Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Playing in Your Own Backyard a.k.a Stay-cations

Most of the people we know plan one or more vacations a year to places near and far, but we seldom find ourselves wandering far from home.  Yes I am a work-a-holic, but I LOVE what I do so it seldom feels like a chore!  When we moved to the Peterborough region a few years back we had planned to explore the area via day-trips. There was no shortage of events or locations to explore there!  Peterborough and the Kawarthas could have easily entertained us for YEARS with all that it provided.

Our recent move to the Fergus-Elora area has me researching a whole new backyard now and I am quite pleased!   You know those items you might have on your "bucket list" where you say ... one day I'd like to do that.  Well it appears that the Fergus-Elora area is a great location if you want to address that list!

Just this week I found out that you can rappel and zip-line in the Elora Gorge.  I still want to go to Costa Rica and do this in the rainforest, but it would be great to introduce myself to it locally as well.   Fly-fishing, white water tubing, Organic food workshops, and now zip-lines. Yes, I'm grinning - like a Cheshire Cat! 

Just this past weekend we took part in the Elora Culinary Walking Tour.  It was a great introduction to the Elora downtown and restaurants.  It runs EVERY Saturday, all year long and I keep seeing that its booked up, so if you want to join in, make sure you call early to get your group on the registration list.  We had some very tasty samples and we were told the selections change - so you can come back and experience different menu samples!  http://eloraculinarywalkingtour.com/

Monday, November 14, 2011

Life seems to have a mind of its own ...

Last December as we were preparing for Christmas, I became aware of how empty our house seemed. We moved to Peterborough 6 years previous when our children had begun their lives outside our home. We had many elder family members in the Peterborough area so we decided to relocate to be closer to them. Fast-forward six years later and we found ourselves alone once again. The elders had passed on and our children were a bit too far away from Peterborough to make visits convenient.

I am blessed that my job allows me to work from any location as long as I have internet, so for me, relocation is only a matter of down-time. For my husband though, relocation means starting fresh - which has its challenges when you're a mature age. Even with this challenge it didn't take us long to make the decision that it was time to move again. I knew I would miss the many friends and connections I had made through my involvement with TVCOGECO and the Peterborough crew will always have a spot in my heart, but we missed our family connections more.

The process of preparing our home, more specifically the DECLUTTERING stage took its sweet time and I URGE anyone who thinks they may move one day - start now! Don't wait. So many of us have an emotional connection to our clutter, and the process can take a while. I've seen it done on TV where a counselor guides the family through the process, but when you've got a houseful of memories collected from elders who have passed, it's a very stressful operation to extract the needed and useful from everything else. If it's possible to do it gently over a period of time, it helps the grieving process.

The next stage was to update and refresh the house so that it presented in the very best light. We are perfectionists ... so enough said. After all was said and done, we had missed the spring peak selling time and things slowed down. Thankfully our wonderful agent @TrudyWilson was a very hard working gal and was willing to do open houses weekly to get the traffic through. We sold in a respectable time frame and our Peterborough home now rests in the hands of a lovely young couple and I'm sure they will enjoy the area as much as we did. We have left them with all of the business contacts and brochure we could get our hands on.

I had a "time frame" in my mind and thought we should be in our new home by June at the latest, with plenty of time to plant a veggie garden. We were looking for a bungalow with a very large yard. It's amazing how you may not get what you want - but what you really need instead. We now have a lovely 2 story semi - so I get my exercise up and down the stairs, a small yard for a manageable garden, close to a school yard and trailway for more exercise and in a fabulous friendly neighborhood close to our family for the companionship we so missed.

I am truly blessed.