Journey & Adventure

I can't believe that I haven't posted anything since October.  Wow!  I don't know where the time went.  There are the usual excuses - work, family and the many, many craft/jewelry shows that I participated in.  There are times when the time passes so slowly and then there are other moments when the time just screams on by.  Apparently, October through December contained a lot of those latter moments. Well, rest-assured I'm still here and all have been good.  I've been lurking, I just haven't had the time or energy to put anything to "paper". J and I were fortunate to spend two glorious weeks on Bonaire at the beginning of December, with plenty of diving, sunshine and relaxation.  You may recall to Bonaire is one of the "finalists" in the places we wish to retire to in a few years, so it was good to spend time looking at the island from that perspective.  We toured many neighborhoods - discovered those that held potential and ruled ou...

I mentioned in a previous post that J and I were creating a business plan that could assist us with our post-retirement sustainability plan.  I mentioned I would continue to sell jewelry as the area we are looking at retiring to has a great cruise ship business.  Well, J is also getting in on the "crafting" experience.  Here are some of his Surfing Flamingo creations (wine bottle candle lanterns and wine bottle wind chimes).  I personally LOVE them, but then again, I'm kinda bias.  Tell your friends - we will ship with the US, Canada and internationally too!

Apart from our early retirement plans, and our scuba diving/travel adventures, J and I are truly boring people. We have little to no social lives, we don’t go to many movies, we don’t go to many organized events and we don’t participate in organized sports and we are basically okay with that. I like my quiet time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a very social person when the opportunity arises, but I don’t need to participate in social activities on a regular basis. This train of thought came about when I was speaking with The Boy this past weekend. He asked what we’d been up to since he’s been off at school. My response was “nothing at all”. To that, his response was “What’s wrong with you guys? You used to be fun.” He’s right. We weren’t always this boring, but have somehow evolved over the years. I realize age might have something to do with it, but mostly it started around the same time our 5 Year Plan came into focus. Preparation for early retirement costs money and mo...

The early retirement plan is chugging along.  I wish I could say it was ahead of schedule, but such is not the case.   If anything, it’s lagging behind slightly. We have made a conscience decision that J would not go back to work.  He would instead spend his time working on the projects around the house, maintaining the yard and really just getting us in a better position to get the maximum return on the house when it’s time to sell.    Well, who knew we had so much unfinished business around our place.  He’s been off work a year now and the to-do list is still a mile long.  Believe me, it’s not for lack of working on things.  In fact it’s far from it - we finish one project and two more come to mind.  There are things we could probably leave and let the next home owner deal with – like new closet organizers, but since we don’t want to leave a dollar on the table, we are working to make things perfect.  Although we re...

J and I are constantly sharing our hopes and dreams for our early retirement.   For the most part we have been on the same page since the beginning – we agree on what we want and on what we need to do to get there; however we aren’t necessarily on the same page as to where “there” is.   As I’ve shared previously, Bonaire was an early contender for the place we wanted to call home, then Ecuador, then Panama, then Nicaragua stopped by for some contemplation time and then somehow, we’ve arrived back in Bonaire.     On paper, they all make sense.     Bonaire has world-class scuba diving, English is widely spoken, amenities are easily accessible, quality housing is somewhat affordable and there is potential for side businesses to make some additional income.   But as with everything, there is a downside – increasing crime rates, high cost of living (i.e. electricity, water, gas, groceries), expensive to get to and of course the l...

I love bright colors. I like being welcomed by the feeling of warmth and cheerfulness when I enter a room. As much as the houses in Architectural Digest are stunning to look at, I don’t think they are meant to be lived in – at least not by me. I understand that some of the first rules when selling a house is to depersonalize it, remove clutter and keep wall colors neutral. This allows people to see beyond the knick-knacks and color on the walls and picture what their stuff could look like within the rooms. Here’s my dilemma – in my opinion, neutral colors can be too sterile, impersonal and boring. I’m not saying I intend on keeping the orange walls in The Boy’s bathroom or the fire engine red paint in his bedroom, but I need to find a compromise that will work for us until we sell the house, but I would like to do it now while J is still willing to have me as his “boss”. We are 98% done the spare room and have finished painting it and in case you’re wondering about the color, we ...

Over the past few months, J and I have been procrastinating on many, many things. Apart from finishing the spare room renovation project, we have been putting off the inevitable – the start of liquidating our household of stuff, lots and lots of stuff. I’m not a knick knack person and am not fond of clutter. Our decorative taste is pretty minimalistic, so I didn’t think I had that much stuff to liquidate. Well, I now think otherwise. I now think I’m on the verge of becoming a hoarder. Eeek! Who knew we had so much space to stuff…stuff? The basement is full of stuff, the closets are full of stuff, the kitchen cupboards and drawers are packed to the brim with stuff. Stuff is everywhere.  No wonder my house appears to be free of clutter - it's because it's hiding.  Good thing the spare room is not finished, or else there'd be stuff stuffed in there too! Where did it come from? Not sure, but I suspect it was just easier to stuff it somewhere than to box it up and ...

So with the holiday season behind us, it’s time to start thinking about moving forward on some of those home repair/renovation tasks that J and I have managed to put on the back burner for the last few months. As you may recall, as part of the 5 Year Plan, which is now the 4 year plan because a year has passed, we had a list of home repair/renovations that needed to be completed in order to maximize the value of our home when the time comes to list it for sale. I realize that 4 years is still a long way off, but at the rate we are moving and the way we keep adding to the list, we are going to need every minute of those 4 years to accomplish everything we have in mind. *sigh* Over the holidays, J and The Boy started to hang drywall in the spare room, but that soon came to a screeching halt when they ran out of drywall. You think it’s simply a matter of buying and bringing home some more, but such is not the case. Remember we live in Canada and it’s now winter. Cold, slushy, we...

In our quest for reaching the 5 Year Plan and as a means of maintaining our early retirement, J and I have been tossing about ideas on how to make some extra money. As you know, I already have my back-up plan – Flamingo Tongue Designs , although I don’t suspect this to be as successful in a third world country as it currently is here in Canada, but I guess only time will tell. As you also know, J is the resident photographer in our family. He takes 100’s of photographs when we travel – both on land and underwater, so it seemed only natural that he use his God given talent for good and tries to sell some of them. This is also a hobby/business that would be ongoing and self-sustaining no matter where we end up. If you ask me it’s a win, win. So with that said, J’s been spending hours, upon hours, sifting through his photos, organizing and submitting them for approval to various micro stock photography sites. It’s been a tedious and sometimes frustrating process - the submi...

I’m sure my tune will change when I’m finally relocated to Ecuador, Bonaire or some other southerly destination, but right now at this moment in time, here is a list of things I won’t miss… 1. My alarm clock. Waking up on my own will be a blessing. I should have all of the time in the world to do what I want, when I want, so my alarm clock won’t be a necessity any longer. 2. My commute. I can think of so many things I can do with an additional 2 hours every day. 3. The daily grind of a 9-5 job and all of the office politics that go along with said job. I know I’ll miss the paycheck but I think all the negatives outweigh that one positive. 4. Fast food restaurants. Yes, I know they are convenient and I am not one to frown upon their usefulness, but I’ll be glad when they are no longer an option for me. 5. Big box stores. Convenient? Yes. Cheap? Yes. Soul sucking? Absolutely! I can’t even put into words the despair I feel ...

Summer is still upon us and I’m loving every extreme heat moment of it, but my thoughts have slowly been turning to the holiday season that’s not too far around the corner. I know – it’s a sure sign of insanity. Believe me, I’m not wishing the next 3.5 months away; however I’ve had a dose of reality in that I’m not remotely prepared. You see, I sort of diddle-farted around and didn’t get my application in for participation in my usual November craft show and now, I find out there is no more room. Eeek! Flamingo Tongue Designs has done well this year overall, but I relied on that craft show to increase my sales into the “almost break-even” range.   Shame on me for procrastinating.  What am I going to do now? Well, after some scrambling, I found a bigger and better show to participate in – if I’m accepted. It’s a juried show and my work will be judged before I’m accepted, so you never know which way it might go. The entrance fees are twice as much to participa...

The 5 year plan is still chugging along and time is passing much slower than I would like. I’m actually quite ashamed that that I’m eagerly wishing the next five years of my life away, but when you finally have an “end goal” in sight, it’s difficult not to become consumed by it. As mentioned previously J and I were sure Ecuador would become our future country of residence and although it wasn’t our first choice, it had everything we were looking for – warm climate, affordable day-to-day cost of living and cheap real estate. We’ve been recently re-evaluating our future needs, wants, must-haves and nice-to-haves. Where does that bring us? Well, we’ve decided that maybe we shouldn’t give up on our first choice just yet – at least not until we’ve done a little more research and financial number crunching. Our first choice is a place we’ve been close to 10 times over the past 14 years and from the first time we arrived on the island, we were in love. Yes, love. It’s a magical ...

First, Happy Belated Mother’s Day to all Moms out there. On that note, I don’t see all the commercial hype about Mother’s Day. I believe you should respect and be nice to your mother every day of the year – not just one day designated by Hallmark Cards. Believe me (and I speak from experience), one day does not make up for the grief and torment we caused our mothers throughout of lives. Don’t get me wrong, the ability to sleep in or a nice dinner is always appreciated, but the gushy cards, flowers and gifts just feel “forced” upon us by society and somehow they become phony and fake. I’d rather the attention come at random times throughout the year….those are the moments that make moms feel special. The renovation on the spare room continues. With the room totally striped out and the millions of nails and screws removed from the studs, J can now start running the electrical. It seems like it’s moving slowly, but considering we’ve only been working on it for a few hours each ...

As part of the 5 year plan , you may recall me mentioning that we needed to renovate our spare room. When we finished our addition and renovations, the spare room was the last room needing to be finished. Having ran out of steam from the other construction, we simply closed the door to the spare room and walked away…for 7 years and for the past 7 years, it has merely served as a storage room for misfit belongings. Well, we began to remedy that situation this past weekend and the demolition has been completed.   That had needed to be done for a long time and as much as I was dreading it, it feels good to know we are beyond the point of no return. Obviously, the necessity of getting the house in tip-top selling shape (so we can retire comfortably) has been just the motivation we needed to move things along. Let’s hope that by the end of May, all of the current mess will be a distant memory and we'll be moving onto the next project. Stay tuned…

Life is slowly getting back to normal and my regular sleep habits are returning after this latest adventure. I’m also less grumpy, although my family would likely dispute that statement. J has started to weed through some of his hundreds of photos – both above and below the water’s surface, so hopefully he’ll have something to share with you in the next week or so. I also hope to share some more of my photos with you. The difference between J’s photos and mine? J’s photos are good, artistic and well-thought out, whereas mine reflect mindless, juvenile enjoyment of the moment at hand. I take photos for the sake of taking photos…no thought, no process and looking back, most of the time I couldn’t tell you what I was trying to capture. My photos are like my life…random. I do have some news about Flamingo Tongue Designs (aka the backup plan). My sales last week where phenomenal and I received my first wholesale order from a Canadian artist for her gallery/shop. Let’s hope the f...