Tiny Living

Stay updated with the latest trends, craftsmanship techniques, and behind-the-scenes stories from CraftSphere.

Jaimie and Dave, owners of Highland & Co. Acres farm, smiling together outdoors in winter clothing during outdoor adventure
About Us

Choosing Forever on the Deck of Our Shipping Container Home

The brain is a difficult thing to understand.  Your life and health may seem fine one day, and completely skewed the next.  The procedure on Dave’s brain did that to him, to us and for a brief season, it seemed that everything that we had worked together for was going to be gone.  Choosing joy was my only option.  The reality of my life without Dave was to much to handle, and so I CHOSE JOY, again and again.

January 9, 2020
Highland & Co. Acres completed shipping container tiny home nestled in forest with multi-level decks, wooden stairs, and natural stone landscaping
About Us

The Home Stretch – Transforming a Shipping Container into a Home

The foundation was poured, the containers were placed, the welding was done, the walls were framed, plumbing and electrical were in, insulation was sprayed, sheet rock was hung.  It was time for the final transformation of 2 metal boxes into our home.   

January 3, 2020
Jaimie and Dave from Highland & Co. Acres with Bryce and Rasa from Living Big in a Tiny House YouTube channel after filming shipping container home episode
About Us

That Time ‘Living Big In a Tiny House’ Came to Visit Our Shipping Containers

God gifted us with angels.  Angels that were wanted to share our story.  Dave and I told Bryce & Rasa, that while we were so honored that they wanted to film our home, it was our story of love and perseverance, even when all seems impossible that we wanted to share.  Our prayer was that if by sharing, we could touch just one person’s life, then it was all worth it.

December 20, 2019

Building a Wood Box Inside a Metal Shipping Container Box

Our shipping containers are structurally much stronger than a stick built home, for obvious reasons, and so we were able to use 2 x 4 material instead of standard 2 x 6 material to frame our home.  We were building our home to code and it was fully permitted. Our framed wood walls were 16” on center, standard code, but we needed to make sure that they didn’t touch the metal shipping container at any point.  To accomplish this, we used the D ring tie downs that are standard in containers and use bailing wire to stand our walls 1” off of our container walls.

December 13, 2019
Intracerebral Hemorrhage

The Rush to Winter Proof Our Shipping Container Home

We were so blessed to have family and church family step up and help us.  It was almost a full time job for me when we were at our property to keep Dave safe.  If the family wouldn’t have helped us, we would have ended up with 2 rusted out shipping containers going into spring and not the home that we were able to get dried in before winter came.  With our home dried in, our hope was that Dave would be able to continue to work on it as part of his therapy and as he got better and stronger.

November 29, 2019

Would an ICH Stop Us From Building our Shipping Container Home?

The ICU is a busy place in the middle of the night. The nurses in and out of the room every 10 minutes, sometimes more often if Dave’s alarm started to go off. There was a constant sound of paging, alarms, and more than once that long night, the sound of someone coding.

I tried to make myself shut my eyes and rest while Dave was resting, but the minute Dave’s alarm, or an alarm in the hall or a code sounded, my eyes flew open to make sure that Dave’s chest was still moving up and down.

November 22, 2019

The BEST Day Of Building Our Shipping Container Home – part #7

I have to admit, the moment those containers were in place, both this sense of Oh – My – Goodness, this is amazing, and also Oh – My – Goodness, we are really doing this were colliding inside of me. It all became so real – we were actually building our home out of shipping containers, and the hardest part was already done – the containers were in place and it wasn’t even noon 😉

October 25, 2019

Permitting A Shipping Container Home, Part #5

They already knew us; we had been talking for weeks. They had assisted in some critical design pieces. So, when the BIG day came and we headed to Building & Planning and attempted to submit our design and supporting documents to build our shipping container home and were told ‘NO’, we were shocked.! They had ‘dropped a surprise bombshell’ on us.

April 25, 2019
A cow, Chester the dog, and a rooster all represented in the logo for Highland & Co. Acres

Breeding AHCA Scottish Highland Coos for Quality & Confirmation ~ Shipping Container Farm Stay ~ Airbnb Super Hosts ~ Blessed Beyond Measure