Tiny home tour

We are a family of five living in about 350 sq feet.  I know, that's like a mansion in the tiny home world!  The truth is that when we bought this house in 2010, I had no idea there was a whole "tiny house movement." Our motivation was that it sat on 4 acres in the country, but still only 6 miles from town, AND we could afford it!

Our original plan was to add on to the little house. Instead, my husband (the Jack-of-all-trades, can-build-anything guy) came up with the idea to transform the pole building on the property into a house. He started working on that in late 2011, when we were pregnant with our first. He has done over 90% of the work himself.

We are inching closer to being able to move into "the big house" (very exciting for us)! But in the last six years, through the arrivals of our three kids, we have learned how to make the little house work for us.

When I got pregnant the first time, I had a minor freak-out in my brain about the fact that we lived in such a small space: "Who does this?" I thought!   Actually. MANY people do this. And I'm not just talking about all of us "first world" tiny-housers. Millions of people all over the globe for thousands of years have lived and raised their families in tiny spaces, untold numbers of them with no heat or running water.
With that in mind, I put my heart toward being content in my little space, owning it, and not caring what other people think.

Here's a mini tour of what some of the little house looks like.

Kitchen. It took me way too long to figure out that to gain space, I needed to go UP! UP OFF the counter. My husband fashioned the shelf in the pic below out of an old cabinet he salvaged. He took the doors off, added some shelves and painted it with some brown paint, also salvaged.  The little metal thing under the clock is something from an old refrigerator (as near as I can tell) that I found at Goodwill for $2.  It keeps a few more things off the counter.

Credit for the photo directly above and the one at the beginning of this post goes to my talented sister-in-law, Acacia. 

http://www.acaciaphotos.com/

The dining room.  The booth was one of the very first "projects" we did when we bought the house. We found the black booths at the ReStore for $50 and picked up the red one later off craigslist for $35.  It's a bit tight, but I still managed to sit at it pregnant.  ;)  It has served us well. We spend a lot of time at it since it gets good light.  When company is here, this is often where we sit. 

The "living room," as well as the awesome custom closet my husband built, will have to come in a future post when I figure out how to photograph them well!  For now, I'll leave you with a video of how we fit 3 kids and 2 adults in one tiny bedroom!

Chocolate sweet potato cupcakes, sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free

The inspiration for these cupcakes came from this recipe:
http://www.spoonfulofsugarfree.com/2013/07/15/flourless-chocolate-cake-made-with-almonds/

Here is my adaptation, made with sweet potatoes and with the addition of a sweet potato frosting!

Makes 12 cupcakes

1 1/2 cups almond flour or almond meal * see notes
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup pitted dates *
Boiling water for soaking dates
6 small sweet potatoes, or 3 medium, or 2 large, baked and peeled.
3 eggs
2 T coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla

Frosting
This will use some of the dates and sweet potatoes from above, plus
4 T coconut oil
1/3 cup peanut butter, or other              nut butter
2 T cocoa powder
1/2 tsp vanilla
Pinch salt

Directions
Soak dates in boiling water for about 15 min or longer. You can do this while baking the sweet potatoes.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Line a muffin tin with paper wrappers or grease very well with coconut oil. I recommend the cupcake wrappers, though.

Mix dry ingredients: almond flour/meal, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt.
In a food processor or with a stick blender, puree the sweet potatoes with the soaked dates and about 1/4 cup of the date-soaking water.

Transfer 1 cup of the sweet potato/date puree to a mixing bowl. (The remainder will be for your frosting)
To the mixing bowl, add the coconut oil, eggs and vanilla and whisk until smooth.
Add wet mixture to dry.

Divide batter evenly into 12 cupcakes and bake 10-12 minutes (note, my oven runs HOT. You may need to bake longer) or until a knife comes out almost clean. Don't overbake!  
Let sit 10-15 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Meanwhile, blend the remaining sweet potato/date puree with the rest of the frosting ingredients. If it's still warm, let it chill a bit in the fridge before frosting the cooled cupcakes.  I did the old ziplock bag with the corner snipped off trick to frost these.


*Notes
Almond meal, which you can buy or make yourself by grinding whole almonds, will make the cupcakes have a "crunchier," more"rustic" texture, depending on how fine it is ground. Almond flour makes a more refined texture, like cupcakes made with regular wheat flour.  You can also use a mix of both.

I used only 1/2 cup of dates and they were sweet enough to satisfy my kids and me, but may not be sweet enough for some people. The original recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups dates, and that's for the cupcake batter only! That makes them very sweet and taste like traditional cupcakes.  1 cup is a good middle ground, I think.

Enjoy!