Update 12.3.13

This is not a cohesive update at all, I am back at my ‘better to post something than nothing’ post though.  I do have some very cool miscellaneous updates though, long over due of course!  I have a plan in action that will hopefully get me on a better track for keeping up with my updates!  I am going to try my hand at just setting a schedule to post my updates ,that way it doesn’t all just build up and become a daunting thing to approach! 🙂  So, after this update I will be shooting for Monday, Wednesday, Friday and a Sunday post, each day posting on one topic, be it my family/pregnancy/Denny, my tiny house, my current craft projects or my miscellaneous day, that is what I am hoping for, if I can stay disciplined it would be awesome :).   But for now there is a little of everything!

So, Denny is getting neutered this weekend, he’s excited ;-).  I think he thinks I say ‘tutored’ though, he loves learning! 😉  Terrible joke!  It’s time, I feel bad for kids when I take him on walks, Great Danes are big dogs… any way you look at it… we are also going to go to our first Great Dane Meet-up, I am excited to see how he does with other danes, when we go to the park he mostly loves hanging out with the littlest pups there, I think it will be good for him to meet other big dogs!  I am excited to meet new friends too, it seems that dog parks are really great places to meet people in general!  He is pretty funny at night, when I let him out before bed he does a perimeter check around the house, its always a counter clockwise motion, he circles the whole thing, then does his business then comes in ready to zonk out, in the morning though the last thing he wants is to get out of bed, turns out if a hundred pound dog doesn’t want to do something then there is not very much I can do to change his mind… fortunately James is usually around to let him potty a little later in the mornings…

My pregnancy update, this is fun, I am back on track with my weight gain, I am not sick as a dog all the time, I am perpetually uncomfortable with my lady parts apparently being the size of a soccer ball right now.  Turns out that makes me hunch over which isn’t good for a newly broken back, I got a sling thing though and it seems to help… if I can just find out where Denver hid it… I definitely look pregnant now, there is no mistaking it!  She is SUPER active still and her kicks are getting stronger and stronger, I guess the calcium is hitting her bones and making her less like rubber, so that’s good!  Yesterday I was working on my laptop and it was just barely against my stomach and she kicked it and it moved… not real impressive of a story but I was alone in the house and it freaked me out!  When my midwife measured me I was bigger than ‘normal’ by 5 centimeters (they measure from the top of my pubic bone to my belly button), so apparently that means she had her growth spurt early, even though I think she hit her growth spurt just after the appointment, I will be excited at my next one to see if my midwife agrees.  I have gained a total of 15 pounds even. That is right on track with where I ‘should be’.  MiniMiller’s heartbeat is right on point and she measures right around 14 inches long and comes in just under 2 pounds.  The most shocking part is that technically she is able to survive, with help, outside of me right now, that blows my mind.  I will go ahead and try to keep her in there as long as possible though, it’s probably best for everyone :).  In the following weeks we will be working on putting some body fat on her!  Other than all that, it still sucks to be pregnant, some girls just rock this, it is NOT my ‘thing’!  oye!  I think I should have been born a guy, it seems so much easier!  I’m sure I’ll get on with the whole ‘miracle of life’ thing after MiniMiller comes but for now oye!  BTW, Hazel Annabelle is the name that is sticking the hardest… Stays with Greg’s astute observation of her initials being H.A.M. too! 🙂

Tiny house update!  My water froze last night!  Oh noes!  thankfully it happened AFTER the hard piping and nothing broke!  When I went and checked this morning it looked like in one of Denver’s perimeter checks he may have bumped a panel of my skirting apparatus… there was a big hole in the insulated portion so I am pretty sure that is what went wrong.  Still, it’s going to get a lot colder (down to 9 degrees tonight!) so I am going to have to figure out something else… For now, because its dark when I get up for work and its dark when I get home (I hate daylight savings, even though it really isn’t what’s to blame for the short days) I just shut off the water and I will figure it out this weekend when I have some daylight to work by.   These are those cold weather things that you folks down south don’t have to work with 🙂  Lucky!  Other than that the house is doing awesome!  The radiant floor heat is NOT enough to keep things heated but with my small supplemental heater it’s not a problem.

So this evening I am in the process of transferring my website (paying WordPress to transfer it since I have had a few difficulties with how the site transfers) to a hosted site so if anything goes awry that is why, I wish I could stay on the free WordPress site but I have enough pictures and data to use up my allotted space, so I must move on! 🙂

A couple quick things, Ryan and I are doing another Tiny House Chat on Tuesday night, log in if you can!  We have Hari and Karl from TinyHouseFamily.com and Ms. Kristie Wolfe from TinyHouseOnThePrairie.net, we are going to talk about tiny houses for the holidays, get some awesome creative ideas from Kristie and some family advice from Hari and Karl, it’s just going to be a fun one.  I nice end to wrap up a great year of Chats!

Ryan has been organizing the first annual Tiny House Conference which is coming up at the beginning of April 2014.  There are going to be some great opportunities to meet some neat people and learn more than you want to know about tiny houses and tinyhousers!  I am stoked to get to go, and MiniMiller will be making her way so long as all goes as planned!  For a little while Ryan is offering $50.00 off if you use the code MM2013, so if you can’t think of what to get the minimalist in your life it could be a good option… ;-), experiences are always better than ‘things’ (well, that is just opinion I guess).

I think that that is all I have for now, below are a couple other things including a tremendous act of kindness I was the lucky recipient of, my interview on Aljezeera with Christopher and Merete a co-sleeper mini-update and some misc. stuff, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

I simply cannot believe this! Christmas came early for me this year!

After reading my post about freezing dinners a VERY nice gentalman who follows my blog took it upon himself to mail me some real tupperware. I am blown away by his kindness, I think of myself as a fairly nice person but until no I never considered doing something like that, completely generous.

I am certainly inspired to pay it forward! Seriously.

I feel so lucky, humbled and grateful! My bar for random acts of kindness has just been raised! Thank you David! Very much! They will see lots of good use for years to come!

This is what my little monster did! I FINALLY went through all of my lifes papers, pulled out and kept only the most important ones, including a divorec decree, a name change, a birth certificate and years worth of tax information... I put them in a folder on my bookshelf, with a bunch of appetizing looking books and THIS is the folder Denver decides to get into... So, this is what is left of all my lifes documents... all I can do is shake my head and laugh... 'the dog ate it!' I'm sure I'll be cussing him for years to come as I need each of these things and have to re-collect them...

But how can you stay mad at this guy... He's an ass, but he was sorry...

This is typically what I wake up to, he is tough to pull out of bed, especially since it's getting so cold, he perfers to stay inside sprawled out o the nice warm bed! I can't blame him, I'd like to too...

James's mom brought me by ome Hollyhock flower seeds from her garden also, that was very nice of her, these flowers are SO pretty, I can't wait to watch them grow. I typically stick with veggies but as I found out the first year, you need some pretty flowers too they get the bees by to pollinate your veggies!

And thanks to Christopher and Merete I got another great experience that I never thought I would have in my whole life! Aljzeera sent this van out to do a live studio interview with Christopher and Merete in New York for their big TV premier of their movie, TINY: A Storoy About Living Small. I have no idea how I got thrown into the mix but it was fun, definitely a unique experience!

At first they got all set up inside where it was nice and warm but then NY decided they wanted an outside shot so they got all set up outside, of course it was 20 degrees and super dark so they lit the house up for a few hours! 🙂 I'm sure the neighbors loved me 🙂 I felt bad for the two guys, I invited them in but they stayed outside the whole time!

So, while chatting it up with the guys I found out that, because they weren't able to find a studio in the area they paid to send both a camera man and a sound guy in two different vehicles from Portland that morning, they each drove all day, after seperate shoots that moring in Portland, showed up a couple hours early, set up, shot me for all of about 6 minutes (which I learned was a pretty long shot actually compared to their 'normal' and then around 11pm both of them had to turn their cars around and drive, one back to Portland and the other up to Spokane (both about a 6-7 hour drive away) for 9am shots the next morning again. Neither of those is a job I would want and I hope they both made it safely!

They (the network) also had to pay, according to the guys $1,200/hour for a satellite feed, of which they used for just under 2 hours, that is pretty amazing to me... just to shoot me, for 6 minutes, for Christopher and Merete's interview, I feel pretty fortunate to have gotten the experience even though I am confused as to why I was wanted :). It as definitely a different one than Extreme Homes... they WANTED me to look right at the camera, that was not true with EH. It was also hard to tell who was who when they were talking and when a questions was asked it was tough to know if it was for me, so much of our communication is body language and I was staring at bright lights and blackness trying to respond when I thought it was my turn! 🙂

And to the co-sleeper, I cut out all my other Ikea style pieces, now I just have to assemble it! These are all the parts I need for the rails

I am going to make all four rails even though I will only need three for a little bit.

I did mess it up a little bit I will be sure to call that out to you as I assemble it, I am going to just roll with it but Ill point out my errors, they would be tough to explain without a visual

These are for the corners, I was impressed once again with how close I am on materials, I had about 4 pieces leftover that were maybe 2 inches long, that is all the scrap from everything I bought 🙂 Even with all the miters!