Can living smaller give you more freedom, or even help you to live a more meaningful life? This is the theory behind the growing Tiny House movement, made up of people building their own extremely adorable, minute (and often portable) dwellings. Whether done out of economic necessity or an urge to simplify life, downsizing can be a way to "live deliberately," in the words Henry David Thoreau, the patron saint of the Tiny House people. Personally, I love the idea that you don't need a big house to live big. Plus, these 400-square-feet-or-less homes make my apartment seem like a McMansion.

Christopher Smith, who had never built anything before, decided to build himself an extremely tiny house, and is now making a documentary about the process.  Just watching the trailer got me thinking about what makes a place a home, what we really need to live--and how easy it would be to clean a 150-square-foot house.

Love it? For the next few days you can help fund the documentary on Kickstarter.

Read more:
The joy of downsizing
Learning to live with less

Photo: Thinkstock

My brother-in-law, an orthopedic surgeon in New Hampshire, tells me that he's expecting some long nights at the hospital and the clinic this month. His appointment book is jam-packed with patients trying squeeze every last benefit from their health insurance plans before the new year starts. That inspired me to call Maura Carley, president and CEO of Healthcare Navigation, an advocacy group that guides people through the Byzantine rules of their health insurance plans. I asked her to help me draw up a quick to-do list for this month. Here's her advice:

• If your health plan has a January 1 renewal, check the balance in your Flexible Spending Account, and then use the remaining funds to stock up on reimbursable items like eyeglasses, a bite guard for sleeping, orthotics, contact lens solution, and cold medicine, because whatever you don't use, you lose. One thing to note: "You'll need a prescription in order to get reimbursed for over-the-counter items," she says.
  
• During open enrollment, ask your HR rep what changes you should expect in 2012, because Carley says that many insurance plans are increasing contribution levels, deductibles, coinsurance and co-pays next year. If you've already had your open enrollment meetings, it might not be a bad idea to review the paperwork to see how the changes will affect your budget.
  
• If you’ve met your annual deductible and you don't anticipate many expensive services next year, consider scheduling almost-due appointments like a Pap smear, a dental cleaning, a dermatologist check-up or an extra session with your therapist. Doctors like my brother-in-law are prepared for your call. 

Read more:
Dr. Oz's ultimate health checklist, including the medical tests you need

Photo: Thinkstock

In my mind I am a scrappy urban pioneer who raises chickens on my fire escape and bakes everything from scratch, but I must stress that this is strictly in my own mind. In reality I have a real city-dweller’s squeamishness about food. My meat comes bloodless and entombed in cellophane; I get a little skeeved out when my mushrooms are dirty; I buy my bread pre-sliced whenever possible. I live, like many of us, entirely disconnected from the life cycle of what I eat.

Not so Lucille Clarke Dumbrill of Newcastle, Wyoming, who regularly makes pancakes from scratch with her 122-year-old sourdough starter.  

As the Casper Star-Tribune reports, the sourdough starter is older than the rotary dial, airplane and modern assembly line. “Someone first stirred its ingredients together the same year the Eiffel Tower opened and Vincent van Gogh painted ‘Starry Night.’... It’s older than the state of Wyoming.” (I think I have some take-out packets of ketchup that old, but I’m not proud of them.) Anyway, 83-year-old Dumbrill, who inherited the starter from her mother (who could track it back to a 19^th-century sheepherder’s wagon), says it’s easy to keep: you just have to put it in a ceramic jar in the fridge and “not be afraid if it doesn’t look good.” (You simply must read the entire article for what she means by that, and why the starter could "make some women squeamish.")

The sourdough starter has become something of a local celebrity, the star of fundraising pancake dinners and political meet-and-greets. But what I love best about this story is Dumbrill’s “go with the flow attitude  -- “Nothing about sourdough is absolutely absolute,” she told the Tribune. A little of this, a little of that, and voila, you have a delicious meal that contains a link to history, a dash of pioneer woman spirit, and tastes great with whipped cream.

Read More:
How to get those family recipes—and why
Grandma's lemon pound cake

Photo: Thinkstock

When I think of the famous verse from Clement C. Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas--"The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads"--the first image that comes to mind is of plums with little arms and legs, two-stepping to Jingle Bell Rock. Once I really start to think about it, though, I imagine a very sweet variety of the stone fruit.... Alas, sugar plums aren't even plums at all.

As this article explains, these treats with such lovely names are made of sugar hardened around a central seed in successive layers using a process called "panning" (think Jawbreakers). In Moore's time, they were often made with caraway or cardamom seeds, or almonds at the center; their shape resembled plums, hence the name. The essay also offers a very sweet reason for why Moore would have them dancing in children's heads.

These days, sugar plums aren't so popular, but recipes abound. Most don't even involve any cooking; they simply advise you to mix ingredients ranging from dates, walnuts, cranberries, prunes, hazelnuts, jam, sugar and spices; to almonds, honey, orange zest and apricots, roll them into a ball and coat them in sugar. Alton Brown's recipe comes with a helpful video (it's worth watching, if only for the drill sargeant fairy dancing above the food processor).


Keep Reading
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25 Christmas cookies to try

Good news for parents of the small lunatics we call toddlers: scientists have decoded the classic tantrum.

Lower your blood pressure instantly by looking at pandas. Lots and lots of pictures of pandas.

Homemade cereal, pizza popcorn, and more: these edible gifts are easy, need no wrapping and work for anyone.

The Life-Lifter: The world's most famous famine-survivor, near-dead of hunger at age 3, has survived, thrived, and given birth to a baby girl of her own.

Every Monday, we're rounding up the things, small and big, that make us stop and think. Today, we're inspired by...

"Don't read your reviews— the bad ones hurt too much and the good ones make you weak.”
-Joan Rivers’ advice to comedian Louis CK.

"Media is killing our daughters' ambition and destroying empathy in our sons. Let’s demand a media that uplifts us all."
-Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the filmmaker behind the documentary Miss Representation, speaking at TEDxWomen last week.

"If we want to understand plants, and their minds, we need to start not with computation, but with the fact that they are alive."
-Alva Noë, writing about whether or not plants have minds.

"Like health itself, the loss of such a thing can’t be imagined until it occurs."
-Writer Christopher Hitchens on losing his voice to cancer.

"I got frustrated, thinking, My goodness, can’t I do even this little mind exercise? But, with persistence, you get there.”
-Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Myanmar politician Aung San Suu Kyi, on trying to meditate while under house arrest.

Image: AKQA for Fast Company

When I was pregnant, the first question people asked was never, "When are you due?" or "Why are you groaning like that?" but, inevitably, "Is it a boy or a girl?" This seemed fair enough. What surprised me was when they'd slyly add, "Which do you want?" Which did I want? Was I allowed to think or say anything other than "Oh, either! Of course! As long as it's healthy!", that platitude of the pregnant? What if I actually said, "We definitely want a girl. Have you seen boys? They're crazy. We'd just send a boy back."

I mean, really.

But in some parts of the world this is a far more serious issue. China, for example, where the one-child policy has resulted in a lopsided population because so many families abort girl babies. Or India, where baby girls are so dreaded that they are often killed.  It's almost too terrible to believe. But could it be that what we need is...a marketing campaign? Fast Company has an intriguing series of mock ad campaigns, designed by leading advertising agencies that look to rebrand the whole "girl" concept. "Boys are 76% more likely to set something you love on fire," proclaims one tongue-in-cheek campaign. Others are more serious, urging consumers (parents?) to see their own value (even if they are, gulp, female), or to remind them that a baby girl might just be a future female CEO. The images are fascinating, the campaigns themselves thought-provoking. I mean, let's face it, the idea that girls would need to be rebranded at all is incredibly sad, but at least clever minds are at work on a creative solution.

Check out all the ad campaigns at Fast Company.

Read more:
Are boys' and girls' brains different?
Ending violence toward women and girls