Tiny House Tuesday: Thatched Roof Cottage

This little china cottage is my most recent tiny house.  T gave it to me for my birthday last November.  We picked it up at an antique store in update New York in early October, when we went to the Berkshires to watch JT run a cross country race.  We made a long weekend of it and enjoyed some happy adventures in upstate New York, Vermont, and western Massachusetts.  The house, which looks English to me because of its thatched roof, is a reminder of that adventure.

These days, as we close in on our ninth week at home to curb COVID- 19, those casual adventures seem a lifetime ago.  The house is a reminder that there will be more adventures still to be planned.

Tiny House Tuesday: Blue Wooden House

This week’s tiny house is a blue wooden colonial house that was an Etsy find a few years ago.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be coming to live on my bookshelf.

The Etsy shop is no longer around but the blue house is rather here to stay.  That’s happy!

Tiny House Tuesday - Baltic Sea edition

In 2014, we celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary with a family cruise in the Scandinavia and Baltic region.  We visited lots of countries but Talinn, Estonia, stood out for the abundance of well-preserved medieval streets and buildings.  JT and I took a walking tour of the city and saw lots of beauty.  I particularly remember the lovely pastel colors of the buildings and the cobblestone streets and town squares.  At the top of a hill in the older part of the city, we enjoyed an expansive view of city and stepped into a small gift shop with a collection of tiny houses.  JT and I each chose one.

Today, they sit on the bookshelf, pastel reminders of happy day spent noodling around a lovely old city.

That’s happy!

Tiny House Tuesdays: Little Green House

The little brown clay house lives in the dining room but the rest of my tiny house collection makes its home in the living room, on my book shelf.

This book shelf is one of the happiest corners of Sassafras House because books are that way for me.  This shelf has a collection of treasures; the books here have all been read at least once and have been saved because they are worth a re-read.  Over the years, I’ve added tiny decorations to the shelves.  Tucked among the books, they seem like hidden treasures to me.  Among the treasures is this wooden green house.

Of all the houses in my collection, I’ve owned this one the longest.  I bought it in my hometown when I was in college at UCLA so it is more than 30 years old. 

This kind of Cape Cod saltbox style house was not common in my corner of California.  But here in New Jersey, they are everywhere.  The style is appeals to me know at least as much as it did in the late 1980s when I first acquired it.   These days, it seems less exotic than it did at the time.  Life is that way, I suppose.

Tiny House Tuesday: Brown Ceramic House

Being at home has reminded me to appreciate the little knick knacks and collections that make my house a home.  I have several collections of this sort and for the next few Tuesdays I plan to write about one of them: my tiny house collection.  All told, I have 6 small houses and though it’s not a large collection (in terms of numbers or size), I’ve had some of these houses for years and the collection always makes me smile.  Most of the houses live on the bookshelf in the living room but today’s house is safely tucked in a spot in the dining room.   

This house was made by an artist who taught at my school, Frances Mackey.  She gave it to me when she noticed that 4 year old JT liked to have small items in his pockets.  He carried it home in his pocket that day and then we put it in a safe spot.  These days, it lives between a couple of brown clay squirrels, next to a ceramics project that JT made in kindergarten.  That project is flat and has the imprint of a leaf on it and is known as “pizza rock” because that’s where we tuck money for pizza delivery.  The little brown house is charming and tucked among other beloved items, it always makes me smile.