with a lot of recycled materials and its been able to keep the costs low.

One thing we may have an issue with, and this has just come to mind recently, is that the drywall may have a hard time staying put if the trailer is going to be mobile often. Once we have more structures built into it, such as the kitchen etc, it may not be an issue. I guess time will tell and much like most I do in life, this too is just going to be trial and error . 🙂

Okay, so drywall and floors completed! Next thing I went to work on was priming and painting! Even tho my arms usually want to fall off by the time I am through, I kind of enjoy painting. Its relaxing. And no, this does NOT mean I will help paint your house for you 😉 okay I might.

All of these small details started to come into play, and they needed to be dealt with. SO. If you look back up to the first picture, you can see in the corner is a big silver piece of foam board. — We cut it to sizes, skinny long strips, and used it to insulate the gap where the wall and ceiling meet. That area will be covered by some ceiling trim and may also put up LED lighting there too… Time will tell.

I then went thru and spray painted the area black… The small spot at the top where the yellow foam is showing is kind of an eye sore, so I made it match the black metal for now, until we decide how that will be covered.

Next order of business was staining the floors! YAY! And cleaning up some more areas. Behind the pulley bar for the back door, is a lot of messy over spray, and it’ll be built in (one day) but we took the time to clean it up, and I also spray painted it black to make a cleaner look for now.

All of that took 3 days.

All was fine and dandy, until about 2 days ago I mentioned to Ben while trying to get to world 7 on Super Mario, that it would be nice if this bed had a frame, even if temporarily built on some 2×2’s, but it would be better than mattress on the ground.

Being the doer he is, he ran off to get the lumber needed and we spent the afternoon making the bed frame, sizing the storage that will go underneath, and even made cubby holes to access by lifting the mattress.

Oh, another cool feature is he made it to fit a queen bed, but also made it easily adjustable to fit a double, in case we decided to downsize on mattress size. (Its a tight squeeze with a queen)

Finished (?) product 🙂

I lifted the lace I have to show you how its lifted, it raised the mattress 14 inches off the ground and it makes a WORLD of a difference. The other half is still a cluster of stuff, but its looking better now that I can store under the bed! And it is all VERY organized and neat! 🙂

It is difficult to get used to the new temperatures at our new elevation 😉 but in all seriousness, it makes a world of a difference and we are struggling to find a new happy medium on the radiator!

Our little holiday shrine 🙂

Happy Holidays everyone! Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year!

Peace and Love ❤

excuses and delays.

December 7, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

Entirely too long of a break — BUT it’s the hoooolidays!

Is this an excuse?!

Seriously tho, celebrate them or don’t, but this time of year always seems to pick up and get really busy for some reason.

Of course the energy in the air is picked up because of the major few.. The kick off starts with Halloween, then followed by Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years… it doesn’t seem to end for a few months. Everyone who partakes in the festivities naturally gives off a buzz and whether I like it or not it seems to affect me.

I just seem to get busy.

Here’s what I’ve been doing! Backing up a bit if I may, jumping around, and coming back to the present.

I mentioned a few posts back that I went to work with Ben! Well, here is that proof. At the end of the day, I stripped off the paper and tape that covered my feet to my knees and I posed for a picture or two!

(Seriously I think I know entirely too much about spray foam.. and I don’t know when why or how!)

Scooting forward a bit closer to present day, Thanksgiving we took a road trip to Council Bluffs Iowa to stay with some friends of ours! It was bad weather in Colorado and a short enough drive to make it happen! The last time I was in Omaha (butts right up with Council Bluffs) was for a volleyball tournament when I was in high school, so it was fun to explore the area some! It was a nice time of R&R and a lot of Super Mario Bros on the old Nintendo game counsel!

Lost time was made up, and I’ve improved my skill!

I don’t want to overload in one post so I am going to break this down into a couple I think.

The trailer is still amazing. More on that in the next post.

And I will leave you with this.

I think I am going to turn into pizza.

Honestly I could eat it daily and not get tired. All kinds of pizza… vegan, supreme, cauliflower crust, just cheese… it doesn’t matter. I am not biased.

I bring this up because Ben and I have been trying out different Pizzerias in the area — because well.. pizza. Every place we have has been really good… so we keep trying more! #foodies

Ben’s tastes in pizza are pretty straightforward … meat, everything, more. I like to switch it up however and try specialty pizzas — I love a good Margherita pizza, and I did a sort of “make your own” at the last joint we went to, and it basically turned into the Margherita pizza :p

The two we have recently tried, Serafini’s Pizzeria and Fuhgidabowdit Pizzeria have been unique in their own way and I would for SURE go back to them. Again… pizza. It’s hard to go wrong.

Cheers!

Okay in my next post I will be letting you know how my homemade toothpaste turned out! We are still in the “testing” phase so I want to gather more data before presenting!

The move.

September 19, 2015September 19, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

It took us 4 days to make it from Washington to Colorado. Day 1 and day 4 consisted of about 3 1/2 hours each, the middle two days were a healthy day of driving. Everything we owned managed to fit into my Honda Crosstour, his eighty something Nissan Pickup truck, and the trailer that we had packed with only the things we were keeping in it. (I still feel like it’s entirely to much stuff but I’ll give myself some time and an adjustment period.)

The truck made it. Took the weight of the load like a champ — We were prepared to rent a truck halfway down but we were pleasantly surprised! 🙂 I would say average speed for us was about 60 mph… Low as 35 uphill/over a mountain pass.

Really tho — Ben was the real MVP. He drove 4 days in that thing with vinyl seating, no A/C, heat on so it wouldn’t overheat, and it was 90 degrees the whole way. I don’t think I would’ve volunteered to drive it, but I don’t really have a manual down to a smooth process, so I didn’t have to put that question to the test!

So day one (a Thursday), we drove to my in-laws and stayed the night there. We slept for the first time in the thing and let me tell you, it was not too shabby my friends… If you look at face value it seems very shabby, but look at the potential and it’s a whole new ball game. It’s like a grown up fort.

What I discovered immediately was it wasn’t stuffy without a window like I thought it would be. The vent on the top almost serves as a cool fan. (Almost) The wind funnels down the vent and the trailer is constantly fed with new fresh air. Not to say that it doesn’t get pretty warm in here cause it sure does! We purchased a fan to help with that issue and are trying this one out. We plan to get a little A/C unit, but since summer is coming to a close we can give that decision more time and thought… and now with insulation it might do just fine. 🙂 We also found a little floor heater fan from a yard sale that will do the job on the colder nights, of course paired with some insulation — I digress. So it’s okay to sleep in and be in without a window… For now, but there will be windows put in… I’ll get into that more later.

The one thing I’m not liking so much anymore is the rush, and the need to be somewhere right away etc. So Friday morning we took our time getting up (as we did each morning) saying goodbye, and just left as the time came. We didn’t really pull out of Spokane until 1 PM PT. We had some last ends to tie up (break lights) and cool gadgets to buy for the adventure 🙂 We drove until about Butte, MT. and stopped at an OHV recreation area out in the middle of nowhere and tested out night number two in the trailer. (We are still in the process of naming it).

Where we stayed night 2.

It was so silent and in the middle of what seemed nowhere, probably was, and the stars were beyond stunning. I feel like I’ve never seen the Milky Way so big and bright before… or at least it’s been a VERY long time. We have a converter plug, and an extension cord so we were able to run the lights and electric in the trailer, so it really was quite the set up.

Saturday morning silently came without any issues or surprises and we slowly got going yet again. We pulled up to this park in Wyoming called Natural Bridge, a public campground, that night when it was time to call it. We had been driving since about 9AM or so that day and it was about 7:30PM when we pulled in, and we picked the wrong night and time to come apparently. We had wanted to stay at this camp the last time we drove through, however it was booked full (there’s only about 5 campsites). It’s supposed to be a cool historic natural landmark and we wanted to check it out! When we got there this time there was no one there to hog the campsites — but there was quite the drama between the one other set of campers and the managers. “Sick of dealing with people” and not wanting to hear that we didn’t know the others (case of bad timing I guess) they rudely kicked us out of the campground. SO as exhausted and hungry as we were, we packed up again in the middle of nowhere headed to find SOMEWHERE to stay the night. THANKFULLY KOA has overnight check in so we were able to find a place and bed down for a few hours, and have a fresh shower.

Somewhere on the drive…

Oh the 3rd night was in Douglas, WY… so we only had about 4 hours to drive on Sunday. So when morning came, we slid out of there like molasses and arrived Sunday afternoon and didn’t do a damn thing when we got to our destination.

And it never felt so good.

Ben during one of our many stops along the way

Micro

September 14, 2015September 14, 2015 / erin / 1 Comment

Live the life you imagine.

Right?

So often we are paralyzed in life and stay confined to all of our comforts because anything else is terrifying. And it is, with good reason too… the world can be a bitch. BUT imagine finally letting yourself rise above the fear and do what you always dreamed of. The fear is there, it always is, and will be… but you do have a say in how much of a voice your fear will have.

My dreams? To live small.

I’ve always had this longing in my soul to travel. Travel the world, travel North America, get in a van and go. Stay in one place and work, and travel in my down time, or take my belongings and go. In whatever way I could make it work, I’ve wanted to. Several things have deterred me from making the leap over the years… Lack of knowledge of how to make it work, fear (yet again), debt < the BIG one, and that inner voice that keeps telling me that I’m crazy.

Thankfully I have found an amazing partner who happens to share my crazy dreams.

After having all our friends and family over to celebrate our marriage up in Washington, we found ourselves at the end of the chapter we were currently in. Not knowing what is (and still don’t know) in the next chapter, we found ourselves leaving one job and home in Washington to move to Colorado to start the next. This is where it gets interesting and the magic starts to happen….

While driving back home from visiting the family one weekend a month or so ago, my husband Ben and I got to talking about what we would do if something happened to the other. (Disclosure: We don’t have any kids, and we have no pets – YET ) It came up that if something did happen, we both planned to sell everything and travel the world like we always wanted to. While that is all fine and dandy, it upset me to my core. Why does the WORST have to happen to motivate us to live the life we always wanted? So for the rest of that 3 hour car trip (and the next 3 weeks) we talked scenario after scenario, possibility over possibility and what if’ed every thought that came to mind.

Could we make this work? Is this doable? Are we NUTS?! Yes we are.

The chain of events that happened after that led us to where we are now… Or rather where I am currently. In a Starbucks in a town north of Denver typing away at my keyboard looking for land to rent to put our 16×6 foot enclosed trailer that we are living in – and will be fixing up to make it permanently livable. Not so much a tiny home rather micro living, going from about 1700 square feet to 94 square feet.

We sold what we could, donated the rest and downsized like you wouldn’t believe. We kept our queen size mattress that fits perfectly in the trailer, one tall shelving unit and a hutch that was made by my dad. We also kept a small bedside table that has a nice storage area under the lid, and an area rug. What we couldn’t fit is going in storage for now until I can either find a place for it in the trailer or I can let go of the emotional ties. My clothing is going to be a big one, but I’ve heard of Project 333 (http://theproject333.com/getting-started/ ) and I am ready to give it a try!
The thought of big spacious rooms and areas never appealed to me much. I always saw tree houses or tiny rooms and imagined a little space that could be just mine. Cozy. Now with the tiny house movement in full swing I have resources and ideas from other crazy DIYers that can help make and shape my dreams into a reality… Now I just need to figure out how to use power tools.

This is just a blog of my life, and how we are going to give tiny living a try, and how it works for us!

Who knows, maybe we will be back in a one bedroom apartment in a month.. but I hope not, I just found a possible plot of land to rent! 🙂

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The before

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The after

dynomadic life

Dynamic Design. Nomadic Nature.

travel

Snow Days *

excuses and delays.

The move.

Micro