The last time I posted, we were in the middle of our house hunting process, and while at the time it seemed like we were looking forever, it was actually only a serious hunt for a little under a month.

To some people who look at houses for months before finding one, that seems laughable (or makes you want to smack me), but I had been wanting to buy something for several months before and I let it get to me more than I should have. Sometimes patience isn't my strongest suit!

Anyway, we had been looking for several weeks, and we opted to use an mls search and Zillow ourselves and call up listing agents for showings instead of working with a real estate agent. And the housing market in our area is super competitive and expensive right now for buyers, and it seemed like half of the valley was also looking to buy in our price range! So I felt like I was on the computer constantly, and we were driving around scoping out houses whenever we got the chance.

If a house even remotely decent came on the market, it was snatched up within days, and sometimes only one! We put in an offer on a house that we saw on the day it listed, and we were one of 11, and we didn't get it. And Dane didn't actually get to see it in person, he had to trust me and his dad when we told him it was a good deal!

After several weeks of this, I woke up one morning to find this tiny little house that I knew would need tons of work (but in our budget, that was pretty much everything), but this one had acreage. Dane has always wanted to live outside of town, with some property where we could have some space and raise some animals. Everything was just so expensive though, we had decided we would probably have to flip at least one more house in town to be able to afford it. So when this house came up, the price was too good, and I knew there was a chance it would need too much work, like most of the rural properties we had looked at (and it did, but more on that later).

I almost scared Dane away from it when I told him about it, because I said it looked so bad, ha! But We went ahead and scheduled a showing with the listing agent for that same day. And it was like a frenzy! It's on a semi-busy-ish road, and I saw so many people slow down, stop and take the phone number of the agent, and someone even stopped after our showing to tell us he was submitting an offer that night! (I think he was trying to scare us off).

But we loved the potential of the place. It had a large shop and another outbuilding for an office/guest house. It had just the right amount of property. The house was the right size, and it just hit almost everything on our list. So we immediately went to Dane's parents' house to talk to them about it, and his dad and I came back and looked at it again the next morning. We made an offer the day after it listed on the market, and even though it had two pending offers already, the owners accepted ours that night!




We almost couldn't believe it, and it was so exciting! We said after selling our last house that we would love to find something that needed more work if it meant we could stay in it and not have to flip again, but we didn't think we would actually be able to do it so soon. So now we are living in a 5th wheel trailer on the property and remodeling our house that we will hopefully be staying in for many, many years to come!

Since this has ended up being so much more wordy than I intended, I'll go ahead and stop there, but I'll be back soon with more progress pictures. And there are a lot, because things got very intense very fast, and plans had to change accordingly. We knew going in that since the original part of the house was built in the 40s, with an addition in the 60s, that there would be a lot of potential problems, and lucky us, we found almost every one in the book! What was supposed to be your run of the mill, total gut job, turned into quite a bit more, but we still feel really good about choosing it. And for Dane to not regret it after all of the work he's done so far, I know we really found something special :) I mean, just look at this view!


Thanks for stopping by, and I promise I'll be back soon to finish bringing you up to date on where we're at in the process, and maybe even some inspiration for what we're planning on doing! Happy Wednesday!

I posted some of these pictures on Instagram when I finished it, so if you follow me there you've probably already seen them.

This was such a fun project, and definitely the most challenging knitting I've taken on so far. It was a free pattern from Home D-zine that I modified a little bit, and while it took a year all together, I would only work on it for a couple weeks before leaving it untouched for a several months. If I had really buckled down I could have completed it a lot sooner, but I was a bit busy with a remodel and all.

I have to say that the hardest part (besides getting the repetition down) was learning to decode parts of the pattern. I haven't really tried to follow very many patterns to be honest, and there were some abbreviations for things that I had no clue how to do!

It took quite a bit of sleuthing to find out, but once I got that done it wasn't too bad. I noticed now though, the pattern explains a little better how to do the things I was confused about. Either it's been updated since I started this project, or I was blind as a bat!

I would recommend anyone try this, because once you get the basics down it's all about repeating pattern. If you can do basic knitting, I think you could knit this blanket. And it will really make you think about all of those cheap knitted throws you can buy in stores. It cost me around $80 in yarn (I think?) and that doesn't even include my time. Don't try this if you're trying to make a cheap diy, yarn is expensive! (Also, this blanket is huge, much bigger than a throw. It covers our bed, which is a queen.)


If you do decide to try it, I should mention that I changed one thing from the pattern. It has you knitting the blanket into three panels and then using yarn to sew them together. I didn't trust myself to knit them all so evenly that they would line up perfectly, so I knitted them all across at the same time. I just bought an extra long set of round needles and it all fit.

I'm so happy that I tried this, and that I was able to complete it! It feels nice to make something this big, and hopefully it will last me the rest of my life. Now I just need to figure out what my next major knitting project will be.

Maybe a beanie, because I haven't made one of those yet, and you can never have too many beanies ;)

Have you ever tried knitting? Do you think you would ever try something as ambitious as cabled blanket? Let me know!

Thanks for stopping by :)

P.S.- If any of you are feeling brave and want to take this on, feel free to ask me any questions that I didn't address here. Hopefully I can be of some help!

Happy Fri-yay!

I realized this week that I haven't kept you all updated on our house buying process as of late! I promise I didn't mean to be so rude, haha.

It hasn't been that long since we've decided we were ready to go all in and buy a house again, and we thought that it was going to be a simple process since we had already found a house to buy.

Well, as these things tend to go, we aren't buying that house after all. There were some unforeseen complications that would have required us to wait a while longer than we originally thought, and in that time we ended up changing our mind.

We've been living in a very small space since we moved to Oregon, (675 sq ft!) and it was going well enough that we thought we could look at places to buy that were on the small side. The fact that housing is so expensive over here was also a factor in that choice too, haha!

But, as the weather got colder and we were stuck inside more and more, it started to feel a little more claustrophobic. Then, my family all got to come over from Idaho for Christmas, and I have a big family! Including my parents, there are 10 of us altogether, and trying to have them all over while they were in town was no easy feat.

After that we decided that while living in less than 1,000 sq ft could work for us most of the time, my family comes over several times a year and it's really important to me for them to get to come to my house and stay. I only see them 5-6 times a year and I want to be able to accommodate them when they're here.

I also miss being able to host company at our house. We have friends with nice big spaces and we go to their houses pretty often, but I love having people over and it only took one time to realize that it wasn't an easy fit in our small house!

We don't have kids and I thought I could get away without kid friendly space in our home, but it turns out that when all of your friends have kids and toddlers, you kinda need some where for them to play when they come over...

For all of these reasons combined, we decided to back out of our house purchase and start looking for something bigger. So far it's been a lot of big fat disappointment (stinking expensive housing market), but we're officially on the hunt!

We know it's going to require giving up on some of our wish list items, but that's life. You rarely get everything you want! So we're going to be busy looking for that just right place, and it will most likely still be a fixer.

I'll be sure to share when we've finally found the one, and hopefully I can learn a bit of patience during this process, because I can already tell I'm going to need it!

That's all for my update for now. I hope you all have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by :)

Happy Tuesday, and happy new year! It's a gorgeous snowy day here in southern Oregon, which is a rare treat for us. It's been coming down like crazy the last couple of days and I'm almost giddy over it! I love snow so much, but we're lucky if we get one snow storm a year. This winter I got my wish and it's a dreamy white wonderland out there today! I'm trying to soak it all in before it melts off in a couple days.

Today I thought it was time for a first post of the year, and I wanted to share my sort of resolution.

I decided this year to choose a word I wanted to focus more on, instead of a typical new year's "resolution." I don't usually make them because I they're hard to stick to, and every year I seem to have the same goals!

I always have some holiday (or year long) weight I want to lose, organizing to do, and goals to reach, but I have those year round. I always enjoy that jump start the new year brings for those things, and I do get a good dose of motivation to better myself, but I never really consider these things resolutions.

This year though I've been seeing others choose words of the year they want to focus on and I liked that idea because it can apply to so many different aspects of my life!

As you can probably tell, my word is moderation. I recently read Liz Marie's blog post about her work, balance, and while I really love that word too, it brought the word moderation to my mind.

If there's one major thing I'd say my life is missing, it's that. I'm a person of extremes and Dane teases me for it pretty often! I'm either eating completely healthy, or treating my body like a human garbage can. I either follow a strict workout program, or I'm a couch potato for months. I let chores go to the point of driving me (or Dane) crazy, and then I'll clean everything spotless! I've been this way my whole life, as long as I can remember, and I'm always wishing for that middle ground but never really trying that hard to reach it.

So this year I'm going to try to be a little more moderate. A little more veggies and water, but still some goodies here and there. Posting my lettering on instagram once a week or so instead of feeling like a loser for not posting every day. Trying to do something to get my heart rate up a few days a week, whether that's yoga, a walk, or a jog. One cookie instead of five (or ten!). Try to follow a cleaning schedule, but knowing if life gets busy and things slide for a day that's ok. Just not to get overwhelmed and let it slide for three days! And a bit less time mindlessly browsing the internet...

I think if I really put my mind to it, I can find a bit more moderation in my life and I think it will be a lot better for it!

I'm curious, do you set new year's resolutions or choose a word for the year? Or do you feel like I normally do, that your goals are constant year round, not just at the beginning of the year? Let me know! :)

As always, thanks for stopping by!

P.S.- I know it's late, but I made this video instead of a typical Christmas card this year, (I know, weird coming from a paper enthusiast, haha!) and I didn't get a chance to share it on the blog. So check it out if you'd like :)