SKI-er or Sk-ater. We know how to enjoy ourselves

donny-gal

Hi Digger
IYWYM, apart from treating ourselves to whatever new electronic gadgets we(I) may fancy if I can justify them to myself, then there is nothing desperately we want, we go away as we like, and eat out if we wish, or buy what we fancy to eat in (trying to remember the waist line and cholesterol), there is no need for the amount of clothes needed when working, and certainly ensure we keep warm, but still cannot bring ourselves to be wasteful. Way we always lived I suppose.
DG

pollypenny

I was very nervous about how we'd manage when I first retired!

We did enjoy a holiday in school term-time that firsdt September, but have to admit the group dynamics were not as good without a sprinkling of younger people. This was with Archer's Direct.

We di also take another holiday soon after - Nile Cruise for our Ruby Anniversary.

Now we tend to eat out once a week, trying for early birds, not not desperately. Most of our ski-ing is to the USA to see our gorgeous new grandson - off next Monday!

seven-day-weekend

DiggerUK wrote: »

OK, blast from the past I know, but seeing how everybody has ailments of one sort or another, I hadn't the heart to say everybody at Digger Mansions is fit as fiddles. But get well soon.

To the subject of this thread; what were the first things that you enjoyed doing when you finally got down to some serious skiing.

Reason for asking is that we complete on sale of Digger Mansion 1 by end of month. We are already in the Digger Mansions retirement home, and apart from getting it as we want it, that's it.
..._

Hi there.

The first thing we did was bought a house in Spain where we lived full-time for five years and part-time for three.

We are now back in the UK, where we have SKI'd a lot of money giving our son a deposit to buy a flat (does it count as SKI-ing if we have spent it on him?) and there are very many things we still want to do, including re-visiting our Spanish village and other places for holidays in the sun.

We are now fully fledged professional Housesitters to give us more money to realise this aim. Already we have jobs lined up for Birmingham (3 jobs), Wolverhampton (2 jobs), Dudley (2 jobs) and Oxford (1 job).

If you wish to book our services please pm me!

DiggerUK

When you get down to looking, it always seems that folks are much of a sameness, it's those little shades of grey that make one person different, and special.

We talked about our "waist line and cholesterol", and just said 'sod it', we like our food. After seeing Hairy Bikers in Norway recently we want to go there for our next break. Then we saw them in Belgium...and then we saw them in....

As to house swapping and seeing grand kids, well g/k are all here in UK so no problem. As we now have Digger Mansions +9 acres for the horses it means we wont be getting property abroad, and g/k want to come here every 5 minutes so our pester power by proxy means that we don't have to go off visiting. Deadly how a little "when our we seeing you again...oh... you will ask mummy and daddy when you are coming again" gets us out of having to travel

As to house swapping, methinks I will muse on house squatting, we have friends and family all over the place. NZ, Aus, Dubai, Canada, France, Lebanon and Scotland.

Both of us still working at moment, me in private sector, and Mrs.D. working from home with job she was in before. But will be sitting down to do a balance sheet when house completion puts money in bank....NEXT WEEKEND. Worrying when we would finally sell has been a bit of a drain on us. But now we can balance the books with family members who sold us their share in property we all inherited, and me and Mrs D wanted.

Isn't it nice when things just work.
..._

pollypenny

I do fancy the house swapping idea, having discussed it with SDW.

We live in a beautiful, yet fairly discovered area of North Wales, handy for Chester, too. However, it's the thought of emptying drawers and wardrobes that scupper me.

seven-day-weekend

pollypenny wrote: »

I do fancy the house swapping idea, having discussed it with SDW.

We live in a beautiful, yet fairly discovered area of North Wales, handy for Chester, too. However, it's the thought of emptying drawers and wardrobes that scupper me.

You only need to give the house exchangers a clothes rail and one drawer, they are not moving in for ever! :rotfl:

pollypenny

Is that all you did, SDW?

I'd imagine a family might want to come here, though.

seven-day-weekend

pollypenny wrote: »

Is that all you did, SDW?

I'd imagine a family might want to come here, though.

Just put a clothes rail in each room where someone sleeps, and a drawer.

The clothes rail can be dismantled and stored when not in use.

We have never been left an empty wardrobe, on all our home exchanges. Sometimes there will be half a wardrobe, or a clothes rail, or once we had hangers on the backs of doors. I personally think a clothes rail is fine.

Oh... in one we had a walk-in wardrobe, but only a quarter of the hanging space was empty for us to use.

pollypenny

That's an interesting thought.

A home exchange would probably a good test of our hopes of living near the family in Florida.

seven-day-weekend

Just try it, just once. You may like it! Try a long weekend in the UK to start with.

If there is any personal stuff you need to leave, just put everything in one place and lock the door. In fact it is quite acceptable to have one room locked - one of our exchange houses had one of the studies locked. We still had the rest of the house to ourselves. We used to put all our personal stuff in our storeroom.

Decide whether you want to exchange cars. We never did because we didn't do long haul so always had our car with us, but many people do, especially if you are exchanging with someone, for example, in the USA or Australia.

Just leave as I say a clothes rail/drawer or two, that will be plenty, let them know what to do with bedding at the end of the exchange, in fact we compiled a little folder with info like this in it as well as how to work the washer, telly etc.

Go through a reputable site. This is the one we used and we never had any problems

www.homeforexchange.com

This is an excellent site managed by a very efficient and helpful Dutch lady. They have properties from all round the world on their books. I think it's about £45 for a year's membership.

Don't hesitate to pm me if you need any furthere information and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Now we are back in the UK we have stopped doing Home Exchanging (no-one wants to come to Wolverhampton!), but are registered house/petsitters so we still get a chance for a change of scenery (and earning money too!).

Hope this helps!