What a treat to travel to The Big Island to meet Marjane and see The Bonsai House, which was inspired by my own Lucky Penny!
A couple of years ago when I was building my first tiny house, The Lucky Penny, I fell off the blogging bandwagon for a while because I was Doing Life instead. Come to think of it, it was actually about the same phase of building last time, too... I think perhaps there's something that happens in a decision fatigued builder's brain where the blogging function just shuts down as the bazillion little things of moving the house forward take over. Perhaps you can relate if you've everstarted a project excited to blog about it and then dropped off at some point when the project itself got more interesting then telling about it! In any case, we can now see the light at the end of this tiny house build tunnel (upcoming: electrical, siding, flooring, trim, furnishings - yup, I know that's a little out of order - I'll explain in an upcoming post about our electrical). A wise friend also reminded me that it's okay to leave all those started posts in draft mode and just start again where I am. Between that and having other exciting things I want to tell you about, it's high time for a catch up!
The month of September was a fun one because we wrapped up the O'Keefe Tiny House Build Blitz and I spoke about tiny house design at Tiny House Fest Vermont. Then I moved back into my tiny house, The Lucky Penny, since my sister-friend who had sublet my house for the summer moved into the Big House at Simply Home Community. Mid-month I went off to Hawaii to speak at the CPCU Annual Meeting (you know tiny houses are a big deal when the insurance agents all get curious), and to visit with Marjane (whose tiny house, The Bonsai House, was inspired by mine) and her fabulous designer Barrie Rose and builder Johanna from Habitats Hawaii.
I love teaching Tiny House 101 workshops with The Tiny House Collaborative so that people interested in having a tiny house of their own know what to consider!
I kicked off October with a trip to Ojai to teach at Tiny House 101 workshop with Lee Pera and Vina Lustado through the Tiny House Collaborative. My pal John Labovitz (who designed and built himself an awesome tiny house truck that was a big inspiration for The Lucky Penny) came to visit and he stayed in The Lucky Penny while he was here. (Meanwhile, Isha and I got to play house together in The Rustic, the tiny house my sweetie is renting at Simply Home.) Isha and I fit in a trip to the Bay Area as well for the wedding of one of his childhood friends and my fabulous, badass, wonderful sister gave birth to the newest member of our family, so all the aunties are in a flutter with smitteness about baby cheeks and cupcake hats.
It's been such fun having Lori (and her trusty sidekick Pie Head) as my tiny house helpers the past couple months!
Otherwise, the focus of October was working on our new tiny house, T42 with the help of my right-hand-woman Lori. Lori is the best thing to have ever happened to our tiny house and I'm so glad that we've become friends, too. She's fun, creative, thoughtful, and deliberate which means she's a wonderful builder. I'm excited for the tiny house she'll be building soon!
There's more. So much more. But I'll save it for now. Stay tuned!