Well, it’s been raining fairly hard here where I live. Yesterday, I sat at a cozy corner window seat in the local big box coffee shop down the street from my house, sipping my heavily creamed coffee & nibbling on a too-small-to-satisfy-my-appetite breakfast sandwich. I was feeling inspired while watching the rain pour down outside,& it was warm, dry, & comfortable inside. I originally planned to write this blog post yesterday, but got distracted by Instagram & Spotify, so I ended up wasting my time at the coffee shop creating playlists & liking overly staged/edited glamour photos.

Today we have a break in the wet weather, but it’s quite cloudy & foggy where I live, so that atmosphere is also keeping me inspired to write today. I am now sitting in my kitchen with the electric heater on low, & drinking an unfortunately rapidly cooling cup of home-brewed coffee. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I’ve got my Spotify app playing lovely café jazz music in the background. It’s putting me in a good mood to write some other frivolous & somewhat unimportant things. My blog tends to be filled with fluff posts anyway.

Well, to jump right into things. I recently have been hooked on watching home architecture/design shows about floating water homes, & it got my memories flowing of when I was a young child imagining my dream fantasy home. The one memory that stands out the most is one of myself living in a floating home. Well, I guess they used to be called house boats back in the old days of the 1980s & 90s, but now they’re called floating homes. I’ve always been fascinated by the design & architecture of homes floating on the water, docked like sail boats & yachts. It has been a secret fantasy/dream/desire of mine to live in a floating home. This dream has become more intense after watching all those HGTV-style shows about people custom building their own floating homes.

This is so unusual for me to even consider. I am not really such a big fan of being in or near water. I am not a good swimmer. I took swimming lessons as a kid, but only enough lessons to pass my swimming test & earn my certificate. I now know only enough swimming basics to keep me from drowning if I ever fell into a pool, or fell off a boat. I don’t even really like to swim. I am also not a big fan of beaches or boats (even though I have been on a few cruise ships in my day). I’ve only gone canoeing once in my life, & don’t get much opportunity to do that again. I am also obviously not a jet skier nor water skier. Well, I guess that means I won’t be moving to Hawaii anytime soon. However, I’ve always dreamed of living on a house boat (a.k.a. floating home).

Floating home architecture has always intrigued me, & I’ve always thought it would be amazing to live in a unique home on a quiet strip of water overlooking beautiful outdoor landscapes with only a few neighbors nearby. I don’t know how I would handle severe weather conditions (like turbulent winter waters), but I would still like to live on a house boat. Being able to custom build my own floating home would be so cool & interesting. I don’t think I would want to take on the challenge of retrofitting & remodeling an existing boat or barge, but building an actual home on a floating foundation is probably the architectural route I would take. I saw one episode of a show where this Dutch couple designed an entire wall made of floor-to-ceiling windows, with panoramic doors that fully open to showcase the water landscape. The wife playfully asked the husband, “Who’s going to clean all the windows?”. That brought up a good point in my mind, since I am such a neat freak, I wouldn’t want to spend all of my day washing windows…especially if I have to stand outside, hovering over the open waters (with my extremely limited swimming skills). So, let’s just conclude that I wouldn’t put too many panoramic windows in my design. Also, I would like to have the option to be able to strut around my house in my birthday suit without the prying eyes of any nosy snoops. I’ve compiled a small collection of inspirational photos for reference to what I’m looking for in my fantasy house boat. As you can tell from the photos below, I am kind of a big fan of the minimal, contemporary architecture style.

(All photos courtesy of Pinterest.)

Don’t get me wrong. I love the house I’m living in now. I live in the beautiful Eichler home I was born & raises in, in a wonderfully quiet & tame suburban neighborhood, & I could not imagine planting my roots anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to also own a floating house boat one day, maybe use it as a vacation home. I’m just describing a childhood fantasy I once had. Who knows? Maybe this will happen one day… One can dream. Until then, cheers!

Today’s song of the day: