We Are Coming AND Going!

Our previous post, Are we coming or going? has now been resolved.  We are doing both -- coming and going!  The anticipated offer on our home arrived a week later than promised.  By the time it was put into our hands it was, as they say,  too little too late.  We turned it down, without even a counter offer. After hours and hours of waiting with the ifs,  new desires and options unfolded.  The what's-next-in-our-lives discussions along with a digging-deep examination of our desires,  twisted our heads a bit.   We simply could not put aside having our cake and eating it too.

So, here we are!  We will stay, in our home, but not.  Yep, the Airbnb venture is turning into a brisk business.  August and September are booked  20+ days each so we can hardly call our home our home.  But, we're liking it, at least for now.  We anticipate our brisk business will  morph into a dull business this winter, giving us back our home's delightful spaces.

Most of our visitors so far have been young couples hoping to one day build their own small green home, and they are delighted to experience living small.  They are also pleased with the ideas they are collecting. This is exactly as we'd hoped our innovative home would work -- modeling living a small, yet good life.  Here are a few of their comments:

"Staying in the Fredley house is like staying in our dream home…This place is like a little slice of heaven to us."

"The home and gardens are so incredibly peaceful and beautiful.  We wish we could stay forever."

"For years, I have loved 'The Not So Big House' and other similar publications….Few possessions, few distractions, togetherness of family.  What a treat…"

"I never dreamed that just two days here at the Fredley Home could restore me so deeply.  I am sad to be leaving…"

"You have really created a work of art."  

In the meantime, Thistle is parked at Brad and Yessi's home, and is our home-away-from-home.  Combined with our barn on Grace Lane, it's quite a comfortable arrangement.   And, come October, it's  China, to be followed by a winter sojourn in Thistle. 

~~~

"The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.  As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to mind."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche