Two more examples of small space living to check out today.
Think adding a guest house is expensive? Think again and this is NOT April Fools, but it is April fun!
See what Derek Diedricksen did that was creative and innovative and only $200. Derek was featured in the Sunday New York Times (Feb. 27, 2011). He used recycled materials and old junk to create playful tiny houses. He has four of them so far.
You can look at all of them in a slideshow here and read all about it in the article here.
Another interesting article on thoughtful, reflective, yet still beautiful small space living can be seen at “Diana’s Innermost House” here. This tiny house was built for the expressed purpose as Diana says, “. . . to make possible a simple life of reflection and conversation.”
A previous post considered what it would be like to live in a tree house. But many of us dream of living on a boat. Here’s a 42 ft. boat that may fit your dream. Living on a boat would make the entire globe “local.” Like a turtle, your home goes with you, wherever you are.
Actually, because our true home is within us – our home actually does go with us wherever we are!
While most of us may not be able to actually live on a boat like this – we can look for the great ideas of boat-life living that make good use of small spaces.
Clean lines, comfortable fabrics, sky lights, dual purpose furnishings and multi-level storage are the order of the day here. Although, it seems to me that the cabinet knobs would be intrusive or poking. However, I don’t live on a boat, so maybe the knobs work better. Of course, the amount of stuff is kept to a bare minimum. How much stuff do we really need?
Have you ever lived out of a backpack or small pilot bag for an extended period of time? I have. You realize how little you really need to live comfortably day to day. Author Rita Golden Gelman lived out of a backpack for fifteen years and wrote about her experience in her fascinating book, Tales of a Female Nomad. Experiences and relationships filled her life rather than stuff and shopping.
Engage your creativity. What will move us out into the world? Living on a boat is fun to imagine, think about, dream about. Ahoy!
Next post: a fun but quirky example of small space living, micro houses!
Here’s another Lenten idea. Want to see an uplifting movie about improving the world while we enjoy the food we eat? Watch Fresh! It’s just 90 minutes. You can watch it with your book club or anywhere that thoughtful people gather.
Unlike Food Inc., the film Fresh focuses on a vision of how things can be different, how much power we have as consumers and how we vote with each dollar we spend.
Envision the kind of healthy food you would like to eat every day. Envision the kind of world you would like to live in. Both are possible.
Thanks to my friend L. I can recommend another excellent short film about food, “The Dark Side of Chocolate.” This film documents how much of the chocolate we eat (Nestle, Kraft, Cargill, ADM) is harvested using child slave labor. These corporations refuse to enforce the laws against child slave labor with their cocoa growers.
YOU can make a difference by resisting chocolate ingredients from these companies and buying Fair Trade chocolate like Divine Chocolate or Fair Exchange Chocolate brands. As a consumer you have power. You vote for the kind of world you want to live in with every food dollar you spend!
My younger daughter used to make delicious apple pies when she was about nine or ten years old.
Into a large bowl she sliced six apples. Then added a handful of flour, brown sugar and sprinkled a little cinnamon. Using her hands she mixed the apples, flour, sugar and cinnamon together. Then she dumped the bowl of coated apple slices into a pie plate prepared with a ready-to-bake crust. She covered the filling with a second crust. We baked it in the oven at 425 degrees for one hour and Mmmmm! Out came a great apple pie. However, she only liked to make the pies – she rarely ate a piece. It was always surprising to me that she didn’t like eating them herself.
The other night I watched the movie Waitress for the second time and enjoyed it yet again. The idea that the pies become a mirror for the interior emotional life of waitress Jenna is an interesting idea. Jenna’s creative pies become the vehicle for her own transformation and resurrection into a new life. We are already familiar with this idea of expressing our interior through art, writing, music. In this case, pies are the medium. Here are just a few of her pies –
Kick In The Pants Pie
Cinnamon spice custard
I Hate My Husband Pie
“You take bittersweet chocolate and don’t sweeten it. You make it into a pudding and drown it in caramel…”
Baby Screaming It’s Head Off In The Middle Of The Night And Ruining My Life Pie New York style cheesecake, brandy brushed, pecans and nutmeg…
The following recipes appeared on Waitress promotional cards
Marshmallow Mermaid Pie
9 graham crackers
1/2 C. sweetened, flaked coconut, toasted
5 Tbs. butter or margarine, melted
34 lg. marshmallows (8 oz.)
1/2 C. whole milk
1 1/2 C. heavy or whipping cream
1 oz. unsweetened chocolate, grated
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine coconut and graham crackers in food processor until coarse crumbs form.
2. Combine crumbs and butter with fork. Press to bottom and side of 9-inch pie plate. Bake 10 minutes and cool on wire rack.
3. Heat marshmallows and milk in 3-qt. saucepan over low heat until smooth, stirring constantly. Remove saucepan from heat. Cool completely (30 minutes.)
4. In large bowl with mixer at medium speed, beat cream until stiff peaks form. Fold marshmallow mixture into whipped cream with grated chocolate. Spoon filling into cooled crust. Refrigerate pie at least 3 hours or overnight.
5. Top with mini marshmallows, maraschino cherries and rainbow sprinkles. Serves 8.
Falling in Love Chocolate Mousse Pie
9-inch baked pastry shell
1 14-oz. can condensed milk (not evaporated)
2/3 C. water
1 (4 serving) pkg. chocolate pudding mix (not instant)
1 1-oz. square unsweetened chocolate
2 C. (1 pt.) whipping cream, stiffly whipped
In large saucepan, combine condensed milk, water and pudding mix; mix well. Add chocolate. Over medium heat, cook and stir rapidly until chocolate melts and mixture thickens. Remove from heat; beat until smooth. Cool. Chill thoroughly; stir. Fold in whipped cream. Pour into prepared pastry shell. Chill 4 hours until set. Serves 8.
Baby Screamin’ Its Head Off In The Middle of the Night & Ruinin’ My Life Pie
4 8-oz. cream cheese, softened
1 C. unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 C. sour cream
1/2 C heavy whipping cream
1 3/4 C. white sugar
1/8 . cornstarch
1 fl. oz. amaretto liqueur
1 tsp. vanilla extract
5 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 C. chopped pecans
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1. Bring all ingredients to room temperature. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Wrap outside of 9-inch springform pan with foil. Generously butter inside of pan.
2. In large bowl,beat cream cheese and butter until smooth. Mix in sugar and cornstarch. Blend in sour cream and whipping cream. Add amaretto and vanilla. Stir in eggs and egg yolk one at a time, mixing thoroughly between each addition.
3. Pour batter into pan. Place pan in another pan at least 1 inch wider and add water to outside pan (prevents cracks). Bake on center rack for 70 minutes.
4. Turn oven off and let cool with door open for 1 hour. Remove cake from water and chill at least 3 hours before removing cake from pan. Top with crushed pecans and dust with nutmeg. Serves 8.
If you visit Duluth, Minnesota you can always head up Hwy 61 and visit Betty’s Pies just north of Two Harbors. This restaurant will remind you of “Joe’s Pies,” converted to “Lulu’s Pies” restaurant in the movie. Many incredible, “world fabulous” pies on the menu. Five-Layer Raspberry Pie is my favorite.
Better yet, perhaps today I will bake a steaming apple pie, top it with vanilla ice cream and drizzle it with caramel in memory of my daughter’s apple pies 🙂
During the past few months, a number of people I know have died. What do we do when the unimaginable happens? How can we use our pain, sorrow and suffering for personal growth?
Of course it is possible to grow without suffering. Which is why we don’t say that we desire suffering. Neither does God desire it for us. But to live is to take a risk. To live is to enter the unknown. Living tests us, challenges us. Illness and accidents can happen to anyone – and do. Relationships end. Those we love die. Life entails suffering, by definition.
So then, do we allow our suffering to incapacitate us? Victimize us? Or do we use it to learn, become stronger and deepen who we are meant to be? This is our task.
What do you do with your suffering?
Look around. Clinging to comfort and structuring life to avoid suffering limits our lives, relationships and our humanity. Christianity teaches the reverse. Embrace the cross.
Jesus embraced the suffering of the cross. In the gospels Jesus was deeply relational with others and with God. This is what made him truly human. It is what will make us truly human too.
Those who have varied and strong relationships are better equipped to handle the pain or suffering that comes with entering into relationships or entering into life and death. This is what it means to be human.
Scriptures can be a good resource for learning how others created something good from pain or suffering. Scripture stories are about what we do with our pain. These are the stories of Genesis, Exodus, Job, Ruth and Naomi and of course Jesus and the resurrection. Entering into pain and suffering can be transformational – if we let it.
What kind of healing are we open to? Only physical healing? Or perhaps emotional, psychological or spiritual healing?
To know that there is something transcendent in each of us is to know that at least a part of us will continue beyond our death. Death is not the end. But it is the limit of our suffering in this world.
Knowing this gives us hope and allows us to enter into the risk of life. Knowing how to use pain or suffering as a vehicle for growth allows us to enter into suffering so we can move through it. It passes. Having experienced it gives us empathy with others who suffer too. We can reach out.
Conversely, our culture values a life of comfort and avoidance of suffering. “Be nice and quiet.” “Don’t get involved.” “Family before others.” We can live in a home with an attached garage for years and never meet our neighbors.
But avoiding new relationships or allowing fear to limit where we go in the world, in order to resist emotional or psychological suffering, doesn’t work. Rather it results in anxiety, dysfunction, addiction, depression and worse. The ability to embrace suffering and then let it go, is the skill that makes us resilient, allowing us to remain hopeful and open to the future.
God is the lure and promise of a better future, different from the past.
We can choose happiness in the midst of suffering. As many can attest, the paradox is that sorrow and joy can coexist. Out of deep suffering can come peace, life-long joy and new life. Spring arrives.
