All The Trimmings

The above picture is the loft where my bed is now located. I have thrown a futon mattress up there until I come up with the funds to get a memory foam mattress.

I am using a standard ladder right now to get into the loft. Abel is bringing by my newly finished ladder today. I am ecstatic about that, as it will take up considerably less room than the normal ladder I have right now.


Kitchen table that folds down. Has my purse on it in this picture. The window next to it overlooks shrubbery and a field below.

A picture of the bathroom, where Riley was taking a nap at the time. This toilet is a composting toilet...which consists of a bucket. There are holes on either side of the toilet. One is for storage of toilet paper. The other is to hold sawdust or peat moss.


This is a picture of my kitchen. The faucet is going in today, we were having a time finding a one hole faucet. However, Abel did salvage a one hole Kohler faucet locally. Which is rad I am pretty happy I will have running water later today, once I hook up myself to the hose. This window looks into some Alder trees. It's pretty neat, makes me feel like I am in a tree house.


This last picture is me looking down from my loft into my circular window. This window looks out to some alder trees and my car. Further back is a rather rough trail to the main house.

Little House, How I Love Thee!

I have been in my little house a few days. To say that I am in love with my house is a vast understatement! I seriously LOVE my little house. I adore it!

The location is pretty spectacular as well. I have my own little corner of the world over here. I can hear the birds singing, and wind blowing through the trees, and other than the occasional airplane I do not hear a whole lot else. [Unless you count the 20 huskamutes/malamutes from the dog rescue that howl when someone is at the gate]

Riley is feeling right at home too. Though I think he is a bit upset he cannot climb the ladder upstairs on his own. He whined at me the other day and was trying to climb it. However, he is not a graceful creature and did not get too far. [Riley blames his lack of opposable thumbs.]

Since I moved in, I have slowly been bringing stuff in from the old house. I do not have a closet, so the shower space has become storage, but surprisingly, I am less attached to my stuff than I thought. So it has stayed fairly uncluttered in here.

There are three windows and two doors that open on the bottom half of the Fortune Cookie. The weather has been phenomenal this last week, so I have been able to leave them open most of the time. This makes for a really well lit and open space.

My best friend Kim came over for a couple days to hang out. She stayed the night and had her air mattress with her. As I do not have any furniture in here yet, she knew she could set it up without issue. Upon setting it up, we realized that it took over the entire 'living' room.

It has been fun just getting settled in. I have been having a blast.

A Place to Call Home

As I mentioned before, I had a friend offer up her place. She has an undeveloped plot of land that would suit me wonderfully.

I even have a private driveway for the time being. Which will be nice while Riley (my shih tzu) and I adjust to living in a tiny space.

Additionally, what makes this space really appealing is the fact that this is a community based household. Meaning we will share a portion of resources, expenses and food together.

Coming Together

So things are coming together rather nicely. The Fortune Cookie is on the last stages of exterior construction. It will soon be moving to interior construction, I am so excited (when I say excited, I mean that I find it likely that most everyone who knows me will be tired of this topic quite shortly)!

I started this journey with the intent to be on the road full-time, however, after purchasing the bus Kim decided that this was not the route she wanted to take. She is in the process of selling her bus, fondly referred to as Moby. In the interim, it is a neat guest house.

I contemplated purchasing another tow vehicle, but fuel and maintenance costs also impacted my decision to road trip full-time. Not to mention, it is a bit counterproductive to try to reduce a carbon footprint by owning a tiny home and traveling on the road full-time.

So this begs the question, where am I going to park this beautiful tiny house?! An envious me has been lamenting that it appears that every other tiny home owner seems to know where they are going to land their home.

I went on an epic search for somewhere and a situation to call home. I searched long-term RV lots, spoke with friends and family, contemplated purchasing property, WWOOFing, Boondocking or sticking with my original plan of being a "Rubber Tramp" (a term I learned from Into the Wild).

After a few months of pondering at great length, I came to the conclusion that I want somewhere stable I can keep as homebase, while I go Vagabonding. Round the World (RTW) travel has always appealed to me, and after a lot of soul searching, I realized this was the most logical conclusion to my dilemma.

So I followed up with a friend of mine and found a place the Fortune Cookie, myself and my dogs can call home. With the construction of my tiny home reaching the end, this is a huge relief!

Fortune Cookie

So, back to the tiny house. After talking with Dee a couple times, I finally built up the courage to ask her if she was still constructing vardos with Portland Alternative Dwellings. She wrote me back that she had her hands full with projects, but she put me in touch with a wonderful man by the name of Abel 'Zyl' Zimmerman.

When I first met him at Sizizi's for coffee, I really was not entirely sure what to expect. Abel is bright-eyed, quick to smile, genuine and a bit soft spoken. When I explained what I had in mind he lit up like a Christmas tree. We spent a number of hours going over concepts, ideas, cost and possible outcomes.

I knew almost instantly that he was the perfect guy for the job. He was artistic, a little off the beaten path and stellar with carpentry. He also happens to be a aerial trapeze artist, how rad is that? You can find him at Zyl Vardos.

The next time we met he introduced me to the first vardo he had constructed, The Azavela. Abel had a certain glow of excitement and pride about him as he explained the structure. It is gorgeous, well lit, spacious, cozy and I wanted to move into it immediately. My friend Odera, who was with me concured as we fell in love with his vardo instantly.

Abel and I talked more over the next couple weeks. I explained that my plan was to travel extensively across the United States, towing my vardo behind me. He made sure to design a structure that was built to withstand that kind of abuse. Eventually, the time came that we sat down with a contract, cost and the final design concept. It was a hardier version of his original Azavela design, with some tweaks.

Keep in mind that Abel is a rather artistically minded craftsman, something I appreciate and admire greatly about him. The cost of the original design was a few grand more than I knew I could afford. So, he worked around this by coming up with an entirely different design. He presented this to me and I gawked at it with glee. The drawbacks were that it was two feet shorter and a few feet taller than the original design. I knew this design was "it" though, I was ecstatic. He joked that it will look a bit like a church. He calls this design the Fortune Cookie.

The Idea Realized

I have come to observe that I have to let ideas take root before I will give them credence. Partially due to what I call my 'Oh Shiny!' complex. So I try to allot myself a period of time where I ponder and/or drool about something before acting on it, best I can.

I have participated in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) for about 13 years, and have aspired to having a gypsy persona. In light of this, I have had a fascination with Gypsy Vardos for years. I thought about building one so that I could have a comfy place to lay my head when running off to wars and tourneys of all sorts. However, I always felt it was a bit of a pipe dream.

Fast forward to my tiny house notion, then back to my vardo concept. I realized I really wanted to marry the two ideas. Who said that my tiny house could not be a vardo? I mean, that sounds like a fantastic idea! Then realized I put myself almost back at square one.

As much as I would like to be a fabulous DIY'er (do-it-yourself), I knew I did not have the tools, time or money needed for such an epic project, or did I?

All About The Details

After meeting with Dee, I wanted to meet other tiny house owners. I found another relatively local tiny home builder, Mark. Mark agreed to meet with me to see his tiny house. He had deviated from the original Tumbleweed plan with his home. He built his tiny home for his mother, who had suffered when Hurricane Katrina hit.

He wanted his home to have a foundation. City ordinances made this increasingly difficult. He hired an architect, who assisted with city approved plans. When speaking with him, he answered a lot of questions. He was rather diplomatic about his frustrations regarding the process. The home turned out beautifully and gave me some more ideas.

I was not completely satisfied. I adore the Tumbleweed homes, but knew they were a bit more than I could afford and were not exactly what I was looking for.

Keep It Movin

"Keep it movin" was a turn of phrase Coco, a co-worker of mine, used frequently. Usually in reference to us pushing cases through our queue at work. But I found I adopted it during internal dialogue with myself.

The more immersed I became in adopting green actions, the more publications, blogs, books and documentaries I viewed. I stumbled across the Tiny House Movement. Specifically, the first main example I spotted was Tumbleweed Houses. I thought they were lovely, but wanted to see one in person.

I contacted Tumbleweed directly to see if they could put me in touch with a local Tumbleweed House owner, Dee Williams. They wrote back a few days later letting me know that I could get a hold of her through Portland Alternative Dwellings, a company she had started.

Dee Williams is one of the first Tumbleweed House builders. She built hers by hand for about $10,000.00, using mostly reclaimed materials. I requested to meet her and see her house in person and she agreed.

Meeting her was delightful, Dee was informative and friendly. She made a number of suggestions and answered my many questions how living in a tiny home had affected her life, dating and work. There are a number of videos of Dee and her home. I have to say she was an inspiration for me to consider living in a tiny home was possible.

So, the seed was planted, I realized I had to keep it movin. Otherwise, this was going to end up being a pipe dream. How was I going to get out of my house, in this housing market to get into a tiny house?

The Beginning

I knew something had to change. I was nearing my eighth year working for a major bank. I detested the job and the companies business practices. I worked nights as well as every weekend.

I owned a home that I had purchased at one of the worst moments possible, right before the housing crash. To help pay for the mortgage I rented out rooms in the house and I lived in the garage.

I realized after buying the house, that I did not want to own it. It was too big for my personal needs. Additionally, my income did not allow for it. I had to work a lot of overtime to make the payments and to have additional funds. So between my normal working hours and overtime, I did not have much of a social life.

My parents were proud, their daughter was under 30, had a job at a major bank and owned a home.

So why wasn't I happy?