Tag: family

You can live mortgage free in a tiny house, like this family of four does. It might be too cozy for some but having no debt would be a great off-setting advantage. TweetFacebookLinkedInTumblrStumbleDiggDelicious

“Of the many thousands of hours spent around kitchen tables—those eternal kitchen tables of the poor!—there is not much to say.” ~Joyce Carol Oates, in Them. “Of those eternal kitchen tables of the poor there is considerable to say.” ~Two-Bit Guru Looking back, the first thing about kitchen tables is that they were in the […]

The time of getting and giving Christmas gifts is breathing right in our faces again, having leaped upon us like an impatient panther even faster than it has in years past. I believe that’s because the Mayan calendar says that things happen faster and faster as the end of a 5,125 year cycle approaches. In […]

Notice: Since the end of the world may occur tomorrow, you might want to hold off starting this project until Saturday, if there is a Saturday. If there is no Saturday, it’s been nice knowing you. Do you remember those big old heat registers at Grandma’s house? They were vertical against the wall and the […]

William Morris [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is what I think I am: Good, honest, fair, peaceful, loving, helpful, trusting, euphoric, joyful, accepting, generous, forgiving, and more. This is what everyone is, at the core. Why, then, is there so much chaos in the world, so much evil, so much crap when it comes to human behavior? I suggest that it’s […]

Two-bit Guru | Not Knowing What You Want | Photo of a Visioning Board

As often happens when I innocently write a post on any old subject, such as wanting, the idea gets a hold of me and, like a sand bur on flannel pajamas, it won’t let go. The ramifications of which have led me to this question: How do we know what we want in the first […]

Two-bit Guru | Imaginary Ghosts | Person in a sheet dressed up as a ghost.

Maybe the Halloween season brought this thought to me: I carried around imaginary ghosts in my head for a long time. You might have some in your head, too. My ghosts remind me that the way I’m doing something isn’t the way my cousin Hans would have done it. If I was able to share […]

It doesn’t take much to make a functional item out of just about anything. One, 32-ounce yogurt container, a piece of cord, a marker, a jackknife, and in 5 minutes you’ve got yourself a dandy raspberry container for picking. Thinking of Grandma’s serious, tanned face when she was picking berries with a pail around her […]

Two-bit Guru - Can Do - Black and white photo of a fedora and wire rimmed glasses

There was an inventor named Cal in my hometown who projected 16mm movies on a sheet stretched between trees in his back yard, for neighborhood kids on summer nights. He knew about all sorts of stuff, like how to draw cartoons, how to make things, how to be funny, and how to go right to […]

Part of the gardening cycle for me each year is to create the ideal support for pole beans and tomatoes. In the past I have used fence posts, twine, limbs trimmed from trees and bushes, wire tomato rings, salvaged bed frames, and probably a few other things I’ve forgotten. Last year’s device was a framework […]