after some research I've learned the following:

mixer's don't seem overly difficult to make, there are a handful of designs.

they generally use a sine wave which makes sense to mix the RF Input with.

finding tuning capacitors ( the kind you would hook a VFO knob to ) from the usual suspects (Digikey, Newark, Mouser, Arrow) are unobtainium, my guess is these went out of style and/or are special use, so even if you do find them, i bet they are expensive (new stock). 

I Stumbled upon the QRP-Labs QCX transceiver. this item is pretty close to what I wanted to build in the first place. except it is CW only, and is single band., But because its a kit, I can/have learned a bunch from it. I like the Tayloe mixer it uses, especially since it is driven by a square wave, which in my world is much easier to generate, and I no longer have to look at high speed DDS chips which can get expensive quick.

check out this video:

plus this spits out both the upper and lower sidebands which will make adding SSB support much easier.

This video is also really informative: