THREE WEEKS?

Ok, so I will admit that having a blog is a lot of work. And apparently it was more than I was willing to do in the last month. We are still in the waiting game for Spokane. I've been doing a lot of spinning and knitting. And I made some of these cute things...

Which btw are ridiculously easy and totally cute and addicting. You just buy the flower cabochon and the ring base and glue them together.

If you don't want to do that you can just buy one on my etsy store. :)

I have this friend...

So the last few weeks have been a bit nuts. My oldest son turned 8 and got baptized. My husbands work announced that they are opening a Trader Joes in Spokane. My best friend in Spokane (Misty) sending us links to houses and referrals to agents. Then there is the non stop perusal of Craigslist and Realtor.com.

You see, we are on the short list of possibly getting transferred there. And in the non-stop perusal of Craigslist we realized something. The rental market in Spokane is nuts. You see something nice and it's gone a week later. Or less. Then we realized something else. OWNING a house in Spokane is cheaper than renting. :|

So we may or may not have gotten pre-approved to buy a house. Ok. We totally did. ROFL. So this weekend we are loading up the car and driving to Spokane. Now, granted we are going because it's Misty's baby shower and I have loads of boy clothes to pass down to her. But that's like the icing on the cake. We are going to look at houses.

The smaller the better.

SAY WHAT?!?!

You see, I have this friend and she lives in a 256 square foot cabin with her husband and their daughter. Purposefully. I never really understood it until she posted on her facebook a link to this video.




And while living in less than 100 square feet is just not possible for a family of five (and maybe more) it did start us watching and reading online a lot more about small house living. Ok, so I still want one of Jay's tiny houses... it would make a great guest house. And a very portable cabin for when my husband goes hunting!

We have been married 9 1/2 years and have always rented. You should see our "dream house" list. It's insane. And would probably require 5k square feet just to fit it all in. There's a few problems with that thinking though. 1. My husband doesn't make enough money for a 5k square foot house. 2. I don't want to clean it. 3. Can you imagine the utility bills on that? 4. Do 5-6 people really need all that space? REALLY?

And while yes, having a screening room would be ten shades of awesome (heck that's what basements are for, right? So it stays on the list) we'd rather travel and give our kids experiences instead of stuff to fill that 5k sq. ft. house. Or at least buy them ultra awesome small stuff.

Some reasons why my brain shifted gears so quickly:

1. We want to be debt free. Including our house. It will take a whole lot less time to pay off a 150k mortgage than a 300k mortgage.
2. We have a lot of stuff we just don't use. If we have to live in a small house that stuff's got to go!
3. We want to travel.
4. The utilities alone would kill us. What if someday we want to go off-grid (or at least partially off grid) outfitting a 3k square foot house would be expensive. Outfitting a 1800 square foot house would be do-able.
5. Granite counters, awesome cabinetry, millwork, radiant heating... heck yeah I'm going to do it! I can have all these luxury finishes if my house is smaller. It will cost less!

Do you see where I'm going with this? We currently live in an 1800 square foot rental. We fit amazingly into it with plenty of room to spare. And as my dear friend Shawna pointed out to me yesterday 1800 square feet in most parts of the world is a fantastic luxury.

At least my bedroom is not our living room and I don't have to fold my bed up in the wall every morning. See, it's all about perspective.

Small will be awesome.

A now for something new...

I am a copycat. Truthfully. Very few of the things I do are actually my own idea. When I do come up with something I feel like it's a small miracle. So as I'm perusing the blogosphere and seeing all theses amazing crafts/projects/recipes/ideas something hit me. Let's do what I do best... and copy them! So, I've made a cute little button so that if "I Copy You" you can grab it and link from your project to my copy.

I'm pretty proud of my button. I've just started using my design software (thank you paint.net for the freebie). After finally figuring it all out I think I've got the basics. I might tweak it or change it up but for now it's not too shabby!

Now, I've been planning this for awhile but the whole month of February was one craziness after the other. And March is shaping up to be equally as nuts but you know, I really want to do this so I refuse to put it off any longer.

We were at my parents house at Christmas and my sister handed me her cashmere sweater and asked me if I could fix it.  As you can see there were these in a few places on the sweater. Bummer! And totally not fixable. So I asked if I could cut it up and make it into other stuff. Good thing I asked. But she was nice and said yes. Squee!

So the sweater landed in my project pile. And by chance a week or so later I came across Melissa Esplin's totally cute blog (which by the way when I get pregnant again I'm going to copy every single maternity outfit she wore) and her Cashmere Mitten Pattern for Grown Ups.

Melissa Esplin... come on down because I Copied You!!!

They are just a tad different. I was sleep deprived when I made them and cut them too short. On her blog you can see that she cut them nice and long and wore them scrunchy. And it's an Old Navy sweater and I'm pretty sure they did some sort of chemical treatment on it because no matter how hard I tried that thing would not felt. So these are unfelted. But still totally cute and warm.

 Here are some pics of the process...

I cut them out of the sleeves. I plan on using the main body for a cowl and ear warmers. Projects forthcoming. Promise.

See the problem? By the time I hem them they would have been WAY too short.

So I cut some more of the sleeve to make a ruffle band.

Folded it in half and pinned it right sides together and put some pleats in there.

I sewed it there and called it good. I used some scraps and made rolled flowers and glued them on. Yes, hot glue baby. That's the way I roll.

So totally cute. They look amazing on. I'm so bummed to part with them but maybe now I'll have to hit up the thrift stores for an old cashmere sweater for myself.


Also a huge shout out thank you to Jo-Lynne at Musings of a Housewife for her amazing tutorials on how to make a blog button and how to make codes. And her blog rocks as well.