The House Always Wins

That is the name of the book I started reading last week. Recently my dear Husband and I moved into our newly bought home. Its an old house, or trailer to be exact. I will be honest living in a trailer is not what I had in mind for our first home. However, our budget is tight and we were tired of renting. Plus everyone has to start somewhere! I thought to myself, the location is wonderful, the yard has potential. This will be a wonderful crafty test, I thought to myself! I will get to be so ingenious and crafty. I will finally get to put all those home decor mags I have to use. All those hours of watching HGTV saving for this very moment will finally all come together. I had one thing right. It was going to be a test. I got into the house. did a little of painting before the furniture moved in. After that pff any creativity seemed to go out the window. I partially blame life. Suddenly I had to get the kitchen unpacked so it was useable so we could eat. The idea of just having take out forever crossed my mind, but Dear Husband knocked that idea right out. Then the bedroom needed to resemble some order so we could find our clothes and sleep. Now I am battling with the office, and the craft room/ guest room.  We need an office set up so we can stop misplacing bills, so we can find where we laid that important receipt and the list goes on and on. you know what I mean! Never mind that Tax season is upon us and Dear Husband needs a work place, plus did I mention the paperwork we can't find! So yes I blame life and her ability to  not slow down therefore forcing us to conform!

Now that we are mostly settled(except for the office and guestroom/craft room of course) I have taken a look at our home and been trying to decide what I want to do with it. I would be flipping thru my magazines and standing in the middle of the rooms pondering on it. Nothing I could get nothing. I was a blank slate. Perhaps I am expecting to much. All along I have been envisioning my home like this:

  When in reality I have this(this is a picture for sure worthy of a before and after shot I am still working on the after part but soon I will get to that). I am all for dreaming big, but perhaps I am being a little over the top! Something just can not be reached. I mean if I want my home to look like a Country Victorian home I will have to move or completely rebuild the one I am in. Which sorta defeats the whole point of getting this place, which was to stay in budget!  But I want my home to be cute and beautiful and comfortable! So now what do I do? Well that is were Marni Jameson is here to save the day. I stumbled upon her by pure accident. I was in the library just perusing the isle in the home and art and craft section when the title of her book grabbed my attention. Then her writing sucked me fully in. First off I was happy to find I am not the only person who finds herself into this kind of predicament.  There are many of us out there who are afflicted! I discovered a problem I didn't know I had. The problem of "I like so many looks I don't have a look" I have a hard time committing to one look. Shoot half the time I am not sure what look I even want to go for. Am I Modern, Old World, Contemporary?? Its a little confusing. I am no professional that is for sure!
Well Marni hit it on the head. She said that there are three things for good home design:

• your home needs to function and absorb your lifestyle
• your home needs to reflect you-but beautifully
• your home needs to your haven, a calm port where you come to relax and recharge

That sounds simple enough. Oh but there is more don't you know? She then poses a question. What are you planning to do in your home? And be brutally honest. YIKES! I don't think I have seriously considered this thought. That really changes things about how I look at my house and what I was thinking of doing. Because lets be honest I am NOT going to become a Sculptor or musical composer like Mozart! However I do have other questions that come to mind.  Like Do we plan to have a lot of company? Are there going to be kids in the future? How big DO I REALLY WANT that craft room to be? How important is a craft room to me?  I like how Marni is thinking. She is not your average Home decorator interior writer, in my opinion. I am going to go back to reading now, I must learn what else she has to say. And in the mean time ponder on what exactly I am planning to do in my home. I will keep you posted on the progress of this.
Till next time,
Amanda
P.S. Heehee I think only a book lover could take a topic they want to talk about and turn it into a book review all at the same time!

You Know You Are a Crazy Knitter When...

1. Just walking into the Yarn Store and seeing all those vibrant colors and yarn fumes helps calm you down after a stressful day(beer? who needs beer? I have Yarn!)
2. You watch movies only to see the knitted items a character is wearing!
3. You watch a movie and then rewind a pause the same spot over and over again trying to figure out the pattern on that cute hat the actress is wearing(I am guilty of this with the movie Life as we Know it. Admit it the hat Katherine Heigl is wearing for about a min in that one scene is adorable)
4. You have stalked some one in the store because you like the hat/scarf/mittens they are wearing
5. You have to take at lest three projects with you anywhere, because you never know what you may want to knit. Like its, OK to knit the scarf in the car, but the small baby hat is more suited for walking around the mall with or in the book store. I am this bad about books too! That is why Dear Husband bought me a nook, to help my poor back from breaking from the weight of it all!
6.  You watch movies because some one is knitting in one of the scenes! 

In Honor of Reading Month!

 The Give Away is now Closed. I will announce the winner on Monday! Thanks to all who entered.
Reading has been a life long passion of mine. I remember being quiet young and my dad taking me to the library, letting me browse the books for hours and then we would sit down together in the reading pit and he would read me a story. Sometimes it wasn't a story, maybe it was the Comic Strip he so dearly loves, Calvin and Hobbes! Those are such fond memories of mine. So it is no wonder why I came to love reading. I loved the characters I got to engage with and lands I got to go. This of course was way before the love affair with knitting ever entered my life. I feel a bit bad actually. Knitting has just swept me off my feet, so that I don't get in as much reading as I would like. Why I used to chop thru a book in a week, sometimes two books! Fortunately for me the books do not hold the knitting against me. In fact they have embraced it and showed me that just because I love knitting doesn't mean I still can't have my time with the books. There are so many books on knitting from tutorial to fiction, that the two loves are blending together quiet nicely.

I loved reading so much that I had wanted to become a Librarian so I could be around books all day. Alas I did not become a Librarian, much to the disappointment of my high school librarian, but it is on my to-do list still so maybe one day. Then I could be a knitting librarian! But that is not the point of this post today. We are in the month of March(goodness really? Already? My how time flies), and March is National Reading Month. Yippie! In honor of National Reading Month, and as a way to Celebrate the launching of this blog(heehee I sound like I am launching a ship) I am doing a book giveaway! I thought long and hard about what book I should feature for the give away. Should it be a mystery, lighthearted, romantic, a combination of all?? Then it hit me, the only proper thing to do is give away a book that had something to do with knitting or yarn! After all that is what over 90% of this blog is about. I am happy to announce that the book in this months give away is, Needles and Pearls by Gil McNeil(I am in no way compensated for having featured this book. It is of my own accord).

Knitting is supposed to keep you sane right? But what happens when life starts to unravel? Follow the story of Jo Mackenzie as she adjusts to being a single parent of two lively boys after being widowed, and the highs and lows of her new knitting shop. This book is the sequel to The Beach Street knitting society and yarn club. This book is an excellent read and you can't help but get lost in the world of the characters.

This give away will be open till the 9th of March(I want to be able to get the book to the winner before the month is over so they have something good to read before the month is out). I am so happy to be doing my first giveaway. Its very fitting that it be a book and about knitting. To enter please leave a comment about any great books you have read recently or perhaps a childhood memory you have about reading, along with your email address so I can get in touch with you to notify you of winning and obtain your shipping information. If you leave a comment and become a subscriber or follower you will receive one additional entry point for a higher chance to winning. If you do subscribe or follow, please leave another comment stating so, this is how you will gain your other point. The winner will be chosen randomly. Happy Reading Month everyone! Let the comments roll!

Till later,
Amanda