Disney | Wishes And Pixie Dust

October 13, 2011
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Fall & Halloween Doings

Welcome Fall! I love this picture, because it reminds me so much of the season of Fall in Wisconsin. At one of our houses we had huge trees just like this in our front yard, and when I say there were leaves to rake……..we had piles of leaves four feet high! I miss the smell of crunching leaves underfoot as you walk along, and the distinct fall aromas: the leaves, the cool crisp air, the bonfires at night, that if close enough, fills your house with a smoky smell. We always went to The Little Farmer at this time of year to pick out our pumpkins, apple butter, muffins and pies, and go on a hayride. I will definitely miss the hayrides through the woods, even though it seriously messed up my allergies. There is nothing like a fall forest hayride in Wisconsin.

This picture was taken last fall, before we knew we were moving. Little did we know it would be our last trip there:

If you are fortunate enough to live in an area where you can witness the fall colors, enjoy it a little extra for me 🙂

There are several different farms/orchards in Lake County that appear somewhat similar to The Little Farmer, which I’ll list here:

Long & Scott Farms in Mount Dora

Santa’s Christmas Tree Forest in Eustis

Stanley Pond Adventure Pond in Astatula

Uncle Donald’s Farm in Lady Lake

Right now Santa’s Christmas Tree Forest in Eustis seems to be the best option to try.

We’re not sure what we plan to do for the day of Halloween this year, even though it is only a couple of weeks away. We’ll do the traditional pumpkins, of course, but I’m not sure if we’ll participate in trick-or-treating. We have discovered that there is no set time or day for trick or treating in Clermont. In Wisconsin, we always had trick or treating the Sunday before Halloween, from 3:30 to 5:30, followed by pizza and hot chocolate (because it was always invariably cold outside). We will buy a couple of bags of candy to give out to our neighbors’ children, but I think this year we’re going to be winging it. Our original plan was to attend Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, but due to unforeseen circumstances, our budget will not allow for that extra expense this year. I did win an Event Party Music CD from the Disney Planning Blog, so at least we’ll have the music to listen to! Walt Disney World is not going anywhere, and neither are we; while we would have liked to attend, there also isn’t an urgency to do everything as soon as we possibly can. There’s always next year, and we’re fine with that.

As always, thank you for following us. We do plan to put out an update post soon describing what Florida life looks like to us three months after the move.

~♥~ Jen~♥~

October 5, 2011
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The Passing of a Visionary

We were very saddened to hear the news of the passing of Steve Jobs, and we wanted to share a quotation that a friend on Facebook posted on their wall:

‎”Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” ~ Steve Jobs

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Rest in peace, Steve. You truly have made our world a better place. Our hearts go out to your family at this time.

September 9, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 1 Comment

The Princess And The Frog

In Wisconsin we had a ritual on Saturday night: we would eat a dinner of pizza while sitting around the television and watch a Disney movie. We did this for years, ever since the children were toddlers, and weren’t quite able to participate in eating pizza yet. 😉 When we moved to Florida, we needed to adjust our plans somewhat and forgo pizza night, as one) we had no television, and two) we had no furniture. We are happy to report that we now have both a television and furniture, but we’re discovering that Saturday doesn’t exactly work the best for us, as we’re usually in a theme park that day. So we’ve decided to be flexible with the date, and tonight was our pizza night, while we watched, of course, The Princess and The Frog!

We originally chose The Princess and The Frog as this blog’s theme as a way to conceal our identities until we were ready to announce who we are. The movie fit our family’s dynamics well, but the selling point was Louis, because our daughter just loves alligators. It’s funny, because when we first saw the movie, it didn’t seem all that good, and we weren’t sure if we were even going to buy it. But we did, and now it’s one of our favorites.

We were at Port Orleans Riverside on our daughter’s birthday; she saw this and we picked it up for her as a present. Kissing would be nice, yes?

You can imagine our delight last weekend when we were able to do a character meet and greet with Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen. Naveen is no longer a regular with Tiana, so we were thrilled to be able to come across both of them together:

We started our blog on June 7, 2010 on Blogger (if you go to March archives and scroll back, you can see all our earlier posts), and then made the jump to WordPress in March. We initially started it for ourselves, as documentation of our move, and as an ongoing record of what we had completed and what we yet needed to complete. We were thrilled when our readership jumped, and we saw that our progress was helping other people with their own moves. Our readers comments have helped us to make decisions along the way, and we are grateful for all the feedback and suggestions we have received. We are blessed to have made friendships over the past few months; friendships that probably would not have existed without the blog, and we are doubly blessed to continue these friendships in person.

Our blog has always been about relocation, and the issues and concerns regarding it. We have never been, nor don’t intend to be, a Disney blog. There are many Disney blogs out there; we follow a lot of them, and we don’t feel that we could add anything unique to what’s been written. Now that we are settled, honestly, we don’t have much to write about regarding the relocation process, and at this point in time we feel like our blog has served its purpose. You can find a list of our favourite blogs (and podcasts) by reading our blog on Getting, and Staying, In The ‘Disney Mood’.

We will keep the Facebook page, Wishes And Pixie Dust active, as well as our website that contains our blog, as we hope it will help those who are still in the relocation process. We may post occasional blogs to the site, but generally we will not publish regular posts. It’s hard to set aside something that has been a part of our lives for 15 months: in one form or another, we both have been actively involved in Wishes and Pixie Dust, whether it be blog writing or website development or researching information. But it’s time to let go and move on.

We welcome our readers to contact us on Facebook or Twitter if they have any questions regarding relocation, and we’re happy that you have been a part of our life over the past fifteen months.

May you have a magical, pixie-dust filled day, and remember the words of Walt Disney:

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

September 9, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 1 Comment

Living Life In Florida

When we were planning our move to Florida, we were excited at the possibility of our expenses being lower than in Wisconsin. Now that we’ve been here for over six weeks, we thought we would take a look at our actual expenses and share them with our readers. For a reference point, our apartment is 1,389 sq feet.

Our monthly rent increased by $186; however, we are no longer responsible for lawn care.
Our monthly cable bill for phone, internet and television decreased by $5.
No more gas bill (averaged $35-45 in summer; $300 in winter)
Our electric bill is $220, which is not bad considering we haven’t been careful about our usage, we had many pool days which means more towels to wash, and it’s summer 🙂 We expected it to be less, but it’s less than it would be in Wisconsin.
Our income increased because there are no withholdings for state income tax.
The biggest change is our water bill. In Wisconsin we were paying $135 monthly. In Florida we paid $8.64. We do expect the bill to go up for September, as the meter was read August 5 for the water, which resulted in only 12 days of water, but we don’t expect it to be a significant amount.
Our gasoline usage has increased significantly, due to the fact we are approximately 40-50 minutes away from Disney (one way), Clermont is much more spread out than Fond du Lac was, and approximately an hour’s worth of gas is used daily for bringing the kids to and from school.
Groceries are approximately 15-20% more expensive here than in Wisconsin, and significantly lacking in a variety of dairy products 🙂 We find that we shop at four different grocery stores: Winn-Dixie, Publix, Sweetbay and Target, which is an extremely different routine for us. (We’re used to shopping at one, and we’ve really been missing it lately).

New bills for Florida:

Disney annual passes are $150 per month
Pest control fee is $1 per month
Valet trash fee is $15 per month
Sunpass: this varies on how often we go into Orlando, but in six weeks since we’ve been here we’ve spent $17.50 in tolls. It will go down considerably from here on because we’re not using the Turnpike as much now.

So are we paying less in expenses than Wisconsin? No, but we’re not paying more, either. It all seems to equal out in the end. We do acknowledge the fact that if we were renting a house, we would be paying more in expenses; in terms of lawn care, pool upkeep and a higher bill for pest control. We’re quite satisfied with the apartment complex and love not having the responsibilities that renting or owning a home entails. We recognize that apartment living is not for everyone, but it suits us perfectly.

September 6, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 2 Comments

Clermont is Home

Yesterday marked the six week anniversary of our arrival in Florida, and we thought we would share with you our thoughts about the adjustment process. Prior to our move we had heard from others who completed long distance moves and were informed that it could take up to a year (or more) for this to feel like home. We are happy to say that we don’t anticipate it will take that long. It goes without saying that we miss our family and friends in Wisconsin, and at times it’s hard being away from them, but we have made new relationships that would not have been possible without the move, and we are happy to know these individuals better and call them our friends. It does seem a little weird, though, not to have anyone to list as an emergency contact on the school forms.

For those of you in the process of preparing for a long distance move, we recommend donating or selling as much as possible. Seriously, get rid of it now. We have been saying on this blog since early on that unless you love it or it has meaning to you, don’t keep it. We have discovered that the boxes you do move with you have to be unpacked, and then furniture needs to be purchased to put the items into (assuming you don’t move the furniture with you). As we were packing boxes and preparing for the move, there was one conversation that kept resurfacing, and that was the question of which articles of furniture we should consider moving. We find it interesting that in the end, the furniture we chose to move with us fits perfectly in the apartment, and had we elected to move an end table we were considering, there would have been no place for it.

We feel at home in Clermont, and have absolutely no regrets about our decision to move here. Yes, we are further than we’d like to be from Walt Disney World, and we find that our trips in are less spontaneous and more planned around our family’s responsibilities. However, we love that we do not live in an area where tourists frequent; it makes it feel more like home. We are becoming more familiar with the area, and have discovered which side streets we can take to avoid travelling on Highway 50. We had our first pizza night last night since moving to Clermont, and it was awesome to get back into familiar routines. Which Disney movie did we watch? The Princess and the Frog, of course! 🙂

We love that we are able to refurnish our house piece by piece. Catie’s room is completely done, Ben needs a dresser yet, and we need a dresser and some bookcases. We’ve gone with a beech wood theme in our living room when buying furniture, and love the lighter color of the wood. We tend to decorate in brighter colors here, to match the sunny climate. We have yet to purchase a sofa; we haven’t found one we like that will match our color scheme, and we refuse to settle on a cheap substitute just to “have a sofa”. We have found plenty of sofas in tan/darker neutral colors, but we want something with a lighter edge to it. One of the furniture stores we go to often is Clermont Furniture by Winn Dixie. We really like the selection and prices, the owner/manager is not an aggressive “in-your-face” type salesman, and they offer same day delivery with really reasonable delivery rates. One of the things we’ve discovered is that in general furniture stores will offer low prices on furniture, but then over-inflate delivery costs. We really like that Clermont Furniture does not do that.

We recommend researching the area you intend to relocate into, to discover which stores and amenities are available prior to your move. This will help you to get a feel for your area, and make it feel more familiar to you once you do arrive. There are still times when we can hardly believe that we live in Florida; sort of a “don’t pinch me, I might wake up” moment. 🙂 It seems weird to be living in a totally different part of the United States, but we all seem to be adjusting well. Clermont is home 🙂