She had us at tiny little red cottage

It all started so innocently. Just a girl on a couch, clicking through the John L. Scott website, just, you know, checking out island houses, but only the west-facing shores like she'd been primed to do. I found this one, on Lummi Island (never had heard of it; we'd only had our duck eye on Guemes Island), but R. wasn't that excited about it. A month later, I'm leafing through Seattle Metropolitan magazine, and in their "Island Getaways" cover story, there's a spread on Lummi Island, with mentions of an inn, the Slow Food movement the owners are fans of, farming, farmer's markets, artists, fishing, eagles, orcas...turns out, the Tiny Red Cottage was still on the market. On a whim that Sunday, we loaded up the puppy, grabbed our BFFs, and took a day trip north to Lummi. Two hours later, we came around a corner and saw this. After two months, many random inspections (septic, structural, one, two, three oil tank ones), going back and forth on offers, counter-offers, counter-counter-offers, our tiny hearts on a giant yo-yo later, IT'S OURS!!!