Tiny House Furniture, Gratitude, Perspective and Perseverance, Log Cabin Life, Braised Lamb Shanks

Using materials from the forest that I’ve stockpiled for furniture, I build a log chair for the tiny house, the first of two. In my self reflections near the end of the video, I speak about gratitude, perspective and perseverance and how they have helped me to overcome challenges in my life.
Tiny house furniture is usually smaller and often multi-functional, but this log chair is not. My wife wanted a chair she could curl up in in front of the fire, so it had to be about 24 inches wide to fit the cheap pillows that she bought for the two wood chairs. My chair will be smaller and dual purpose – to sit facing the fire, but also to turn sideways to work at my corner desk when editing videos on my computer.
As usual, Cali, our golden retriever, is at my side while I’m building the furniture, either demanding my attention, entertaining herself or watching me intently, waiting for any indication that I’m done working at ready to play. She loves the outdoors and often chooses to lay on the front porch in the snow while she sleeps or watches for wildlife to chase.
The dog follows me around as I collect the balsam fir logs I cut down last March. The weather turns cold and snow, so I spend half of the time debarking the logs inside beside the fire in the wood stove. When it turns sunny and warmer the next day, I am able to work on the sawhorses on the front porch, using my hand tools to carve tenons on the logs. I use a two and a half inch hand auger to drill mortices in the legs and back supports. The logs are 3 to 4 inches in diameter and I drill one and half inch holes to accommodate the tenons. This is a very traditional way of making chairs, but this is the first chair I have ever made. Now that I have a better understanding of how to do it, I’ll make the second chair for in front of the fire and then I’ll turn my attention to the dining chairs or stools in the kitchen. I want to use smaller diameter logs, probably maple from the forest around the cabin. I don’t have a lather, but I can hand carve the wood legs and use an adze to carve a comfortable wood seat.
At the end of the video, I talk again about how I was personally seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in debt and how I had to change my perspective to keep motivated to get back out of debt. I talk about gratitude, accepting my role in my failures and being grateful for the positive things I still had in my life. Perspective was the result of gratitude, realizing that life always has challenges, life sucks generally, but by accepting that and being grateful for the good times, people and things in my life, life is not only worth living, but worth living fully. Perseverance is how I made it through the most challenging events in my life, including several years in court defending myself and family against relentless creditors who threatened to take my house and sue my parents for all of their equity in their home since they guaranteed my home and mortgage. It was a rough time on the family, but I absolved my family members of the burden, taking it all on myself, and persevered until I was successful. Today, I’m not only out of debt, I’m financially secure, happy and healthy and I plan to stay this way – hence the cabin life.
The meal, I almost forgot! Braised lamb shanks. My wife made lamb on the stove in a cast iron crock pot. Wait until you see this. Even if you don’t normally like lamb shanks, I guarantee you would like these!