Tag Archives: Home

I’m chomping at the bit to write about a couple of things today, but Fadra’s prompt is, “How do you feel about where you live?”, and I have opinions about this too, so here we go.

My family moved to Florida when I was four. Aside from a short stint, 18 months, in Las Vegas with my husband, I’ve lived here since then. There are a lot of things to love about Florida, the beautiful beaches, flip flops all year, we don’t have to shovel snow or scrape ice off our car windows. For me though, I’ve never gotten used to the humidity at the levels we have. I soooo dread the summers, this one more than others as we’ve had NO winter this year and we hit 86 today, UGH. When we lived in Vegas, even when it was in the 90′s I could handle it because of the low humidity levels, you could go into the shade to escape, you can’t here. There are some who love the warm, wet blanket that wraps their body as they step outside four to six months out of the year, not me.

A couple of years ago we were set on moving to Colorado, the mountains, we love mountains, mountain lakes, streams, etc. That didn’t work out, still here, we found a wonderful house in East Bradenton on seven acres. We’re surrounded by old Florida, lots of beautiful oak tress dripping with moss, they’re lovely when the sun shines through. It’s so quiet out here and our neighbors are organic dairy farmers/ranchers. Such a great addition to our already natural lifestyle. This is our compromise until it’s the right time to say goodbye to Florida.

Ultimately for me, home is where my husband, two children & our furry babies are, on the road, here, anywhere, as long as we’re together.

Times Up!
This has been my Sunday 5 minute Stream of Consciousness.

Want to try it? Here are the rules…

* Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
* Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
* Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
* Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
* Link up your post at all.things.fadra.
* Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

As we get ready to leave this afternoon to spend the Christmas Holiday with my parents in Yonkers, NY, I sit here remembering last Christmas. We were sill in the St. Petersburg house and it was one of the very few years since the kids were born that we’d spent the Holiday’s at home. It was nice being home for the holiday’s, our kitties rummaging through all the ripped up paper and ribbon, Santa coming to our house, being able to decorate and enjoy it the whole season through.

This year, we are now in a new home in Bradenton, a beautiful new home in the country. We’ve decorated and so far the kitties haven’t taken to the tree, not even Harry, the new baby. We’ve booked the pet sitter and are flying into NY tonight, tomorrow we’ll be walking around NYC, high 50′s and sunny, should be very comfortable. Chance of snow this year is slim, rain is forecast instead, so now it’s all up to the temperatures. We get to visit my sister’s new house on top of a hill in New Jersey. She says they have deer in the yard almost daily:-). She’s in a serious relationship with a wonderful man from Norway, so a big Norwegian feast is to be had on Christmas Eve. Really looking forward to this! Love experiencing new cultures. Mema & Pop Pop get to spend time with the kiddo’s, and we get to see nana. There will be antipasti, a trip to Arthur Avenue for an Italian Dinner, Eggplant Parmigiana for Christmas dinner, Michael will make is yummy brie and prosciutto French toast, Christmas movies and….

For now, some images from Christmas 2010.

We’ve been here now exactly 19 days and it’s already been quite the adventure. We’re starting to make new friends, finding our farmers and markets, yep we have both close by. In fact, we recently learned that we can walk, yep, walk to The Dam Ranch (only .6mi from our house). They have fresh eggs, chickens, goats milk and cheese. We also visited the Miakka Farmers’s Market this past Saturday. It’s located at the Crowley Museum and Nature Center.

It’s so wonderfully peaceful out here, a little creepy too. We love to camp, primitively, so we’re not strangers to the dark, the crickets, critters moving in the trees, bugs, etc. But it’s something about having so much space, and it’s sooooo dark. I love it though, and I’m sure we’ll get used to this. We’re on a two-lane country road and our neighbors are only about 2ish acres away from us on two sides, a bit further to the rear of the house. It’s like we have our own nature park really. So many beautiful old Florida oak trees with hanging moss. The moss glows in the late afternoon as the sun shines through it, beautiful!

Then there’s the spiders. We have many banana spider friends, AKA Golden Orb Weavers. Yes, they do weave a golden orb, it shines in the light a glorious yellow hue. We had a Wolf Spider stop by the other evening. We, well PFMan, gently removed him from the house against his wishes. I’m usually the bug remover, but I’m trying to break PFMan in a bit. We had our friends over the other day and the kids found a Jumping Spider that had placed his web in a poor location, the walkway from the house to the walled garden. Just glad it didn’t jump on me while removing his web. I like spiders, but I don’t want them on me.

The Verizon man found a Gopher Tortoise in the yard behind the studio. Watching Lilith, our Corgi/Beagle mix, was loads of laughs as she saw the tortoise for the first time. She had no idea what she was looking at and really wanted to investigate. Poor little tortoise probably just wanted her to shut up. PFMan witnessed a family of opossums in the yard a couple of nights ago. Did I mention we pass soooo many moos and naaaas to and from our home. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of seeing those cows grazing. Love seeing the mamas with the babies. I haven’t gotten my camera out yet to capture them or the horses yet, but you can bet I will soon! For now I’ve just taken tons around the house.

Our dog Bear is not the Country dog, having already sprained her ankle, gotten into a Spur field (covered!) and has gotten her neck stuck in the gate leading to the pasture. That was fun, NOT! Everyone is still alive!! We’ll continue our adventure, we still have many boxes to empty and have been selling and buying furniture as needed. So it’s coming along.

Peace & enjoy the images:-)!

A small piece our new rural lifestyle.

House poor? Something we always steered clear of. We prefer to be travel poor. There’s this phrase I hear, something about being happy in the place you’re in… never subscribed to it. Don’t get us wrong, we LOVE to be around our little unit of four where ever we are as long as we’re together, we just never got hung up on the home thing.

Well, the need to stay in a place we aren’t truly in love with has changed all that. With the need to stay put in Florida, for the foreseeable future, we’ve decided to move to a rural community to give us the change we desire within our need to stay here. With that went re-examining our preexisting travel plans. And you know what? We’re okay with it… for now anyway:-). We’re so incredibly excited for this move, this change, that having to ditch our plans for a bit is okay. There will be so much to discover in our new town, our new home. It’s the beginning of another chapter, a new adventure, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be occupied much of the time investigating and rejoicing in our new surroundings.

I can’t wait to share it all with you!

Peace.

Me!

Hi there. Well, we’re back from our month long adventure, and of course there is new and exciting news to share. Remember how we’re supposed to be simplifying, minimalizing? Well, we still are, but…. While in N. California, (PFMan and I went out there for 9 days alone!! more to come on that soon), we visited with a friend who moved out there recently from FL. Her house here in Bradenton is up for rent. I should mention it’s on 7+ acres, with the main house, another house-like structure with 2000 sq. ft. and horse stables, but did I mention the 7+ acres:-). So it’s ours!! Yes, it’s official, we move mid Sept. We have to keep our wits about us, you know the old adage You Fill the Space you Have, makes us a bit nervous. We’ll have a total of 3700 sq. ft. with the two structures. The 2nd structure will be my new photography studio, so that to me is simplifying at it’s best, no more driving to work, no more baby sitters, the kids can stay at the main house while I’m shooting. We are surrounded by farms, veggie and dairy, u-picks, they picks, etc. So excited, and we’ll have our own garden as well too!

Since we can’t move out of state just yet this to me is a way to compromise our living, get the more rural lifestyle we’re looking for just without the mountains right now.

Ciao!