Have to admit, until fairly recently, we'd never heard of the butter bell. We just did what I suppose most people do - keep the butter in fridge, where it's always too hard and cold. Or, leave it...
Lifestyle…
Slow design. Slow life.
This doesn’t mean we’re lazy – far from it. It just means that we’ve stood back, taken stock and slowed down the pace of things. We’ve (largely) stopped the 9-5 working day and we spend more time living. It hasn’t been easy making such big changes – coming from a city that never stops to a rural village has taken some getting used to, but we’re getting there. Our whole lifestyle is becoming much more balanced.
Our lifestyle now much more takes into account what we buy, what we eat, how we cook, how we relax. How we’ve largely weaned ourselves away from convenience and are now taking a much considered approach to how we live our lives. We still work full time from home and we’re planning our next adventure, but we do try to make time to live life.
Slowing down has had such a positive impact, that we want to share what inspires us and what has enabled a shift in our lifestyle.
What we’ve done isn’t rocket science. It’s just about savouring moments that we might have missed before, because we were just too busy. Too pre-occupied. And even if it’s just watching a sunset, getting in the car and having a night away or making a spicy curry on a Friday evening, listening to Kylie Minogue, well – we savour it…
recent lifestyle blogs
benvenuti winery : kaldir : istria
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cooking : air fryer style
Since we bought our air fryer in the New Year, we've noticed that we are definitely using the conventional oven much less. It's been used maybe three or four times, if that, and if we were in our...
mi smart air fryer : 3.5l
We've considered an air fryer for a while, but haven't done anything about acquiring one, as we thought they might be a bit gimmicky. Used a couple of times and then put back in the box and pushed...
settling in, kind of…
In a few days time, we go on holiday. Our holiday this year will be a bit different, as we’re flying back into Manchester to visit family and friends. Returning to the city that has been our home...
the confusion that comes with buying a car…
I think my blogs about things which cause us confusion, will go on for some years to come. Because, at the moment, just about everything is causing us to be be confused. We are muddling through,...
causes for confusion
Our last cause for confusion centred around the Croatian banking system, which admittedly is getting a little less confusing as we just keep returning to the bank. We’re sure that one day all will...
lost in translation
You know when things go really smoothly and you get lulled into a false sense of security, that this is how it will always be? Well, that happened to us very recently… We had arranged with the...
the big unpack begins
After two days of drowning in boxes and bubblewrap, we finally carved out a tiny corner of normality in the living room – unpacking and putting together our sofa was a joy, as was having some cosy...
finally moving in
So, three months after we signed all of the legal documents for The House in the solictors’ office in Rijeka, we found ourselves, on 1st March 2017, heading from our stop-over in Zagreb, to the...
the move : how we did it…
Fast forward a couple of months from the last blog, and Monday 5th December, saw us sitting in a solicitors’ office in Riejka, with the sellers, signing paperwork & taking possession of the keys...
getting the keys
So, on Monday 5th December 2016, *this* happened. Meaning, it’s now all very real, indeed…
flights booked
So, flights booked. We hope there’s no turning back now. Come the beginning of December, we hope the deal has been sealed. We hope that as well as those UK National Insurance numbers – which you...
getting the oibs
December is going to herald in some big changes! We fly out on 1st December to Bergamo in Northern Italy and pick up a car, which we’ll drive down to Istria. On Dec 2nd we apply for our Croatian...
finding the house
So, we’d arrived in Istria and hired a car, with the intention of finding the house we’d spotted online. Armed with a map and sat-nav we set off, climbing higher and higher up into the Istrian...
the first viewing
Our second trip to The House, this time to view internally, was much less problematic direction-wise, as we were already becoming used to the Istrian roads. What had seemed like a very long journey...