Sustainability Book Review- Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn

Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Written as a collaborative work featuring the homes and space, written by the people who built them, Tiny Homes is a great source of inspiration for smaller more sustainable living. Many of the homes and spaces (studios, saunas, offices) were built using salvaged materials, opening up the readers options, not only in size, but also in economy.
Covering a great number of less-than-conventional but earth and pocketbook friendly construction methods, like straw bale, cobb, and palate, and including an article on the basic municipal planning and building approval process, Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter is a valuable resource for people dreaming tiny.
After reading this book, I look around my ridiculously oversized spaces filled with too much stuff and feel compelled to pare down the clutter and live with more of the things I use and less of the things that just take up space.
What makes this book special, beyond the valuable information, is the peak into the lives of the diverse people who have decided to live somewhere tiny and sometimes hand built for very different reasons and in very different places. I also like that tiny home builders featured throughout the book are easy to find and contact because the inclusion of website information from the contributors. All in all, it's a great resource filled with beautiful pictures sure to plant the seeds of a plan in readers' minds.

The Edible Front Yard by Ivette Soler: a Book Review

It's winter, and I'm already planning my spring planting. Aren't you?

This year I've decided that I want to go predominantly edible with my plantings, because not only can they be beautiful, they're functional. Let's face it, anything is more functional than grass. Sure, grass is great if you need something for your sheep or goats to munch on, but we don't have sheep and goats at my house (at this point in time) and I'm so tired of wasting time and money on the gas powered goat, I mean, lawn mower. It's silly. Water the grass (okay, I admit I'm not a grass waterer, but my neighbors are), mow the grass, water the grass, mow the grass. We want it to grow, we don't want it to grow. As a nation, we have an identity crisis going on in our own front yards.
No more, I say.

So, I've been spending the long nights reading up on some alternatives, and I want to share them with you, then maybe as planting time approaches we can share some of our plans with each other and check back in throughout the growing season. It will be good old fashioned hard work with delicious rewards.

You with me?

The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden by Ivette Soler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The Edible Front Yard by Ivette Soler is a good jumping off point for a person who is ready to start making the transition from growing a great big lawn of useless and resource wasting grass to having a functional garden space planted with the things one loves to eat while still maintaining the all important curb appeal. Her descriptions of various ornamental edibles that one might not consider growing, hello nasturtiums and orach, are truly useful in planning a garden. I appreciate that she includes a description of color, height, habit, days to maturity, drainage requirements, hardiness zones, and even what to do with the various edibles. That said, I wish she had included light requirements. It is not safe to assume that all plants need the same light, and while on a rare few Mediterranean herbs she says they require a lot of heat and sun, I know that my plant wish list, if drawn from this book, is going to require a substantial amount of light checking while in the planning phase. It just seems silly that with all of the details provided, that this one was omitted.
Still, it's a good book to have on hand when you're planning and drawing a blank outside the go-to garden veggies and looking for something both yummy and pretty.



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Feng Shui Anyone?

So we've been working on this long term renovation process, and it's turning out that home improvement is a real pain.  That said, as I'm starting to get to a point where I can consider things like color and just where to put the counter, I am wondering, how much thought do you give to Feng Shui when renovating, and what are your favorite resources?

My Review of the Hammaka hammock chair from CSN Stores

A while back I told you I was going to let you know how I liked CSN Stores, remember?  I was talking about  home improvement and renovating our garage and turning it into a living space?
Well, it turns out that our renovated garage is turning into Mongoosine's bedroom, and so it doesn't need any barstools, but it DOES need a chair.  Because she had enjoyed hanging out in the hammock Sky Chairs at the Renn Faire so very much, I decided to order her the hammock chair by Hammaka for Christmas this year, and she absolutely LOVES it.

It was a super good deal, only costing $50, as opposed to the $100 we had been looking at spending on the same type of chair when she fell in love with it at the Faire this summer.

And the Hammaka one had arm rests. Oooh, fancy shmancy.

Here's the review I left on the product's page, in case you're wondering.

Originally submitted at CSN Stores

Sweet Swingin'

By Slee from IL on 12/31/2010

5out of 5

This was the perfect Christmas gift for my tween.
She loves to lounge in it and read, or spin in circles.
I love that it was easy to assemble and is rated for up to 350 lbs, so I don't have to worry if she and a friend are being ridiculous and piling on, or if the baby wants to sit on my lap in it.
It was super easy to assemble and install (so long as you know where your beams are if you don't have a special contraption to hang it off of) and even with her jumping up and down over spouse's shoulder, it was less than a 10 minute assembly.

The only downside was that spouse thought it smelled a little weird coming out of the box, but since it has wood dowels, I think that smell he was referring to was "wood."

(legalese)

I bought this for Mongoosine's Christmas present using a gift certificate provided from CSN Stores a while back, and it was the perfect choice.

In other news, they shipped super quickly and everything arrived in great condition.
My only irritation was the box the item came in is the box in which it was shipped, meaning that had she beat me home, she would have seen the box and been able to tell, from the picture, what was in it.

Home Sweet Home Renovation

I've been pretty quiet lately, but a lot has been going on.  We decided to try to finish redoing our basement and garage this summer by converting it all into living space, and not just the usual man cave with bar stools and flat screen basement reoutfitting, but a real living space improvement conversion.  I'm talking luxurious bathtub with hot-tub like jets, laundry room, master bedroom suite, basement and moving the family room out to the large (fully heated and insulated) former garage.

So of course, I've been putting a lot of thought into how to decorate all of this once we finish getting it gutted. Yeah, we've been on this task for months now and are still working on gutting what was/is down there.  But part of that delay has been trying to figure out just what I want to do.  You know, giant  hand built TARDIS wardrobe and console room copper walls or something a little less fan girl?  Or I could go with this sweet TARDIS cut out, you know, because I can't quite give up the fangirl in me...

Yeah, that's right, you can get a TARDIS cut out from the CSNstores websites, of which AllBarstools.com is just one of over 200, so I'm really excited that they're sponsoring a review so I can put some of my fan-girl on this house rennovation, you know, once we get back on track with this whole project.  Of course, I'm spending way too much time on the CSNstores websites because they carry such a great variety of wares like kidlet toys, shoes, clothes lines, sewing machines, furniture, and even puppy wear.

So stay tuned for a follow up review of their customer service and great selection, as well as some before and after pictures of this home improvement quagmire.  Who knows, I may need a wet bar by the time I'm done, and if that's the case, I'll definitely be checking out some barstools.