It's official...

Our house is officially on the market

Since Christmas we have been busy little leavers...

When we closed the store in September 2010 and sold the daycare we basically piled up everything in every nook and cranny in our house.

Spare bathroom:

Upstairs hallway

So in September 2011 after returning from our 4 month Maiden Voyage in our travel trailer, I stated unpacking and sorting and selling off all that stuff.

Remember when my living room looked like this

I am happy to say that by January we were able to move everything that was left into the garage and my living room now is back to normal again :)

And my hall even though the walls need a wash still is beginning to look like normal again.

After removing all the "stuff" from the spare bathroom, Ian tiled the floor. About 7 or 8 of the old tiles were all cracked and old and ugly looking so in a couple days we now have a beautiful new floor. It was on our to do list for a few years...funny how when we decide to sell we finally get around to actually doing the things we wanted to do for so long!

And the spare bathroom now looks like this

Even though we've had a cold streak here for the lower mainland BC we managed to get our front door paint this week finally. We took our inspiration for the front door colour from these Black Eyes Susan's in the fall against the freshly painted brown...the yellow was so pretty.

So yellow we went (One door at a time as it's snowy and cold right now so we had to remove the door and bring it inside to paint)...

To be honest I am not sure how I feel about the yellow now that it is painted...it's a bit brighter then expected. I'll try to get a daylight photo tomorrow and post in in a few days as I didn't take a picture when the door was finished.

So as you can see we've been busy...not just ignoring the blogs...just no time to sit down and play :) So we have a couple days before our listing actually shows up on MLS and then hopefully we will get some showings and have a quick sale! Until then...I'm off to wash walls!

Welcome 2012!

This year brings lots of changes for us! We take on living another Year of Choice and are making lots of big choices and changes!

First though we hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We had an amazing 2011 with our 4 1/2 month trip touring the US and Canada. We made many memories and are looking forward to making many more in 2012.

We started off the new year with a yummy dinner inspired by Gordon Ramsey. We enjoyed a wonderful roast turkey dinner with lemon, parsley and garlic, roasted potatoes with chili and tumeric, and brussel sprouts. For desert we had Strawberry Margarita shots. I found the recipe HERE and they were sooo good! You can't taste the Tequila however they were quite potent as I put the left over jello mix in a container and when you ate it alone it was strong! The sweetness from the strawberry made them so yummy and you couldn't taste the Tequila at all. We will definitely make these again in the future!

With 2012 here now we are all set to live another year of choice! We look forward to it. We haven't set resolutions as usually they get broken. Instead we have decided to live our choices. We are embracing 2012 with all of it's possibilities! We are open to change and to all the hard work to get there.

January 1st means we have less then 4 months to clean up this chapter of our lives so we can move onto the next chapter. For some the changing of the years means cleaning and organizing...for us it means thinning out and getting rid of the majority of our belonging so we can hit the road in our RV again for a few years. During this time we will look for land and then take a few years to build our Earthship ourselves (so excited to be one step closer to our Earthship dream)!

Each day we will have to decide what is important enough to keep and what can we live without. We will chose to keep those things around us that mean the most, and let go of all those things we collect throughout our lives that we really don't need... you know all that "stuff" that piles up here and there and before you know it you have a room full of "stuff". We'll purge, we'll sell, we'll give away, we'll donate...we'll chose the life we want to live and go for it! It's amazing how powerful making choices can be!

Why 4 months? We have friends in Toronto who are getting married in April and we are choosing to sell off everything to be at their wedding and not have to come back here to tie up loose ends. So we have 2 weeks to get the house ready to sell and listed and then hopefully sold in time to allow us to be ready to leave and make it to the wedding on time and not look back! Celebrating a wedding seems like a grand way to embrace our choices and begin our next journey in life as well.

So with that...we wish you a year of choice, we wish you love when you least expect it and we wish you much happiness in the year to come! Happy New Year!!! with LOVE from all of us :)

We'd like to give big welcome wishes to Michael and Dee of gonerving and to Heinzrvjourney who are just beginning their choice of life in an RV as well. Welcome and thanks for joining us even though we are parked at the moment :) Glad to have you along as we start this next chapter in our lives.

I'd like to thank you all for following us this past year and hope you enjoy reading about our coming choices this year as well. Things have been sporadic around here since we have been "home" but there are many more journey's to come and we'd love you all to join us!

Christmas is coming...

I LOVE the Christmas holidays! I love the sights and sounds and smells of Christmas. I love the magic of Christmas. I love just sitting by the Christmas tree in the evenings, all lit up and the fire a glow. I love all the time we spend together as a family. I don't like the cold white stuff much but the Christmas season I love! We don't have a lot of family traditions but the ones we have are important to us.

Every year daddy makes sausage rolls from scratch just like he and his dad used to do. Below Sierra helps daddy for the first time in 2008.

We love decorating our tree together. Here's some of our past trees full of many homemade and store bought ornaments but all of them have a special meaning.

Aayla helping in 2009

2009 tree all decorated

2010 tree all decorated

Everyone helping to decorate our 2010 tree

Me adding one of my favourite store bought
ornaments...I just LOVE this fairy dog :)
 I have a large one in my craft room too!
2011

Our 2011 Tree...some branches are heavy
with multiple ornaments as the girls love
to add numerous ornaments to each branch

We always make gingerbread houses. Sierra and Aayla are so excited about our house from 2010

We buy or make at least one new tree decoration every year (in all honesty we usually end up with 3 or 4 every year). Here are some of my favourite ornaments from past years. I love unwrapping each ornament as we get ready to hang them.

Notice a theme? A lot of red, a lot of Santas, and mainly handmade ornaments.

This year we started a new tradition called "the Elf on the Shelf" and we LOVE our Elfie :)

To learn about the Elf on the Shelf click HERE


Here are a couple pictures of the mischief our Elfie has been getting into

Swinging on the chandelier

Caught watching a movie

Built a pop mountain/tree and gave the
girls invitations to the north pole BC

We are having fun with this new tradition! I love his vintage feel and the book he came with is really a sweet story. It is so magical to watch the girls search for Elfie every morning and to see them talking to him throughout the day, telling him stories :)

What traditions do you have each Christmas? Are you in an RV this Christmas? How will you celebrate? decorate? I'm curious as this is our last Christmas in a typical "house" and next year we will be on the road and I would love to hear about some of your RV Christmas plans.

A weekend in Seattle

Mom and I took the girls to Seattle for a weekend get away which turned into a kids weekend :)

We visited the Seattle Children's Museum.

 Playing in this little taco restaurant was Aaylas favourite thing to do. Making smoothies just like daddy does.

 Walking through leaves my girls can't help but pick them up by the handfuls.

And the Woodland Park Zoo which we got in for FREE with our membership to the Carlsbad Living Desert Zoo and Gardens we purchased on our trip this summer.

 This elephant was so much fun to watch. He kept throwing the dirt up on his back, then rolling in it and then throwing it again.

 We bought bird food feeders for $2 each to feed the birds.

All in all we had a great girls weekend away...now home we go to continue with organizing and selling things in preparation for hitting the road again in the spring.

Oh and I bought this book (find it here)

at a thrift store for $2.99. Looks like it's full of lots of great info for travelling this Spring.

Lest We Forget

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

- John McCrae May 1915

To see how we made our own poppies this year click HERE