Karen from Log Cabin Quilter left a comment the other day stating she had made the little Winter Solstice quilt plus she also stated, “your blog name is intriguing.” I thought an explanation might be in order. In 2008 when I started this blog with the help of my friend Ellie, the cowboy and I struggled with names. I grew up in a camping family—my Mom and Dad had a RV, my then husband and I had a tent. Michael grew up in an outfitting family—they used horses to pack their gear into the mountains near Yellowstone Park and slept in wall tents.
As we were nearing retirement age in 2003 and were participating in a shooting sport I would suggest getting a RV so we could travel to warmer climates in the winter and shoot. The cowboy would say, “I’m not living in a *&^% tin tee pee.” We live in a log cabin on acreage in the mountains of Montana—thus TinTeePeeLogCabin became the name of our blog. Needless to say, the cowboy does now spend a fair amount of time living in a tin tee pee.
We’ve had several “tin tee pees”—our friends Angie and Ralph frequently say, “you guys change RV’s more often than most people change their underwear!” 
The motorhome has no slides and we love it that way—we have no slide issues such as leaks and we don’t have to deal with flapping slide awnings. With that said, we also don’t live in our motorhome full time and if we did I might want slides.
When we bought it this is how it looked:
The TV was above the driver’s seat and you would sit in those two swivel recliners to watch TV. We took the old TV and the recliners out. We also removed that gorgeous 
While I was traveling the cowboy was remodeling. We’ve had a hard to use situation—the TV rode in one of the upper cabinets and when we wanted to watch TV we took it down and sat the TV on that little table between the recliners in the above photo—wires hanging everywhere—not very aesthetically pleasing! Plus that dumb little cabinet/table stuck too far out into the room since we removed the recliners. That lamp you see in the photo was glued to the table—that took some doing to remove!!
Notice our little blue flame heater on the wall—have you seen the great article in the Escapees Magazine about blue flame heaters?
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Thanks for the tour. I can look at houses and RV's all day. You know sometimes they are the same thing!
ReplyDeleteI agree - it sure is nice to have a hubby who is handy. I love what the cowboy did with the table. And I can't imagine my life without my blue flame.
ReplyDeleteI always wondered how your blog name came about - thanks for the explanation. Nice job on remodeling the Tin Teepee! If we were ever planning to RV in places where it got cold I'd probably look at one of those Blue Flame heaters. Don't think we'll ever need one in Palm Springs though.
ReplyDeleteWe liked the interior of your Tin Teepee when we saw it last winter at North Ranch. I personally like the darker woods & plush ritzy look of higher end coaches. Oh how many times over the years I have wished I was a handy person. It seems to come naturally to so many guys I know. I always have a head full of ideas on how to change things but put a hammer in my hand & the only thing I'll nail down is a finger. Has always been a source of great frustration for me. Interesting how you arrived at your TIN TEEPEE/LOG CABIN name. Makes good sense:))
ReplyDeleteFirst time I saw a picture of the cowboy I knew where the tin teepee part came from :-) I guess I never noticed that your house is a log cabin - but of course it is! Even that blue couch was tame compared to some of the décor in those older coaches - but that was definitely a lot of furniture in a small space. Families camped for years without slides and did just fine, probably could have lived without them full time if they had never been built. But we'll have four slides and love every inch :-) Can't imagine no tv during football season, but it could stay in the cupboard the rest of the time. Anything Michael can't fix?
ReplyDeleteGood story about how you came up with your blog title. Makes sense to me!
ReplyDeleteThe Tin TeePee reno looks very nice and professional.
Having a handy husband is a must to live in a house on wheels. Nice work:)
ReplyDeleteYup.. we have an older rig without slides too and it has gone through a few stages of remodel. Thanks to you, we bought a reclining loveset, in place of the two fat lazyboy chairs we thought we wanted. Nixed those and gave them to the kids and bought a loveseat after seeing your pic of yours.
ReplyDeleteOur tv also rides along laying down and we only put it up on a little table when we want to use it. We still left the big one over the driver's seat because it also doubles as a screen for our backup camera.
We have the olympian wave 8 catalytic heater in our rig... which functions similar to the blue flame, not needing 12 volt power. But we wrecked the pad on it mid-vacation and picked up a blue flame for the rest of the vacation until we could fix the Olympian. So we installed that blue flame in our last house and it heated the main and upper level quilt well and save on our propane use in the house! We took it with us when we sold that house, and we have the blue flame stashed aside in case we ever need it again.
We love all the room we have in our rig, and the ability to change it around a bit.... and we joke about it being 18 years old, it's now old enough to vote!