I spend more time baking than the average person. A lot more. My Etsy shop is incredibly (sometimes overwhelmingly) busy. In the three years I’ve been running my Etsy shop, I’ve learned so much. I’m a much better baker than I was when I started. Experience is, after all, the greatest teacher. I’ve developed so many hacks, learned so many secret ingredients, tried so many special tools to make it all go faster. And I’ve been dying to share them–along with all the assorted news on the farm, like our new milk cow. And hey, we’ve got a new (uniquely designed by Rodney) chicken tractor full of growing meat chicks, and a new garden full of veggies and herbs.

I’ve been working on getting control of my time budget (my biggest challenge!) so I can start sharing it all. Recently, someone contacted me via message on Etsy saying they had actually googled for my obituary! I’M NOT DEAD!

Even more recently, Morgan (who is at WVU in Morgantown working on her PhD now, believe it or not!) said, “MOM! START WRITING ON YOUR BLOG!” She is so bossy.

Really, I didn’t know she cared!

And I hope some of you still do, because I’m not dead, and I’ve got a lot of things left to share. I’ll still be here, but if you are also on social media—

Find me on Facebook here.

And on Instagram (I’m just getting started on this) here.

I’ll be sharing many things right here on the blog as always, but I’ll also be sharing some extras on Instagram and Facebook, so come find me!

Ever thought about redoing a camper? For yourself, or to flip it? I’m gonna give you the numbers!

This is our 1984 13-foot Scotty camper.

This is what it looked like before.



This is how it looked after the remodel.




You can see all the “before” pictures here and all the demo pictures here and here. See the full makeover reveal post here.

So, how did this work out for us? We didn’t really want to use the camper. We are not campers. Rodney bought this camper maybe around 6-ish years ago. At that time, he paid $400 for the camper. The only time the camper was ever used was in his back yard when his son lived in it for about six months or so. We put the remodeled camper up for auction on eBay.

This is Aimee! The happy winner of the eBay auction. She came 3 1/2 hours from Ohio to pick up the camper yesterday.

Back to the numbers–

If you are a handy person and can do the work yourself, you can deduct the cost of labor. We hired a professional contractor to do the work for us. What did we do ourselves? We cleaned the camper inside and out, from power washing the exterior and recaulking to sealing the roof. Inside we supercleaned every inch of it. We also painted trim. And we shopped–a LOT. But we hired a contractor for all the heavy lifting on the interior remodel.

Along with purchasing new tires and roof coat and caulk outside, we bought all the new interior flooring and ceiling and wall materials. We bought a new sewer kit, a new fridge, new faucets for both the kitchen and bathroom, all new upholstery and foam, new thermostat, new wall decor and shelving, new trim, and a lot of paint, along with decorative items, and other stuff I’ve forgotten by now.

Numbers! We spent $2000 on all the materials and supplies and decor and tires, etc. We spent $1000 for a week’s contractor labor. The auction fees on eBay added up to $160, which made our total costs $3160. We sold the camper for $5300, which made a profit of $2140. If you count off the original $400 cost of the camper, that’s a profit of $1740, though we didn’t really consider the original $400 too much since that was long ago water under the bridge and the camper was used (at least by Rodney’s son) during that time. Either way you look at it, we made a nice little profit. So there’s how it worked out for us on our big fat camper flip. Got a camper? Want to try it?

So first, Rodney paid himself back the money he spent on the camper, and THEN. Today, we went shopping and bought a new 65-inch TV and a big new comfy couch with our camper flip profit. We don’t miss the camper a bit!