Progress....

So I bit the bullet and put up the Christmas Tree, mainly because the boxes were cluttering up the living room and it was either do it or store them away and my conscience wouldn't let me store away the Christmas stuff in December! I have even bought and wrapped a few presents. Who knew!! And what do you know....it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

I took the photo above so you could see the tree in context but I must say I prefer it when it looks like this, with the lights dimmed, much more magical.

From this photo it looks like I put blue baubles all down one side, but that is just the light from the window doing that, all my baubles are silver. Then I have a few touches of red.

Hubby is in France this weekend. He drove over through the channel tunnel with his brother. He has to take the van back regularly to keep the insurance valid, but also of course to check on the house. It is a long drive from the UK so that part I am not looking forward to at Christmas, especially after a transatlantic flight! The end wall has been rendered and made watertight and he is pleased with the results, he has been instructed to take photos so I am sure some will follow. Surprise, surprise a lot of the weeds were back up in the front courtyard, but I guess that was inevitable but he did say the plants we put in in July have come on quite a bit, again photos have been demanded.

He also managed to speak to Steve, one of our many contacts there, regarding the next phase on the inside work, making an opening for the staircase, and renovating the floor/ceiling to the main living room so that we can start the framing for the bedrooms. I doubt much will be done before we arrive in December, in fact I don't really want an opening in the ceiling as hubby says it is pretty cold right now. His brother and him are both sleeping in their clothes. Doesn't that sound appealing, roll on December 26th.

It's a Done Deal!

So we are all moved and the deals all closed today. The closing was a bit of an anticlimax as we are already moved in but thank goodness we didn't have to wait to close to move, because it didn't get confirmed until 4.55pm this afternoon. Apparently today has been a manically busy day for real estate lawyers here in Ontario, a result of the very hot market I mentioned over the last couple of months.

Anyway it is getting quite cosy and organized around here. We don't have as many walls so there are many mirrors and pictures leaning up against the walls with nowhere to go. All the boxes I can be bothered to empty are empty, everything is functioning well, so I am wondering if I actually need what is in the unpacked boxes!

Daughter and son-in-law have already put up their tree and decorated for Christmas. They were laughing wondering what the neighbours thought of them being so organized having only moved in on Friday. Little do they know the decorations are the only boxes that have been unpacked!

Connected Again

So we are in, daughter and son-in-law are in - the brain is fried and the knees and back are complaining but we can finally see the wood for the trees - or should that be the floor for the boxes...?! Anyway the boxes are slowly disappearing and things are getting a little more organized.

I have had my traditional Bell moving experience, whereby I don't have internet, then I do, everything is great, Bell knock on my door, I don't have internet .....aarrgh! We won't even mention wireless connection - I am terrified of trying to add that into the loop for fear of losing everything again. The new house is actually quite cosy, mostly because we have too much, too large furniture! But as winter draws in (and temperatures have definitely dipped over the last few days) it is nice to be cosy.

So now I suppose I should start thinking about the big "C" which is tough because I would rather think about France. The Christmas tree and decorations have not quite made it into the basement so I guess I will have to bite the bullet and get into the spirit but not until we are are safely into December.

I am off to play house a bit more and look at my new rooms....see ya next time.

On the road again!

I have spent the last few days moving boxes from one house to another, but it's getting old. Having moved many, many times I have it down to a fine art, but even so, it is always at this point when I am in the thick of it, I ask myself "why oh why?". Poor daughter is also sick of it, in a way she is doing two moves, her stuff from her house to here, unload, then load up with my stuff to move over to our new place as she is helping me to get all the small stuff shifted. Anyway we are finally on the eve of moving day, almost everything that can be is in a box, tomorrow we will load up all the furniture and my move will be done!

Then Friday we will move daughter and son-in-law's furniture, most of their small stuff is already clogging up my basement. We will all be very glad to get to the weekend and have it all behind us.

On the bright side, we have booked flights for hubby and I to go to France!! Whooppee! We fly on Boxing Day and I return to Canada on January 4th while hubby returns to work in the UK. It is probably going to be cold and damp in the house but it will still be great to catch up with friends, share some festive cheer with everyone and hopefully get to talk to some builders to plan the next step in the project.

Ok that's it, I need to stop procrastinating and get back to it. I will report again once I am settled in the new place, think of me and send me happy, energetic thoughts......

Packing......etc.

Just picked up the keys to the new house so I can finally start moving some of the boxes that are liberally stacked around the home. Daughter and son-in-law have been bringing over their boxes on a daily basis so when it actually comes to their moving day, a week on Saturday, all they will have to move is the furniture. However this does mean my house is getting a bit crowded. For a newly married couple they have an awful lot of "stuff". My basement and garage are currently half full with their belongings.

I am looking forward to getting settled in the next house so that I can finally starting thinking about Christmas, yes I know it is just one month away but I am in denial!! I just don't have the brain cells to spare for that right now. There is also talk of us (hubby and I) heading off to France for a week or so between Christmas and the new year which is very exciting. Not that I think we will achieve much while we are there but we need a regular fix to keep us motivated. There is a little pressure to make some serious progress as daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter are planning a trip over next summer, so somewhere out of all the mess over there we have to come up with some "accommodation". But you know us, we like a challenge.

The lovely Annika seems to have turned the corner and is finally sleeping through the night, and taking good naps during the day, which has quite transformed daughter's life, she now has a gorgeous chatty little girl to look after rather than a screaming tiger cub to tame!! Check out the boxes in the background!

I will report back when I have managed to clear a little floorspace.

Coming Up for Air

Progress is being made and I am starting to feel a little less overwhelmed by my life!! You all know how we like it a little complicated around here but every once in a while I do wonder why? I think it boils down to the fact that I have been on the move most of my life, starting with my dad being in the Royal Air Force, we never stayed anywhere for very long. That has certainly rubbed off on me and I tend to get bored if life becomes too steady and predictable.

As we are on the brink of our latest house sale, I have looked back over all the others, which now total 14 in 33 years of marriage so you can see we like to mix it up regularly, and of course these are just the houses we owned, there have been a fair sprinkling of rentals in there. That's where we are off to next, renting a house for a year before we make the next step to France.

It has been a challenge to find something suitable, in the right spot, that is available ASAP. We have seen some grubby ones, some nice glamourous ones that weren't available until January, or too far from son's high school. The one we have finally settled on is clean and tidy, has a two car driveway, fenced back yard for dog, the right accommodation, just not quite in the nicest street, but maybe that is just me being a bit snobby. Anyway I have convinced myself that it will certainly work for a year, 5 months of which are mostly spent indoors (which I will make beautiful) and the rest of the year will hopefully be spent fairly evenly between here and France.

So now I can take a breath, knowing where I am going in a couple of weeks (eek!) and can start packing in earnest, I couldn't get started properly not knowing where we were moving too. Most rentals would start on 1st of the month but this is vacant and they have said we can start moving stuff in anytime but take possession on the 25th, which means I can be out and the house given a thorough clean through, in order that daughter and son-in-law can take it free and clear of all sitting tenants at the end of the month.

Another development is that the colleague I was covering while she was away on vacation, asked me to team up with her as her assistant. Hopefully this will make things a bit steadier, income a bit more regular. Obviously as an assistant there won't be the big commissions but hopefully my cut will come in on a more regular basis and there won't been the constant worry of where the next deal is going to materialize. This agent has been in the business for eight plus years and has a good referral base, the hardest part of the job, and as I can attest to, is pretty busy.

Strange as it seems, I will do a much better job promoting her, than I ever did promoting myself, it just doesn't come naturally. So fingers crossed for a productive and successful partnership over the coming year. That is another thing, she knows I am not in it for the long haul, not looking to build a huge career in real estate and also that I have another little part-time job, so that takes a lot of the stress off as the brokerage frowned on both those issues.

Update

I have been fighting off a cold for the last two weeks, it keeps surfacing in the form of a sore throat and dry cough, but I take my vitamins and echinacea and it retreats for a day or two. The colleague I have been covering for the last two weeks, returned yesterday and things are a little calmer but I feel I mustn't slow down and take it easy in an effort to recuperate, for fear that when I am recovered from the cold, all the momentum I have gained in the real estate business will have disappeared.

Hubby returns again this week for a few days, so I do plan to pull back a bit while he is here, but I am sure we will still be running with other stuff. We have to find somewhere to rent so that we an hand over the house cleanly to daughter and son-in-law on November 30th. Also we will be sorting through our belongings to decide what can be packed for France, what we will need to survive for the next year and what can go. Sounds restful doesn't it?

Most of the leaves have fallen around here and been raked to the curb for collection this week. The pool has been closed at last and the clocks have fallen backwards, all the signs that winter is almost upon us. Where did 2009 go? It seems one minute we were sweltering in the heat and suddenly we need the heat on in the house. Never mind, we are looking forward to 2010 as, having sold this house, we can make some real progress on the French house. At the moment we have the builders in clearing out the ruin so they can stabilize the walls and render what used to be an internal wall but will now be the end wall of the house. They will render and then do "pierre aparent" (?) whereby they push the render in between the old stones, revealing some of the larger stones. Not dreadfully exciting stuff but very necessary. There is some talk of hubby and I going over to France over the New Year and getting our beams sandblasted and talking staircases with people. Does the excitement never end?