Just Humans Being...

We love having our own business & the fact that we can choose when we work, it's so lovely after the hectic summer to be able to relax a bit more! We really appreciate lie-ins (something that we haven't really done for years), now our youngest is into sleeping in until lunch time, our mornings are much more chilled! As our kids become independent, our elderly relatives are becoming more reliant on us - which is a slight problem as we live over 300 miles away from them! Our journeys upcountry are having to be more frequent & we are now dealing with dementia in our family for the second time. Dementia is just awful, but at the same time - we find it fascinating... Our 2 family members with it have followed the same path, both gone from being very independent, very sociable with lots of friends & keeping busy to gradually losing contact with their friends, then losing the confidence to go out, so just staying in & watching TV from morning until they go to bed, th

It's the time of year that we really enjoy cooking, as it gets colder - we like making nice, warming dishes... Nut roasts & stews are great for using seasonal veg. We also eat lots of garlic, which is probably why we remain in good health. We try to eat as much fresh food as possible & we always use up leftovers by transforming them into another dish - like using tofu & mushroom pasta sauce as the base for a walnut roast. We make our own bread & at the moment, Doris Grant's "No Knead Loaf" is the recipe we've adapted, which means we can have a loaf on the table in just over an hour! Here's a good, easy recipe: http://www.woolfit.com/grantloaf.html We used to have a bread machine, but for the last 5 years we've enjoyed making it by hand! The book "Dough" is very easy to understand & the photographs just make you desperate to get started! We try to buy most of our food locally (from mainly farms & friends) wit

In order to live simply, we eventually want to live without mains power & water. Instead, we hope to generate our own power & live on land that has a spring or well. At the moment, we have 2 shower rooms & a bathroom in our rented house, so moving away from these luxuries will be a massive step, but we really want to do it! We don't watch TV, although we have an old television that we use to watch DVDs on. We are gradually getting rid of (selling or giving away) unnecessary electrical appliances, we don't have any fancy furniture & most of our clothes are from charity shops. We try to live by the war time motto "Make do & mend." Here's some info about it: http://make-do-and-mend.org/ It seems like a good time for cutting back too & this book is really useful & cheap too! Life without luxuries doesn't have to be boring & miserable - we love it & it's a wonderful feeling that we are decluttering our home & ma

We have given ourselves until October 2011 to find a plot of land with a spring. We think it may be in France, though we're still not sure. We want to be prepared for peak oil - If it doesn't happen, then we'll have a nice little bolt hole & lots of opportunity still to travel. Whereas, if we do run out of oil, then at least we'll be ready! We want to live off grid, generate our own power & not have mains water. Just live very simply... At the moment we rent an old farmhouse on the Cornish coast & we love this big old house, but it just feels right to think about moving on now. We want a small cosy place with land to grow on We've lived in France for two periods over the past 20 years & every time we go back (usually 2 or 3 times a year), it feels like home! In April, we visited the Auvergne, which was very exciting for us, being amongst mountains - as that's something we miss in Cornwall! While there, we fell in love with a hillside villag

It's days like today that make us so glad that we live in Cornwall! We moved here in 2002 & since 2007, we have had our own business - providing a green housekeeping service to holiday lets, second homes & residential properties. After 20 years working in social care, mainly in the North of England - this is absolute paradise!!!

We welcome you to join us on our journey of peaceful happiness, working towards living a beautifully simple life.  We are already on our way & each day just keeps on getting better!