Changing Lives

It's the first of November and preparation for moving to a new location and different lives has begun.

Our buyer, Naomi and her sister and sister-in-law visited us for the first time last week and have confirmed wanting to purchase the quinta. They stayed with us for 6 hours and were all very excited and delighted with our lovely home. So now we can start to confidently plan for the future move.
We won't be completing the sale until April next year, but there is much to do. Mainly we need to find somewhere new to live! More about that later.

In the meantime we have been sorting out and shedding stuff that is no longer needed or things that we will be leaving behind. Naomi wants to buy virtually everything in the property so we are compiling lists for her and Fraser has begun to pack his studio into boxes. Quite a task!

Some things we have already given away. I am organising a luxury Christmas raffle for Lili's dog shelter 'Cantinho da Lili'. Friends have donated some stunning prizes and we have donated quite a few things too, so that we have 14 prizes in all. We just have to sell the tickets now! If you are interested you can go to the website 'Cantinho da Lili' and click on the button Christmas Raffle in the menu across the top of the main page to see most of the prizes there.

In addition we have given more clothing, books, DVDs and household goods to the shelter's second hand shop in Oliveira. Suzanne and Jan, who own the shop, have been a huge support and are promoting the raffle and selling tickets too. So fingers crossed that we manage to sell all 500 tickets.

The rest we will either be selling off finally or giving away. 

It is amazing how much stuff we have collected over the last 11 years but we are determined to simplify and reduce our possessions, as hard as that is going to be.

I made some new advent calendars to sell this year again. Not much luck so far but there is still time before December. Parcels of advent treats for the boys, their girls and Lexa are due to be posted on Monday

Groundwork goes on as usual and Fraser worked with friends Mark and Karen to pick our olives on the trees closest to the house and prune the trees at the same time since they have become really overgrown over the past two years. It is a lot of work and sadly the olives weren't good enough to produce oil as the water content was too high because of the early rains.  

Karen picking olives from the branches

Mark and Fraser cropping in growth

Fraser in action

beautiful olive wood

brash for burning

We have had a wonderful indian summer with warm sunny days but increasingly chill nights. Soups are definitely on the menu for lunch these days

 and we have stacked more wood ready for the winter fires and preparing to get into hibernation mode. The dogs of course take it all in their stride and wisely get into the sun as much as possible.

Bugsy still enjoys his swim though....despite the cooling water!

And of course Mouse hunting!

 
Grey dog is still coming for food and with the rain and cooler days we have put up a doggy bender for him to shelter when he is too tired to go back up through the woods.  

He uses it sometimes for a short nap.

We are hoping that Naomi will continue to feed him once we have gone.

We are now planning to take a short trip back to the UK in November to do a recce of areas where we hope to find a house. We are focusing on the Isle of Wight initially and Fraser is going earlier to buy a car to leave in London. Then we will go back in January again to buy a place hopefully, pick up the car and drive it here ready to travel to the UK in April
So it's all go and all happening. Keep your fingers crossed for us. 

We are really going to miss this................

and this.......................