The Wild Rose Gypsy

As humans, it is easy to get caught up in what happened - what happened yesterday, what happened two weeks ago, what happened a year ago. We make it so much a part of our story that we let it shape us. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. For example, let's say that you succeeded at something. I'm going to go with running a marathon for personal reasons. So, you have succeeded at running a marathon, and because you did it before, you know that you can do it again. What about failure? We treat it the same. If we fail at something, we often let is shape us to where we believe we will fail again. However, yesterday is not today. Today is a brand new page, and we decide what is written on that page. There are easy ways to flip a switch on to change how you view today. I've started with something simple: create something new every day. Each day, I make sure to create something. It can be something I write, something I draw, a business idea, or a picture I take....

When Ray started building the Gypsy Rose Bus, we talked about several choices in outfitting her. We both wanted the ability to be off grid, for one. A factor of that was our toilet... When it came to purchasing a toilet, we knew that Nature’s Head was the way to go. If you’re unfamiliar with how a composting toilet works, I’ll explain. There’s absolutely no water involved. Urine goes in one compartment and solids go in another compartment. Absolutely everyone sits down to pee. When you pee, small holes carry the urine to the compartment that holds it. For us, we dump urine about every two days. For the poo 💩, there is a flap that opens toward the back where you sit down, like literally where the butthole is. In the compartment, you put something that helps to break down the solids into compost. We use coconut coir. We’ve found it to be the most effective. We empty that compartment and clean it about every month and a half. Our non-water closet is behind these lovely doors that Ray bu...

Hello, hello! I hope your week (so far) has been grand. It is the Lunar New Year. We have now entered the Year of the Pig, which is supposed to be a lucrative year. Pigs are good with money. Here's hoping. ;) Last week, I talked about what lead up to my husband Ray and I purchasing a bus to convert to a tiny home. As I mentioned, we previously owned 2 conventional homes. After moving out of our house in San Antonio and into a 2 bedroom apartment (1 bedroom which was ours), we had already begun the process of removing unnecessary items from our life. When I say unnecessary, I'm referring to (for example) camping gear we were using every so often and my many, many books. Items like this were taking up space, and we didn't need them every day in our life. Moving into the bus, we had to purge even more. We had to get rid of clothes. I got rid of all of my journals that I had been writing in since I was 12.  Instead, I took pictures of the pages so I could save them in a ...