ObscurAbode, The Dream

I have a dream! A dream of a Tiny Home/Camera Obscura/Artist Studio/Gallery/Community Resource Center on wheels which I can move from place to place interacting with other artists, building community, sharing and learning skills, Knitting it Forward with others, and holding Gallery Shows for local artists wherever I go.  I think my inner nomad needs a chance to come out. As a young person, I was privileged to travel around the US a bit with my family, and to Germany as a teen to see a bit of the world, but the travel bug was not really satisfied before my disability kicked in.

Now that I am starting to be healthier but am still have so far to go, I have decided that I want to learn to be more self sustaining by growing my own food, and creating objects people can barter, trade or buy from me to help me make my dream a reality. I have begun doing that with my Peace Full Creations. Please "Like" the Facebook page!

As far as the Gallery, it would be called ObscurA, and I plan to have a sign on the house that says ObscureAbode, and has a sign that can come down or move over to cover the last few letters so that it will then say "ObscurA, the Gallery is Open", or "Welcome to my Abode". I imagine it would be a rotating show. So that if I was parked somewhere for a month, every weekend would focus on a different artist, with the final show focusing on myself, and several other artists. Some artists have already said they want in on the deal, which is fun and exciting. If you are an artist and you'd like to help make this a reality, let me know.

As part of manifesting this dream, I did a quick and dirty sketch up of a tiny home/gallery on wheels which you see above, but it is nowhere near the reality of what I will build. For one thing, after much investigation, I changed my plan to have the entrance on the short side, and a fold down porch on one of the long sides, that wraps around to the front porch (short side) ... that may make no sense in your mind but I will sketch it out in the future. For another thing, I have been wanting to make it all in copper tones, with a steam punk aesthetic. At first I might have to build it bare bones, but eventually it will come together into the creative home/gallery I envision. In the mean time, I thought I had better post about the dream here, and hopefully my fellow tiny home enthusiasts, artists and friends can send out positive vibes to make it happen all the sooner!

Making gifts rather than buying

I have been struggling with when to buy and when not to. For example, I have WAY too many pajama pants, but almost all of them are so big on me now that I can't even tie em tight enough to stay on. So I bought 2 new pajama pants size XL. Losing weight does mean I'll need to buy some clothes (Tho I do have some 42's  and XL's I stored so that I don't have to do TOO much unnecessary shopping) and I did get the pajamas on sale. Good stuff. It's the holidays and I did buy one gift, for a holiday gift exchange. Otherwise, most of my gifts planned for this season are home made.

Then I ran across this site: http://www.takepart.com/photos/better-store-bought-holiday-gifts/better-than-store-bought-homemade-dog-biscuits when looking for instructions to make our own dog biscuits, and thought I'd take this pledge. It may be a challenge, but I'm not going to buy any more holiday gifts. They'll all be home made.

My family called me a grinch when I tried to encourage no xmas gifts. We're not even Christian, why are we exchanging gifts due to someone else's traditions? But apparently they like the stockings, tree and xmas gifts of their youth and didn't want to give them up. I like to give people gifts any time of the year, not just when someone else tells me to. But this year I think at least I can hand make gifts :) 

How do you handle the holidays?