A Year in Review!

First and foremost!  I have recently had a bit of prompting for me to get a set of construction plans together based on my design, really I should have had some drawn a LONG time ago (like before building my house ;-), when you build yourself it’s easier to skip that step and just wing it, at least for me!).  Anyway, those are on the way and they will be awesome :).  In my professional experience, a good portion of people have a difficult time reading and ‘seeing’ a space in their minds eye from just a 2D plan and some elevations.  It’s going to take a little extra but I have I am working out a solution to make it, hopefully, a much more friendly set of drawings to read for people who don’t necessarily have construction experience.  If anyone has any feedback on what they would like to see different with a plan set, or what issues they have, if any, reading a plan, I am all ears.

If you want to receive an email as soon as the plans are ready please feel free to sign up HERE. 

The real point of this post is to say THANK YOU all for such a wonderful year!  I as you can read in the previous post I have been so very fortunate and had some amazing experiences in 2013, I am excited and ready to move to 2014 and I have no doubt that it will be even better than 2013!  I hope the same for each of you!  Here are some pictures of the highlights of 2013 for me!

Early on in the year I was selected to joing the Planning and Zoning Commission, I have learned so much and feel great to make an impact on my community!

A little later in the year I got to take part in our very first local Makers Faire, both presenting my house to a large [INTERESTED] group and later setting up a both to talk to others about tiny houses! I actually had a couple from Nevada drive up to see it and get some ideas on their own tiny house which in their case was a very cool modified bus! There were plenty of other people that stopped by too!

Thn there was the trip I took down to Austin for SXSW to watch the premiere of TINY: A Story About Living Small (which I was in! how cool is that!!!)

I graduated from Leadership Meridian where I was able to take part in SO many amazing experiences and I got to see parts of the community I would never otherwise be able to see the inside of!

And the big move happened!

I got to meet this sweet 'little' guy! 🙂

And another bucket list Item achieved, Walk a great dane and a chihuahua at the same time!

And then there was this 🙂

Which lead to this!

And FINALLY! I finished this after 18 months of HARD work!

And was filmed by a major TV network!

We had a open house whee there was lots of interest from the community and my whole family came out (brother is pictured!)

Ryan and I continued the Tiny House Chat where we have got to talk with some really great influencers in the tiny house community!

And of course the beautiful Lacy got hitched and I got to be in the wedding!

And some sneaky photography finally caught a picture of me with this guy! (coincidently the last glass of wine I got to drink for a while 😉

And sadly this boy met his end, he lived a good long time, this is my dog, Gage, who I got when I was 16, h made it close to 14 years befre his old bones wore out!

He was a good boy! 🙂 And adorable!

And I got to check glass blowing off of my bucket list when I made my kitchen lights with my brothers!

I got to visit once more with Chistopher who came and took some more footage of the final house (he seems to always get a snazzy picture I like to use 🙂 )

I was a part of a live interview on a cable network that aired across the entire united states!

MiniMiller keeps a growing and a kicking around!

And I hit a huge goal (also that I never imagined would happen) I hit 1 million views on my website, it took 22 months to do it, I got my second million in the next month after that! 🙂

This goof ball has become a staple of my world 🙂

I was able to fly to Minnesota and visit with my fabulous cuz Sagey and her Husband (and meet all of her amazingly awesome co-workers!)

Oh yeah, AND watch Mikel graduaate from law school! HUGE deal!

And check out all of the awesome family that came to be a part of it to! Family from everywhere!

We welcomed another new family member too, Jack the weiner dog, my nephew! (brothers dog)

And wham, I get to end the year being on the front page of the 4th most trafficked website in the whole wide world!

After all of this here is what I was able to check off my bucket list this last year:

1. Build my own house
2. Never rely on a bank for finances
3. Own my own business
4. Start to compost
5. Walk a great dane and a chihuahua at the same time
6. Give back to my community
7. Fund my house in cash
8. Start a blog and stick to it
9. Be in a movie
10. Be a guest on a radio talk show (just squeaked by on this, FYI, tune in to NPR”s ‘Tell Me More’ tomorrow, December 27th to hear me! 🙂 )
11. Be published

Thank you SO much to everyone who supported and encouraged me this year, it wouldn’t have been near as much fun without you!

In the year to come I am looking forward to SO much, firstly, meeting my daughter!  I will be spending more time focusing on nutrition and learning to garden better.  I will be focusing [obviously] on natural and minimalistic parenting.  One of the very best things about blogging my life is learning from my audience and on the go.  There have been SO many great and creative ideas that have come from you people, I love so much to hear input, even if I don’t always use it!  Life is learning on the go and I appreciate each of you offering your two cents!

I also am looking forward to putting out a book, probably just an e-book, I have had some people asking me for some similar information so I figure I can try to address it all in one place and make it available for others as well!  This and the plans should keep me busy for a little while! I am also looking forward to developing deeper connections with my family and giving my dog a healthy and socialized life (we are going to start some obedience classes!  He’s a really good dog but he will just be that much better!).  I am also going to start to make the shift to education more, I probably won’t make the actual leap for a while yet but there is plenty I have to learn before making that leap!

There are a couple, well three videos I want to share, I won’t do them all at once because they add up to a bit of time but they are great videos, I hope you can watch.  I will attach this one for now because it lends itself to this whole idea of ‘resolutions’.  This is a part of a short film by Jeremy Collins called ‘The Wolf and The Medallion’.  I have been searching for the film every since I saw it a few years ago, it isn’t available to the public but I so hope it is one day, it’s really great!  I happened to email him a week or so ago to see if I could buy it (it was a really impactful short for me!), he was kind enough to let me watch the whole thing from his private account!  I was so excited and I was so energized all over again!  I seriously reference this often throughout my life.  There are so few things in the world that touch me the way this piece of creativity did!  I am so grateful there are people like him in the world who are SO inspiring!  So, I wanted to share at least this part of it with you people!

The Ten Things from Jeremy Collins on Vimeo.

I am not sure I have any ‘resolutions’ per-say this year but being a better person is on my list, being more creative is on there, and eating better is on there.  What resolutions are others doing if any?

PS-I believe I have gotten through every single email/comment/message from the last week, if you have not heard back from me and wish to please nudge me again!  I really tried not to skip over anyone but there were well over 500 messages and I can see how something may have been lost in the shuffle!  If so I am sorry, I didn’t do it on purpose and I hope you like me enough to give me a second shot! 🙂