2021. It's here and starting with a....well, it started. Slow start, but hope for the future grows every day. And hope for new blog posts grow as well. Heh.

Expect new posts coming very soon, including:

- The "Disney Tattoo" collection
- The Adventurer's Loft: "Where does he get those wondeful toys?!" (Yes a DC quote - forgive me.)
- How we made our house 'Smart'

And much more! Hopefully as the year moves along, we'll have some travel reports in there as well (us, not the house...not yet (wink, wink).

Stay safe and sane everyone. Hugs to you all from The Tiny Mouse House!

Hi everyone! Hope your holidays are shaping up to be magical despite these challenging times we live in. And we truly hope everyone is wearing their masks, socially distancing, keeping those gatherings small and limited to your immediate group, and just generally being kind and considerate of others. Things will get better. There is hope on the horizon in the form of vaccines with high success rates and new leadership in this country. If all goes well, we may resume some sense of normalcy in mid-to-late summer. Disneyland may even reopen!

As for us and this blog, 2021 is a "keep it simple" year for us. We invested a large amount of funds to bring our tiny home up to speed very quickly. 2021 will be one for recovery and rejuvenation, financially, physically and mentally. That's not to say things will stay static in the TIny Mouse House. Things will change, and when blog posts warrant updating, when galleries have new pictures and perhaps even a new video or two, we will post it here. But there will be no set schedule and it may be a while between posts. 

We're still here though! Please feel free to reach out through the contact us page and we'll get back to you pretty quickly. We'd love to hear from any of you with your own Tiny House projects, perhaps inspired in some small way by our journey.  And if there are any questions you might have or stories you'd like told about our home, please let us know! It might just make it into a blog post of its own.

We truly wish all of you a very safe and sane 2021 and beyond. May the promise we see forming grow to one of unity, equality, acceptance, bipartisanship and ultimately peace for each one of you and our country and world, together.

And may all your Disney dreams come true!

We are very excited to be spending our first Christmas and New Year's in our Tiny Mouse House! And my, how far we've come in our holiday decor vs a few years ago. 2016 is when we had our Open House for Christmas, sporting a multi-level light show to music (designed by us), and our house had 17 CHRISTMAS TREES inside!

This year, we've learned the power of the adage "less is more" when it comes to Tiny House living. And that applies to our decorations as well. Outside, our multi-color LEDs behind the Mickey icons have been joined by some "under-glow" lighting supplied by three Hue outdoor spotlights. They give off a soft touch of color to the walkway in front of the house. And welcoming everyone at the front door is none other than Mickey himself.

Inside, one of those 17 trees has made it into our tiny house. At the time, it was in my den, a white paper flock where I had swapped out all of the colored lights for just red and yellow - the theme being, naturally, Mickey Mouse! Now it sits on our table, with a very select set of personal ornaments (including ones representing each of our themed rooms in the house), and Mickey icon blue ornaments to juxtapose the red and yellow glow.

It isn't big, but it doesn't need to be. It's a perfect size and the glow illuminates the entire house, so much so that we have found ourselves just having the tree lit while watching television or just relaxing in the recliners. Additionally, we have a few select Christmas plush Mickeys and Minnies sprinkled throughout the house (and one jingly Xmas Dopey in the bedroom!)

And that's really it. It sounds sparse, but it feels right. We do plan on expanding the decorations outside next year though, with a modified return of our light show featuring new per-channel RGB lighting to go with new yard decorations and accents, all set to returning musical favorites from past shows we've done along with new surprises!

We truly hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday season, and stays safe (and sane) as we move into a very promising 2021! We love you all. 

 Beginning with those words, Disneyland was dedicated on July 17, 1955. And while we would never put our little slice of magic anywhere close to the import of what began on that day, we are so very, very proud of what we have achieved with our home.

As I mentioned in the last post, our interior design is now complete....er, well complete for now. To paraphrase Walt Disney himself, "Our home will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world..." But we are at a point that we are ready to share the interior with the world.

Below are links to both a video tour we put together, as well as a gallery of the home. It includes the new awning we just had installed (more info on the front page of this site). Please note that the video does not provide narration. If we get enough requests, we may film a more detailed tour. OR....if we get really lucky, maybe a Tiny House YouTube personality might visit us? Hint, Bryce, hint. :)

We've also been thinking about the next steps for these blog posts, and are considering doing more detailed stories about specific items in the house or design decisions we made, some of which have some cool stories behind them.

Before we get to the links, we do want to touch upon the theming of the house. In a grand sense, it takes its cues from the Disney parks, in that we utilized a "hub & spoke" layout. Like the main hub past main street leads to Adventureland, Fantasyland, etc., our house uses that idea but leads into themed rooms instead of lands.

When you enter our home, you enter into the central hub - our main living area consisting of our Living Room and Kitchen. These are focused on the most prevalent inspiration for our home: Mickey Mouse. Adorned with black, white and red accents, we find Mickey at every turn: from art work to plushes, from rugs to dinnerware. Mickey is with us whatever we do, wherever we go. And he reminds us, like Disney, our home all started with a mouse...

From that main hub, you can enter 4 different themed areas:

The first is our bedroom, themed around my wife's favorite character. Welcome to Dopey's Mine, a glowing green room with purple accents and the impossibly cute visage of our favorite dwarf.

The second is our bathroom. Please forgive the pun, for it was way too perfect. Welcome to Pooh Corner. Deep in the hundred acre wood, you'll find Winnie the Pooh and his friends practically everywhere.

The third is our smaller loft, reached by a custom-made maple ladder. It is the most hidden of the rooms, requiring you to climb to truly view and appreciate the design. But Mickey's beloved had to have her own little spot, and so we present Minnie's Hideway.

And last but not least, our fourth area pulls its theming from several different inspirations. Starting with the gone-but-not-forgotten Adventurer's Club of Pleasure Island, to the Enchanted Tiki Room, to the Pirates of the Caribbean and even Indiana Jones. It is decorated as eclectic as the Club itself: welcome to The Adventurer's Loft.

We are so very proud of what we have created, with all of our partners, family and friends. From the curtains throughout the house all lovingly sewn by my mom, to the tiniest hidden Mickeys, we hope you enjoy your virtual visit to our little piece of magic, our personal Magic Kingdom... our Tiny Mouse House. 

Photo Gallery link: click HERE.

Video tour link: click HERE.  You can also watch the video embedded below.

​Please comment here and let us know what you think, and what you would like to read more about in the future! Enjoy and stay safe!

We were able to complete our filming of the finished interior Saturday. It's going to take me a little time to get the final video put together, as well as organize the pictures in order and in a proper album on Google Photos (which we'll share here of course!)

So a little more patience please. I'm guessing a week or two (since I will be on vacation later this week and not working on this specific project.) In the meantime, here's a sneak peek! 

Been a long, exhausting week what with everything going on in the world AND us adding a new "addition" to the Tiny Mouse House! Pictures of that and the promised interior pics and video(s) coming soon. 

In the meantime, here's a pic of one-half of our Yorkie duo - Ty is sleeping on the floor most likely, but here is his brother, Toby, chilling with his pal. The look on his face kinda represents us all these days, but knowing his friend Dopey has got his back and has his arms open wide for a big, magical, Disney hug! 

More coming soon! And a quick hint: Dopey is there for a reason; he temporarily moved out here to chill from his usual THEMED spot..... :)

While we really can't celebrate like we want to this year, we didn't want to let this opportunity pass by without a quick "Hiya Folks!" from our head mouse in the house. Next year, expect decorations outside for Halloween and Christmas. 

We've been living in our Tiny Mouse House for just over two months now and we are loving it. As with any new house of ANY size, there have been ups and down. There have been a few small maintenance issues that Forever Homes or the device manufacturers have immediately addressed. But overall it's been everything we had hoped for. Definitely more room than the trailer we were in, which actually makes it feel roomier - because it is. :)

And we're really glad we stuck with the design and didn't compromise on any choices. The house features amazing items like an on-demand hot water heater (soooo easy to take unlimited hot water for granted), quartz counter tops, a jacuzzi tub, dual mini-split AC/heaters, dishwasher, stackable washer and dryer (separate units), LCD fireplace and so much more. And we've added items like solar screens and coming soon a 20' Sunsetter awning.

It truly feels like home. And we're adjusting to the reduction of space both with less storage - making us more aware of what we purchase and what we have to keep in our storage unit - and with display surfaces. We have to constantly catch ourselves with the collectibles and decorations we buy, because there just isn't any room without it feeling cluttered. We are purposely leaving more empty wall space than we normally would, to avoid an oversaturation of our themes.

And each area does have a theme. I won't spoil what they are yet, but we are super-excited that they have all come together so well.

Soon we will have interior pics and video, and we will continue to post about how certain things came to pass, answer questions we may get in the comments, and fun stories from life in a Tiny Mouse House!

Our house sold in late December 2019. Our downsizing was going well enough. We found a location for the tiny house. We had a closing date for funds to release so we could have Forever Tiny Homes start the build. Design was finalized enough for them to start. All in all, things were going well....

Except we had no place to live while the house was being built, estimated 4 to 5 months (that would become 7 months, primarily pandemic reasons.) We were close to panic mode and all the thoughts raced through our minds: Do we rent a house? Do we buy a trailer then sell it? Do we try to live with family? None of those were ideal solutions for various reasons. Key was not using any of the proceeds for anything but paying off debt and paying for the tiny. 

On a whim one night, I had an idea. I posted to Facebook "I know this is going to sound crazy, but does anyone have a trailer we could borrow for 6 to 9 months while our Tiny House is being built?" Gave myself a few extra months, just in case things ran long during the build (this would prove prescient). We did NOT expect a reply.

Only we did get a reply. Quickly. From a friend who I can never thank enough. I won't mention his name here without permission, but rest assured he knows who he is. :) He offered us use of his 26' trailer for as long as we needed it, and I offered a small monthly payment to offset insurance costs for him (though I also took out a policy, to cover his property and what we would have inside.) He and his wife were so kind and accommodating during the entire process, never once worrying or checking up on us. It was complete trust and true friendship. Again, I can never truly repay such a kindness.

We contacted the place we would be living in the tiny house, and asked if we could move in early with the temp trailer in the spot we would be in, just pay for the location starting then and then swap out when the tiny was ready. Was not a problem, and on January 21st, we moved from an 1800-ish square foot home into a 26' trailer. We stashed what we wanted to definitely keep in a very close-by storage unit, moved a few suitcases and bins of items we needed to live day-to-day into the trailer, and sold or donated everything else before the move date.

Now please understand this is ZERO fault of my friend or ANY complaint of the trailer itself. Yes, we had to make some repairs during our time in it, but that is simply because most (if not ALL) travel trailers are NOT MADE FOR FULL-TIME LIVING. The appliances, the furnishings, the overall build all have life expectancies based on total use. 2 weeks here, a couple weekends there - you might put in 20 days total living per YEAR and that's on the high side.

We lived in the trailer for just shy of 7 MONTHS STRAIGHT. To its credit, it held up fairly well. I had to repair things like the thermistor on the refrigerator, burnt out LED light bulbs, a bent stabilizer jack. We had to adapt to a 5 gallon hot water heater and showers that involved turning on the hot water for a minute at a time, scrubbing and rinsing and hoping we wouldn't suddenly get a blast of freezing cold water - man, I missed long hot showers, not to mention a simple thing like a bath. And don't get me started on the horror that is a black water tank....ugh....

But persevere we did. And all the while, the world started crumbling around us. What was normal became taboo. Our cruise vacation to Alaska was cancelled. Our regular Saturday night dinners out became impossible. I refuse to get political on this site, but our country became a hate-filled powder keg, our state exploded in flames and our world became a contagion. We were suddenly forced to spend more time in this little metal box then we had ever anticipated.

I cannot thank my parents enough. We agreed early on that our "quarantine group" would be them and my son and daughter, with her fiancé.  We kept the group small, and found ourselves- just for our sanity - spending the weekends at my parents house. There was room to stretch, conversation beyond the little metal box, reason to look forward to Saturday and Sunday.

And we continued to talk with Arlin and Dominic. The design stayed true, with small adaptations as needed. Despite the chaos of the world and the difficulty in getting things that were just recently easy to source, the vision was never compromised. If anything, they found ways to add even more details and unexpected touches to the house. We limited our visits to their facility to just twice during the entire process. Texting probably drove them crazy, but it was weekly (if not daily sometimes), getting the details, the feel, the dream just right.

The months pushed on. The expected 4 months became 5 became 6 became almost 7. But suddenly, almost unbelievably, the day came when were scheduling my friend to pickup his trailer, washed and cleaned, our belonging stashed into an already-packed storage unit. Two days later, a driver came around the corner....and behind him, was our dream home. 

Our forever home.