Countdown | Wishes And Pixie Dust

June 21, 2011
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Just Around The River Bend

As we approach the one-month milestone in our long journey, it seems wild that we will no longer be residents of Wisconsin; it’s almost too much too take in at times. In the early planning stages, we decided to make this our future reality, but we always knew that if things didn’t work out, we could always postpone the move. Even as we moved forward with our dream in January, our “escape route” of delaying the move was always a possibility. We have reached the point now, however, that backing out is not an option 🙂 It’s kind of scary to go out there without a safety net. The quotation by Robert Burns “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” really applies. It doesn’t matter how much you organize or how hard you plan, there will always be something that changes. It may be a good thing, it may not be so good, but you need to go with the flow and accept it for what it is.

As we approach our 30 days countdown, we thought it would be fun to make a list of 30 things that haven’t gone according to plan:

Our first moving date was going to be September 15, 2012
Our second moving date was going to be in 2013.
Our third (and final) moving date is July 22nd, 2011.
We considered renting a U-Haul truck at one point.
We thought about renting Pods.
We considered driving both cars down.
We considered letting Mayflower do part of the packing for us.
We considered renting a house.
We decided against the first city we picked.
We paid much less in a security deposit than we anticipated.
We didn’t get the apartment we wanted.
We got a better apartment!
We didn’t meet our packing goals.
Car repairs cost way more than we thought it would ($1564) Some might question the wisdom of this given the age of our car, but we expect to get at least two more years from it, it purrs like a dream now, and it also means no car payments, which totally rocks.
We didn’t sell nearly as much stuff on Craigslist as we would have liked.
We considered having a rummage sale but decided the grunt work wasn’t worth it.
Disney raised ticket prices so the cost of an annual pass will be higher than anticipated.
We’ve gone through 33 end rolls of paper that we use to pack boxes. We received 5 free, so that totals $56. We didn’t expect to use so many, and we’re not done yet.
All our boxes have been free so far, from either Mayflower or the seafood restaurant, and we currently have 138 boxes packed. $138 x $2 (average) = $276 savings. We expected to have to pay for boxes (although we’re not done yet!)
We don’t even want to total the cost of packing tape 🙂
Our bank decided to drop the Disney Rewards program for our bank cards. This was a disappointment, however, we currently have $172.44 saved in Disney Reward Dollars, will probably accrue a few more dollars before it ends, which we will be able to use at Disney World. Good news.
We didn’t realize just how much stuff we had. Let’s put it this way: we should have our own wing in the Goodwill store!
We didn’t think we had so much paper/documents/art projects stored in the house, and it took weeks to go through it all.
We didn’t realize how hard it will be to move away from businesses we’ve frequented for years.
We weren’t able to sell our oak desk, but we were able to dispose of it a lot easier than we anticipated. It will not be missed!
We acquired a lot more medical bills than we would have liked.
We didn’t expect that our son Nick would be able to get one month’s free rent at his new apartment, which saves us on needing to rent him a hotel room for a week, and a storage unit for his furniture.
We were hoping to take a visit down to Wisconsin Dells to ride the Ducks, but given the cost of the car repairs, we are unable to do that before we leave.
We were also hoping to possibly visit Chicago for a day trip, as our son Ben absolutely loves the city of Chicago, and Mark was born and raised in Chicago.
We are fine with putting off the day trips, because it gives us an excuse to come back. 🙂 Not that we need one with Nick here, of course!

We don’t know what the following weeks have in store for us……just around the river bend….. but we are excited to see how things will unfold and begin our new life as Floridians. Walt Disney said it best: “Many of the things that seem impossible now will become realities tomorrow.” Since we first imagined our dream, it has been 1,266 days in the making. Wow. Hold on to what you believe in, and keep persevering. If you believe in it, you will do it.

We hope all our readers have a magical Disney-filled week! 31 days and counting! What are you doing now to pursue your dreams?

June 19, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 4 Comments

Choosing Our Florida Home

It’s hard to believe looking back, now that we’re at 32 days, but we began this journey with a decision way back on January 1^st, 2008 after our Christmas season visit to WDW. Then came our next decision, where to live.

We started by deciding that we wanted to be no further away than a 20-30 minute drive. Then by reading through the blogs of people we knew online who lived in various areas of Central FL we had many ideas as to which areas we’d like to make our new home. We then made a list of all of the cities we had found from that reading as well as those we knew of from past visits. Then using Google Maps we scouted other cities within that 20-30 minute ‘zone’. That gave us our original search areas of NW Osceola County, NE Polk County, S Orange County and S Lake County.

With the areas “narrowed down”, our plan was then to visit as many of these areas as we could on our 2009 Disney trip (our first time driving down); with our primary focus being the areas just south of WDW. We were able to drive through several places and stop in a few stores (to gauge prices, etc.) and made some notes to take back home with us. The drive-through was cut short by a FL rainstorm, but we did come away with a new perspective.

At this point I want to say that where you choose to live will depend a lot on your personal feelings, choices and lifestyle. And keep in mind that when choosing a new home in the WDW area you will need to make some trade-offs. From many months of research online and from having mailings sent from many different commerce groups, I did learn several things. As an example, the closer you live to WDW property, the higher the prices tend to be in the local grocery stores; but further away you’ll have a longer drive to WDW but the grocery prices are lower. This is especially true in the “tourist corridor” to the immediate south of Disney property where many stores raise their prices to catch the tourist dollars from those staying in Vacation Homes and/or Suite Resorts. So you’ll want to keep things like this in mind when you start your adventure, and everyone’s choice is theirs, there is no “right or wrong’ choice…just the choice that is best for you.

This is where the work began. Using websites such as www.greatschools.org, www.homesforthegoodlife.com, www.bardellrealestate.com (Relocation tab), www.discoverourtown.com, www.mydreamlocale.com, www.cort.com/relocation, www.city-data.com/city/Florida.html (city-data is excellent for giving pure statistics on everything) and www.moving.com/real-estate/ (Real Estate Tools section) we researched the ins and outs of each city: schools, taxes, crime rates, cost of living, etc. The city at the top of our list going in ended up being eliminated early because we could see the cost of living would be far higher than we liked and a city we hadn’t even considered moved to the top of our list. This process took almost a year of being thorough in looking for what we wanted to see in a new hometown.

Once we narrowed our choices to Clermont, Windermere, Winter Garden, Reunion, Groveland and Minneola we started “visiting” these cities virtually using Google Maps, Google Images, YouTube videos, blogs and also through the help of local friends who live in these areas or who would visit for us. This helped us to ‘see’ what areas looked like and to learn what shops, restaurants, etc. were in each area. We also learned at this point that apartment and home rental costs were very similar. Sites such as www.rent.com, www.rentalhouses.com, www.apartments.com, www.forrent.com, www.trulia.com and www.realtor.com are excellent resources for viewing apartments and rental homes. The last two are great if home-buying. We also read the online versions of all the local newspapers.

By this time Clermont had risen to the top of our list and we do have friends living there who were able to give us great info on the city in general. Then it was a house-search. We decided mid-way along that we wanted to rent an apartment to start so that we could personally learn about the communities and neighborhoods. Using the apartment search sites above we narrowed our search to 3 apartment complexes. Our preference was to have a first floor apartment and we needed 3 bedrooms, so this narrowed the search to 2. At this time an ‘outside contender’ popped up unexpectedly. There was a house for rent in the city which had topped our list early on. The house seemed great; a pool and yard (lawn care and pool maintenance included), a nice sized house and the price was right. But the owners couldn’t get licensed to rent and so we dropped this house from the list and we had our final contenders: Village at East Lake and The Gardens at Citrus Tower.

We spoke and emailed with leasing reps at both apartments and Carrie at The Gardens just really sold us on them. She took the time to answer all our questions and we came away from our calls knowing everything about The Gardens and only half as much about Village at East Lake. The rest is history.

~Mark.

June 18, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 2 Comments

Relocating Your Furniture. Or Not.

As you contemplate a long-distance move (or perhaps you have already made the decision to move), one of the early questions that arises deals with the moving of furniture. If you are using professional movers, you will want to think about this prior to the appointment, as the contents of your house will be inventoried, and you will generally need to know if you plan to move an item to your new home.

There are a few questions you need to consider as you think about this. How old is my furniture? Is it worth moving hundreds of miles? For us, the answer is no, it’s not worth it. The majority of our furniture are older pieces, and realistically, the cost it would add to our invoice is more than its value. We are only keeping a select few pieces of furniture, and most of it is being discarded on Freecycle.

We will state, however, that it is kind of stressful to dispose of your furniture and not move it. We made the decision early on that we were not going to move our desk; it is solid oak and extremely heavy. It has been the thorn in our side for every move, and we’ve simply had enough with it. We made arrangements with a local person to come and pick up the desk. In order for this to happen, the desktop computer and work laptop needed to be disconnected, which is not a small feat given the massive piles of cords and modems involved! They were temporarily placed on the kitchen table, while we moved the desk out to the middle of the room. Unfortunately, this person never showed up, and we were faced with an enormous desk in the middle of the dining room, and computers disconnected and sitting on the table.

Thankfully we have a large foyer by the front door, and we were able to drag the desk out there and reassemble the dining room into some semblance of order. We used four smaller tables/bookcases to replace the desk, and while not an ideal situation, it should be okay for the next five weeks. We have someone new scheduled to come tomorrow, so if all goes well, the desk should be gone by tomorrow afternoon.

We have been slowly giving away our furniture; this week alone we have parted with 2 bookcases, a rocker & ottoman, three chairs, and (hopefully) a desk. We prefer Craigslist and Freecycle as means to dispose of our furniture because you can set the time frames when you want people to come buy to pick up your stuff. Another option you have available is to hold a rummage sale, but then you are responsible for hauling your furniture outside, sitting outside with it all day while hoping it sells, because if it doesn’t, you will have to bring it back inside (or place it in a garage if you have one available to you).

There are a few furniture stores that we are considering in Florida, recommendations given to us by friends:

Clermont Furniture on Hwy 50
Ashley Furniture
Rooms to Go Outlet in Altamonte Springs
American Freight
Sears (for mattresses)
Original Mattress Factory
IKEA

We’re putting them in our blog mainly so we have a reference point to go back to later. If any locals have some other great furniture or mattress stores to add to the list, we’d love to hear about them! Our plan is not to replace everything immediately, but only buy the essentials first and then add pieces as we can. One of the reasons we chose the apartment complex we did is that is comes furnished with a full size washer and dryer. This is a huge expense that we did not have to assume and are thankful for that!

Thanks for following along!

June 15, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 3 Comments

It’s The Little Things

Summer in Wisconsin can be described as fickle. At any given point you can be sweltering in 105 degree temperatures, or needing to bring sweatshirts, jackets and fleece blankets to soccer games. Today was a sweatshirt day, though thankfully Catie plays soccer on Monday nights, so we were at least spared the indignity of hauling along gear to brave the elements.

One thing we’ve noticed about Wisconsin since we’ve made the decision to move, is that people who live here like to complain about the weather. And we’re no exception. It probably has to do with the fact that Wisconsin weather is less than desirable (was actually thinking of a different word to use here but we like to keep this blog family friendly). When asked why we are relocating to Florida, all we have to say is two words: “Wisconsin winters”, and immediately everyone understands. We realize some of our readers may not understand, and think, “well how bad can it be?” Until you’ve experienced four to five feet high snowdrifts (and those are just the ones at the end of your driveway courtesy of the snowplow), or driving in blizzard conditions, or having to leave the house when the wind chill is thirty below zero in the morning to take the kids to school, well, you get the picture.

But by surviving a Wisconsin winter, you have earned the right to call yourself a Wisconsinite, whether that is a title you want or not is irrelevant. 🙂 You may now laugh among yourselves when the southern cities on the news shut down over an inch of snow. (No offense meant to our southern readers; it’s a Wisconsin thing, we have to find some way to amuse ourselves in the dead of winter).

This blog post does have a point outside of rambling on about the weather. We’ve reached the point in our move where we like to have everything in its place, and no surprise phone calls letting us know the apartment we were told was ours is no longer ours because the people who live there have decided to renew their lease. Augh! Really?

The good news is that there currently are three other apartments available, but the building they wish to put us in is completely opposite where we were originally supposed to be. The thing is, we really liked the location of our first apartment. One of the available apartments is located across the street from this one, and is the one we’d like to move into, but they are hesitant on that because they don’t want to leave it vacant for a month until we arrive. We were asked if we could move up our move-in date. As much as we would absolutely love to do that, Mark has work commitments, we don’t know if we’d be able to alter the date for the moving company, and we’d still be responsible for July rent on our current home, and all these factors combined just make it an impossible occurrence.

We are waiting to hear back to see if they will give us the apartment we want. We believe that it shouldn’t matter, because either way whatever apartment we choose will be empty for a month until we arrive. We’re thankful that we have not yet set up utilities or cable, though we have given out our new address to friends and the school in Clermont, so that will be a minor inconvenience to have to deal with.

We want to thank all of you who showed an outpouring of love to us, either on FB or privately, when we made the post this afternoon on our Facebook account. We truly appreciate the support and friendship you showed us, and we apologize if we made it seem like we lost the apartment. We’re kind of stressed out at the moment–all the little details seem to be sneaking up on us and the last thing we needed was a change in living arrangements. As you know, The Princess and The Frog is one of our favorite Disney movies, and when Prince Naveen says, “If you are going to let every little thing bother you, it is going to be a very long night”, it’s kind of where we are right now. We’re down to 36 days, and we’re trying not to let the little things get to us.

Thanks for spreading the pixie dust and sunshine to us 🙂

June 14, 2011
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The Eye Before The Storm

There comes a point in every move where you are lulled into a false sense of security. You think there’s no need to alter your daily schedule too much, there’s still plenty of time to pack boxes and make arrangements. You go on with your routines, only to discover two weeks have passed, and you realize you really are behind schedule, and thus the “storm” begins. We feel right now that we are in that “eye before the storm”, the calm period when everything feels okay. Our goal, however, is to make sure the hurricane storms dissipate to sunny skies, and we never see the storm clouds on our horizon.

We wanted to share just what our daily life looks like lately. The kids are now out of school for the summer, and we’re just enjoying the laziness and schedule-free qualities of not needing to set alarm clocks or rushing dinner times. During the day we are packing boxes or sorting through items; today we made a run to get more paper rolls for packing, and we were graced with free shorter rolls today. Apparently an individual had come in about an hour ahead of us and bought all the large rolls, but we were given the shorter rolls, and to be honest, we probably received just as much paper and saved twelve dollars in the process!

As we reflect on first making the decision to move in January to it now being almost the middle of June, things have gone pretty much according to plan. We had anticipated saving a little more money than we have, but we’re still in the comfortable zone, and well, it is what it is. We made the decision to hire professional movers and we stand behind that decision one hundred percent. Yes, it may seem like an extravagant cost, but we have items that have sentimental value, and other things that just would prove to be too much of a hardship to replace. We have disposed of a lot of our possessions, which we know has probably halved our cost of the move, but we choose to keep the items that matter to us, to provide security to our family. Let’s face it, moving across several states is a huge life decision that will require many months of adjustment. By choosing to transport some of our items with us, we are helping to ease that transition, and our apartment will seem more like a home.

We are keeping our storm clouds at bay by making sure we accomplish a few things each day in regards to the move, whether it be packing boxes, taking care of items on Craigslist, or just simply making lists. By not procrastinating, and doing the move in little chunks here and there, it really has become not that painful. We are grateful that we do not have the worries of needing massive amounts of energy and strength to move boxes and furniture, nor the stress of driving a moving truck across several states. For more times than we care to remember, we have been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and are simply not doing it again.

We anticipate that our lives in Florida will basically be the same as our lives here in Wisconsin, only with much better weather and lots more to do in our free time. We know it’s not going to be an easy process, but with the promise of being able to visit Walt Disney World at a whim’s notice, and meeting our Floridian (and non-Floridian) Disney friends who have been cheering us on for several months, we know it will be well worth the effort.