When we were preparing for baby (almost 3 years ago now!), my husband had read an article on a family that saved a ton of money by buying second hand clothes and lots of baby clothes from Craigslist. I was of the mind that it was not sanitary enough for a baby and kept her (in reader suggested) onesies for most of her infant life. She wasn’t crawling or walking and I wore her most of the time so I really didn’t need any cute frilly dresses or outfits at that stage. I am glad I didn’t give into temptation and just kept her wardrobe to the very, very basics.  As she got older, more active and started growing out of clothes at an alarming rate, I needed to think of a more budget friendly solution without sacrificing style. Read More

I want to preface this by saying this isn’t for everyone and even though it was a side hustle for me, it is not exactly passive income, but you could make it more passive with a couple things in place! The income noted is from last year, since obviously this year isn’t fully realized yet. So without further ado let me share my little income maker…

I mentioned in a blog post a little while back that one of my goals was to have a hotel, of course that has not happened and to be honest it is no longer on my goal list, because I have had a taste of the hospitality industry now, albeit in a less daunting form than I originally imagined. When I was pregnant I decided that I was going to start an Airbnb. I had stayed at some pretty awful ones cross country and a really great one in Seattle. The last one, I picked the hosts brain about their experience and how it worked and they gave me feedback from their experience. They were renting out rooms in a wing of their house that was not currently used by them and it became a way for them to help pay their mortgage. I also knew of a couple friends that were doing VRBO and having a good experience with it. Three years ago, there wasn’t a huge amount of competition in Seattle for Airbnbs and the ones they did have were constantly booked (I knew this from us trying to book one when we moved here).  I decided I wanted to have an Airbnb that I would feel comfortable staying at and I wanted it to be a single unit not something we were living in. I looked around found a property in a happening neighborhood and set up shop.Read More

We have mentioned the seemingly end to blogging, we have watched as many of our blogger friends have shuttered their virtual blog doors and some without so much as a good bye. When Michelle and I started to reconsider our minimal time and what we would devote it to in order to grow our fledgling enterprise, the elephant in the room was Besotted, neither of us really knew what we were going to do with it. The thing that would make the most sense would be to acknowledge that we have had a wonderful time writing the blog and we have made so many incredible connections, but it may have run its course. We decided to push the decision off for a few months while we focused on bigger tasks in front of us (and oh, do we still have an Everest size task list in front of us). The more we thought about it the more it started to make sense that we should phase Besotted out, that it didn’t fit our ‘big picture’, but again neither of us was willing to pull the trigger, give an end date like we had been doing so effortlessly with everything else. Maybe it was sentiment, we certainly never achieved the status of other bloggers that had started out when we did, we always did try to put out new and interesting content and all that jazz, but then both Michelle and I had an almost simultaneous brain wave happen and in that decision all was right in the world again, we released an audible sigh of relief (decisions are so very hard, aren’t they?)  We decided that we would keep Besotted as our personal blog (for now), just like the old days (except I wouldn’t be whining about my evil boss). We’ll keep it casual, if we don’t write one day that we had it on the schedule, then no biggie, we won’t mentally flog ourselves. We want this to be an inspired space and not something that is a chore.  We will write about whatever we fall in love with and whatever interests we have. Taking the blog back as a personal project will allow us to write about what we want, as random as it may be (I have a whole library worth of kid lit books I have been dying to share).

So, that’s our big decision! For those having a hard time focusing and making decisions, just know that not everything has to be forever, that little nugget has helped me enormously lately, I think that I had this huge fear of making a wrong decision (about anything) that I was paralyzed by indecision, now I talk myself through but letting myself know that the decision doesn’t have to be permanent, even if I make a bad decision, hopefully I will learn from the experience and move forward. Wishing you all well and be sure to know if we ever do decide to stop writing Besotted that we would never just leave you hanging wondering where we up and went to.

Miss Tristan B. is the co-creator of the world’s best + easiest product photography editing tool-Foto Rx | Shopkeeper’s Helper and one of the writer’s of this delightful blog. Her lofty goal here is to make this a creative resource repository and to inspire you to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with your life.

I know this isn’t the ‘norm’ here to do a home design post, but nothing is the ‘norm’ here anymore, so I am going with it. We are currently getting ready to move again, just a few blocks away mind you, but my head is already filled with little design upgrades that will have to be super budget friendly as my budget after moving is going to be very sparse. I know we are going to need lighting in the master bedroom and since it’s where we do a lot of our bedtime reading with our toddler, I wanted to make sure we had some fairly good ‘spotlight’ on the books and not just the usual ambient light. It seems that while I was off being a mom, the design blogosphere decided that sconces in the bedroom were going to have a moment. That’s great news for someone interested in bedroom sconces!  The drawback though was a hundred fold, either all the really great looking sconces that were being written up were sponsored by this company (and yes, they have some really great light choices), or the scones were hard-wired (we are renting so not going to happen) or were completely utterly out of my budget. I hunted and scoured for plug-in industrial inspired sconces, which is actually a fairly hard item to find and once I had wishlisted a bunch I thought, hey? Maybe someone else out there is looking for the same thing and why not just do an eensy round-up? I actually wasn’t even sure how to go about doing this, should I post some inspiration rooms? Would I need to email every blogger to use their image? Or would a link suffice? I mean, I am so out of the loop of what protocol is, so I am just adding sconce images and links. For the record, feel free to use the images we shoot here with a link back, no need to email (and not get a response back for 3 years from moi, Michelle might be a bit faster, but we are both swamped). So let’s get linking so you can get shopping!

//RESOURCES//

Plug-in industrial lamps featured clockwise:  upper left Ikea wall clamp spotlight $20 | upper right Caged wall sconce $30 | Lower right Adjustable black and brass sconce $32 | Lower left Oiled bronze swing arm $48

Not shown but good options! Accordion wall sconce $59 | Aged zinc wall sconce $39

How to hard-wire a plug-in lamp (for those that may want a more permanent option) I | II

Pricey but pretty Industrial (ish) Sconce options: 1 | 2 | 3

Miss Tristan B. is the co-creator of the world’s best + easiest product photography editing tool-Foto Rx | Shopkeeper’s Helper and the fastest way to clean + digitize your lettering and line art –Lettering Rx | Paper to pixel and one of the writer’s of this delightful blog. Her lofty goal here is to make this a creative resource repository to inspire you to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with your life.

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