Lighten the Load

Sitting here having a glass of Medoc wine and goat brie cheese on crackers.  Sounds fancy doesn't it.  It isn't our everyday go-to wine or cheese.  DH brought home both, I think his reasoning that a holiday is upcoming and his birthday is next week.  We rarely splurge and I approve that we should occasionally as one can get frugal fatigue.  Our needs are average to below-average and our wants are very minimal.  We have re-educated and re-trained ourselves to what is important and to have minimal needs.  We eliminated gift giving to each other about 10 years ago.  Now we aren't scrooges by any means, we just changed our thinking.  I recall the last year of gift giving of having the epiphany of saying I don't need anything else thus it was born that no more buying something to surprise one another or make grandiose gift buying a show of our love for one another.  What we do now is that Person A might have a hankering for something - one year for me I said I wanted a double kayak - my DH almost broke his jaw by how far it dropped.  One year he wanted a digital camera.  So we save up our wants and get pricing, double check our real need vs want and then go shopping.  We also have a somewhat utilized rule of 'out with the old before new comes in'.  For the digital camera, DH traded all of his bellows camera and gear toward the digital purchase.  With the double kayak, we have used it a lot and we get to spend some great quality time together - also we bought it used up at Lake Tahoe at the end of the season - thanks Val for housing it and transporting it for us!!  Love you!

Milk and Honey

Milk and Honey popped into my head this morning while making coffee.  Returning to the Land of Milk and Honey.  When I thought of it I had a warm calming feeling inside, a reassuring feeling that all is ok and this move is a good and correct move.  But why milk and honey, so I had to look it up.  It goes back to the Bible where it is referred to the land of fertility and abundance - well that is California (or was as it has been eight years since we left). 

 

To catch up, since the end of October. 

 

We initially were going to sell off all furniture and keep only what would fit in a cargo trailer that we would haul.  We moved up here with a professional mover, taking everything with us after a major whittling down of extra stuff.  Our prior home on the peninsula was all of 1,200 SF so it wasn't huge, about one-fourth or one-fifth of a moving rig.  That furniture is now even eight years older so it's true age is close to 20 years in some cases.  It has all served us well but isn't worth the cost to move it again.  But, wait, I really, really want to keep my beautiful outdoor furniture.  It is a lovely set from O.W. Lee and is a table with four chairs, a love seat and two armed side chairs and a coffee table.  Lovely bronze wrought iron with faux stone table tops, custom pads for all seating and leaning surfaces.  We paid $3.7k back in 2000.  This set has served us so well and the pads are just now showing signs of wear.  This set represents outdoor living to me, it represents being able to be outside, relaxing in the warm breeze of a summer afternoon.  Up here in the 48th latitude one can only do that for three to four months of the year.  We can only leave the pads out for maybe two months.  I did not want to give up this set out of everything furniture wise.  I kind of dug my heels in (in my head).