More Shelter-Kit Houses

Build My Own House?

Lately I've been obsessed with the idea of building my own house, mostly because I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and housing is way too expensive. Not that building your own house is necessarily more affordable, but...
In a very roundabout way, I came across this company called Shelter-Kit that offers all kinds of kits for building your own home. Some are kinda modernist cool, others are more old-timey cosy, and all seemed to be pretty customizable.
Basically, you design what you want based on different modular units and materials offered, the company makes everything needed (including a super comprehensive instruction booklet), everything is shipped to your site, and you build the house on a foundation you have prepared beforehand. You have to do the interior finishing, plumbing, and electrical, etc. yourself, though.
Anyway, I'm just into the idea of having a lot of control over what's going into my house (as in "no toxic weird stuff") and being able to partially design it myself. Like I could add alpine chalet details, windowboxes, porch, whatever to make it look cool.
So, can I find affordable buildable land lots in the Bay Area? That would be the ultimate challenge to making this little idea a reality.

My Pippi Figures Arrived!

I won the cool Pippi figures off of the Swedish ebay-type site Tradera! The seller was really, really nice and made my purchase very easy for me as he spoke, er wrote, fantastic English.

Here's a picture of my Barbapapa figure welcoming my Pippi figure, hee hee.

Someday I hope to visit Sweden and see all the cool Pippi places, etc. in person. There's Astrid Lindgren's World Playpark in Vimmerby. Apparently there's a recreation of Pippi's house as well as a whole bunch of other people and places in Lindgren's many books.

One of my favorite artists, Carl Larson (and his wife, Karin, too) is from Sweden and you can tour the house that he and his family lived in and built. So I definitely want to go there and also to the places where his murals and paintings are exhibited. I was really lucky to see some of his original paintings at a museum show about the Arts and Crafts Movement at the L.A. County Museum of Art.

And, of course, you can't forget Ikea. Gotta see where Ikea all started.

Barbapapa Hedgehog

Does anyone remember a cartoon called Barbapapa? It was on probably in rerun in the late 70's, maybe early 80's, and I think it was originally European. I found this video on YouTube of a Barbapapa artist turning into a hedgehog. I know, I know, WHAT am I talking about? You'll just have to watch and see: