Houseboats - Alternative Life

Hello everyone, Happy New Year! 

As promised I am going to show you some wonderful Houseboats outside San Francisco, California.  In a little hillside town called Sausalito.

I get all silly headed when I think about living an alternative life.  I think my fantasy has to do with something about beating the system.  What system, you may ask?  Well that is still unclear (I said silly headed), maybe the world of pressure and conservatism, the rat race, paying ridiculously high energy bills (as we do here in Italy).  Becoming trapped by a mortgage.

I love loft spaces, organic gardens, solar panels, making your own things, tiny cottages/sheds, big old rambling houses that need love.   I go crazy for color and I love white and gray and brown too.  I like the idea of living off the grid and then I also want to be able to go to a café and have a good cappuccino, often.

many of the houseboats have names like boats
  this one the ANSWER is pretty great

Houseboats and Mt. Tamalpias

Sausalito, Ca Houseboat

this one is quite huge, because they are all bigger than they look

When I went to Design School in Brooklyn I really wanted to move into one of the architectural masterpieces that were burnt out in that ghetto which was then my neighborhood, Clinton Hill.  I really wanted to be a squatter, but not a homeless type, more of a well-designed squatter.  I was also very scared of the rats I knew would be living in abundance there. I’m not tough.  During that time and even now I know in my heart that I would like to own a pink cashmere coat.  Do you see my dilemma?

this houseboat the roof is a deck garden

I understand that to some our life here in Umbria Italy living in this huge Gothic Palazzo is already a bit alternative.  To me having two feet thick stone walls is still weird.  Interesting that for me girls it probably normal.

this guy is even further off the grid, she has to row out

Do any of you out there know of blogs that seem to be about an alternative life?  I love and follow the blog Soule Mama www.soulemama.com.  Soule Mama is homesteading in Maine and knits and has a garden and makes honey.  She understands the simple life.  I also like the Tiny House Blog http://tinyhouseblog.com.   I am so impressed with these people who can live big while living small.

 

this houseboat has copper panels that have a gorgeous patina

it's a long pretty walk down the dock

this lavender paint job is fantastic,
the color is blinding in it's perfection and hue

My mother lives in a houseboat.  I left my mother's house out of this post to respect her privacy.  I will say that her space has lots of windows and skylights, it is quite modern and airy.  The front door enters into one big room that is the dinning room, kitchen and living room, then the bedrooms are downstairs at water level. 

I love this tiny houseboat full of color

What is your alternative life fantasy or are you already living it?  Interesting that alternative is just a perspective.

Un bacio di Umbria,

Natalie