File this next house under “It could have been mine” because today’s unique house was actually up for sale on eBay earlier this year.  Yep – you and the fam could have bunked up in a house carved out of a mountain.

Sadly, the Sleeper family who owned this unique 17,000 square foot home was facing financial struggles.  They wanted to hang onto their Festus, Missouri home, but ultimately they decided to see what eBay could do for them.

The house – originally a mine used for decades – was actually converted into a concert venue and roller rink in the 1950s by former owner, Sue Morris, before it became a house.  Known as “Caveland,” performers like Tina Turner, Bob Seger, and Ted Nugent were quickly attracted to the unique stage.

Of course, performing in a cave wasn’t exactly a dream for some.  ”Ted Nugent said it was the worst show he ever played,” Curt Sleeper said. “Bob Seger supposedly told him to just shut up and play.”  The humidity and peculiar acoustics eventually put an end to the Caveland stage.

So five years ago, the Sleeper family decided to turn the cave into a house.  For four years, they lived in a tent next to the cave as they remodeled.  Talk about dedication!  Think you could tough that out for your dream home?  How sad to have to say goodbye to it so soon after!

The most unique thing about the Sleepers’ sale of their home online?  

…they originally bought it on eBay!

We’re bracing ourselves as we prepare to return to Berlin.  Here’s Martin’s own little man cave.

(Images from Fox News, info from Suburban Journals)

Today marks the 4th anniversary of the day Martin and I tied the knot (okay – 4th anniversary plus one week since we got a surprise announcement that our friends, Vica and Ion, had just taken the plunge in Romania.  I couldn’t resist sharing that first!).

So now we’re back on track, and with all the prodding and begging, you’ll be glad to hear that today’s featured wedding is…

Martin + Katie

We got married in the church I had grown up in.  It isn’t the most elaborate, stained glass church you imagine when you think of a Catholic Church.  It’s actually a very simple place… which as you know, Martin and I are all about keeping things simple and symbolic these days.

To kick off the whole event, my closest friend (and bridesmaid!), my mom, and I all met at an enormous craft store to pick out a pattern and fabric for a dress.  Yep!  My wedding dress was custom made!  My friend gave it to me as a wedding gift, and I am still pinching myself and wondering how I snagged such a generous pal.

Just before we walked down the aisle, my dad followed family tradition and slipped a penny under my shoe for good luck.  My sister-in-law and her now-husband who were just married in Vienna won over the crowd with their professional opera voices.  They even sang a song from my parents’ wedding!  And after a lot of big hugs and attempts not to cry, I made my way down the aisle where Martin and 100 of our friends and family awaited.

We worked hard to keep costs down and did everything we could ourselves.  Yes, even back then Martin and I were very hands-on from decorating the church and reception to asking relatives to share their talents.  Of course, most of the time we didn’t even have to ask.  My father-in-law and his sister were begging to be our photographers.  Pinch me again, right?  We love this wedding gift, especially now.  It’s one of the few things we can have with us in Germany and the US.

And then before we knew it, we were signing the marriage license…

and zipping over to the reception…

What kind of wedding would it be without a little unsuspected humor in thick, foamy shaving cream to break up all the sappy action, right?

And how many Germans take off in a little borrowed Nissan truck?  Okay, okay… how many people in general?

One of my favorite gifts actually came from my grandmother.  It wasn’t something new or shiny.  In fact, it didn’t cost her a dime.  It was one of those priceless gifts… another one of those moments where I have to wonder how I could be part of such a loving group of people.

She gave us a piece of advice – never go to bed angry with one another.  She also gave us a symbol of love and resolution that she’s been hanging onto for all of these years.  It’s the cake topper from the day she married my grandfather almost 60 years ago.

A lot of the food (all vegetarian even back then) was spread on enormous dishes my other grandmother had collected over the years.  Some were gifts she received at her wedding.  And a couple were even from her mother’s wedding.  A couple of my sister’s friends managed the food and dishes so we didn’t have to hire a catering service.  My mom and I had been collecting punch cups and various saucers at estate sales to minimize waste.

Marrying a pilot (and now learning how to fly myself!), I don’t want to totally shock you or anything… but our first dance was to the song, Fly Me to the Moon.

Fly away we did.  The next morning, we hoped into a little Cessna airplane and headed to the San Juan Islands to go camping.

Peek into all the international weddings our friends and family have shared on Making This Home (from Vienna to Japan) on the International Wedding Page.

Some people cry over spilled milk, but not me.  It’s all about the salt around here.

One of my biggest problems in baking was always spilling too much salt on the counter or worse – into the food itself.  That’s why I made the simplest swap from our ho-hum salt containers from the store.

Here’s our table salt.  It used to be a jar of Adam’s Peanut Butter in a former life.

Then we’ve got kosher salt for sprinkling on top of foods and using for various cooking projects.  It happily hangs out in an old salsa jar.

Talk about a reuse that makes my life easier.  I just unscrew the top and stick my measuring spoons right into the container (or my fingers for “a pinch of salt”).  No fancy balancing act.  No spilling salt.  Nadda.

To prep jars you want to repurpose, tear off the label and pop it in the dishwasher to get out all the leftovers you couldn’t scape out.  Then soak the jar in soapy water to loosen the remaining paste and bits of label on your jar.  Scrub off with a Scotchbrite pad, and your jar looks like new.

A quick dash of spray paint could cover the original lid for an especially clean, complete look.

Have you ever repurposed old jars in your house?

As long as we’ve got repurposing on the brain, you might like this adorable jar we transformed into a stylish hanging vase or this used candle jar where I keep my jewelry now.

It’s been nearly five hours since I landed, and I haven’t managed to successful think about anything but flying today.  Would you like to know about the latest requirement I crossed off in my flying lessons?

Everyone says that I’ll never forget my first solo flight.  They say it’s one of the greatest experiences in your entire life.  Yet each time I land, I find myself falling more and more in love with flying.

Today was no exception.

I woke up early to put together the finishing details of my flight plan on a piece of 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper – factoring details like wind direction and variations between magnetic headings and true headings.  I never really thought about these things before.  When you fly commercially, you just hop in the plane, watch a few movies, sip a few Cokes, and step out in the exact place where you want to be.

My first solo cross country flight of over 2 1/2 hours wasn’t so easy today.  I wasn’t allowed to use GPS, and you can be sure I didn’t have access to fancy equipment like autopilot or radars!

All I had were the flight plan I’d just built to give myself compass directions and estimated times, airport directories, and maps.  It was like flying years ago when pilots had nothing else to guide them.

I used the maps to get from point to point, studying rivers and mountains, roads and little towns.  The airport directories told me which radio frequency to use as I landed in each little town.  The trickiest part was factoring the wind into my flight.  You know how the wind pushes your kite along with it?  Wind does the same thing to a plane.  You can drift right off course and have no idea unless you prepare with a flight plan before you go (or today you can use tools in your plane that Martin made me promise not to even touch unless I was lost).

And I swear it wasn’t scary at all.

Just kidding.  I actually had a BLAST on my little adventure (although my face looks surprisingly red and blotchy!).  Unlike my solo flights at a large commercial airport where I had to wait in line behind two commercial airliners, I even remembered to open the vents before my nerves and I sweated to death.

See… not so bad.

I did manage to snap a few photos of my journey for you all to see.  

My exams are coming up soon.  I have to fly back to a city with a tower (yikes!) for my written test and on another date, do a practical test in the sky and around the airplane on the ground with an examiner one-on-one.  Needless to say, I’m as nervous as heck.  

But first?  More solo flights, flights at night… and scariest of all:  flights with funny goggles that completely block my vision out the windows.

Meanwhile, I’m off to take a nap, which probably means dreams of maps and wind.  Does that ever happen to you?  Whatever you spend the most time doing in one day is all you can dream about as you sleep?

Everywhere I look, it seems I find unfinished projects and things that need to be done.  It’s impossible to completely eliminate every task I find.  And what’s worse: Martin discovers a slew of things we need to do, too.

Do you ever get overwhelmed looking at all of the “to dos” around your house?

Our biggest problem is knowing that we are moving in a few weeks.  Suddenly all those things that you neglect in life or never really think much about are waving their arms at us.  They’re shouting, “Haha!  You have to take care of us before you leave!”  It’s the butter in the freezer, nicknacks to donate, papers to scan, and all these little things that we never really think about when we can wake up and still be in the same place the next day.  But one day soon, we won’t be in the same place.  We’ll have to tell someone over the phone to dig in files if we need something that we didn’t make digital.  (Here’s a handy list of practical things to make digital, from documents to movies.)  I must breathe deeply even as I describe this overwhelming feeling to you.

Yet to some extent, even though you don’t have to worry about what to do with all the dried goods in your pantry like us right now, you probably face so very many little projects, too – the tasks that you’re not sure you’ll ever manage to cross off the list.

Some tasks (like this one below) are clearly important.  It’s the urgent but totally not important projects that can trip us up.

Are you a good to-do list person?  Not me.  No matter how much I rush to finish as many projects as I can, I never get that satisfaction of crossing off the very last item.  It usually seems so trivial by the time I reach it that I wonder why I even thought something like “organize utility bills” was so urgent.  Are tasks like that really important before we leave for Germany?  And even more importantly, are the little tasks that you and I stress over all that important in our lives?

Women are natural multi-taskers.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t even watch a movie without feeling like I have to do something with my hands.  The worst was when Martin caught me reading a book while watching a movie.  A book!  It’s no wonder I’m exhausted at the end of the day.

This last year, I have really tried to simplify our home and habits.  First, my dad taught me this simple trick for de-cluttering sentimental things so they’re easier to part with.  I’m trying to get rid of the papers and items that seem interesting and seem like something I’d want in the future.  I don’t pick up the free magazines at the health food store any more or clip out intriguing ideas or recipes unless I’m certain I’ll want to use them in the next month.  Any of the stuff either of us hangs onto has to be something we would need in the next three years.

Three years.  That’s my focus.  If things can’t be useful to our lives and our home by then, they need to be donated or recycled.  It’s just not worth weighing down life in order to keep them.

So what happens when you reach this point of frustration when all those projects start shouting, “Me!  Me!  Me!”?  The key – for me anyway – is to quit creating trivial things that need to be done and being more conscious as I bring projects (like those free magazines) into our home.

Taking a no new clothes challenge has helped decrease the feeling of needing to clean out our closets more because they’re not getting fuller.  Organizing stationery, learning to live with next to no storage (and no closets) in Germany, dispersing my childhood postcard collection – each little change in our habits adds up.  Ultimately, they mean less work down the road and fewer tasks on the never-ending to-do.

How often do you decide to leave projects unfinished?  And can anyone offer all of us who suffer with trying to get on top of things some advice?

Earlier as I was looking at today’s feature house in our weekly series of unique and small homes, Martin glanced over my shoulder.  ”Well that’s weirder than us living in a tire house,” he said.  I think he’s right.

Continuing our unique home tour we’ve been doing every Monday, today’s home is a tipi – a “suburban tipi”.  This tipi was designed by John Paananen when he wanted to see how well such an iconic piece of history could be incorporated into modern architectural designs.  What do you think?

You can probably tell that this tipi was definitely not made of hides.  It was constructed with  pvc siding, polypropylene sheeting, engineered timber, and polycarbonate supports.

This 16-foot tall tipi had a diameter of 18 feet.  The tipi was actually meant to supplement the existing house, much like the gorgeous Shepherds’ Huts we saw two weeks ago.

But unlike the Shepherds’ Huts, the suburban tipi idea just wasn’t that long lived.  They tore it down a year ago when the tipi in modern society experiment ended.  My guess is that the answer must have been no; the tipi didn’t fit.  Then again, they didn’t build it next to our tire retaining walls.

So what do you think of the Suburban Tipi?  Would you reach for the phone and call the building department the moment one of your neighbors started putting one up?  Or would you be the one to put it up?!

(Images from Yanko Design)