Posts

Bigger Is Not Necessarily Better

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“Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology toward the organic, the gentle, the elegant and beautiful.” ~ EF Schumacher ~ Schumacher wrote his book "Small is Beautiful" in 1973 and for us - it is still relevant today.  We haven't had internet at home for nearly a month and it's interesting how we first saw it as a big issue and ventured out daily to get a signal to keep on top of messages, but as time's gone on - we find ourselves not bothering and instead embrace a gentle and quieter life...apart from when digging out old CDs for a bit of music now and again! We realise how wonderful it is to have time away from the world and the little impact the fearmongering propaganda really makes to our lives. We have no interest in news, but unfortunately many people on social media are fully immersed in it's misery and like to shout out about it. Having time away from all this is great.  While technology is moving faster and faster - with AI and the pus...

You Can Choose

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  Are you living your best possible life? "You grow old when you lose interest in life, when you cease to dream, to hunger after new truths, and to search for new worlds to conquer.  When your mind is open to new ideas, new interests, and when you raise the curtain and let in the sunshine and inspiration of new truths of life and the universe, you will be young and vital." ~ Joseph Murphy ~ In our little world we see much beauty and try to take time to enjoy the simplicity in our lives. We love the flexibility and variety of our business and feel good about doing what we do. Working with people and animals is definitely our thing. Earlier in the year we considered taking on extra cleaning work, though neither of us really wanted to venture down that road. We were looking at ways of increasing our income, but we have no desire to clean up after tourists anymore - we did it for many years and are happier now that our business has evolved to focus more on people and animals rath...

Blog Tweaking

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It's nice having the time to update the blog, tweak some of the settings, learn and re-learn how to do a few things! We often think it would be great to write more regular posts as we did some years ago, but book reading has become a much bigger part of our lives - especially as our internet signal is not always great at home...so as we are pet sitting, we really thought we'd be writing more! Instead, we have been venturing out everyday, exploring old haunts and new places with our little chum and we also seem to have taken on a new client! It never ceases to amaze us - how the universe works and what we are all capable of manifesting. We had put the thoughts out there and along came the person we were looking for, so although we wished our work was closer to home - we wonder if deep down inside we are both still very much connected to the Roseland area and so  "home" continues to be here. The intention to unravel ourselves from this part of Cornwall just hasn't h...

Animal Attraction

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It has been over six months since our last proper pet sit and for no reason other than all our regular clients decided to stay at home over the winter. Financially it's been quite a blow, but we have come to realise that neither of us are drawn to doing holiday let cleaning nor happy to work as employees anymore - it's just not for us and instead, we have made it through the last few months being more frugal than ever and with a little help from our friends - who we are incredibly grateful to! Most of all though, we have missed spending time in the company of all our animal friends, which is the thing that really makes our hearts sing, so now we are here with one of our favourite chums... We adore this beautiful buddy and we have settled into our lives together, even though her routine is no doubt quite different with us...she remembers everything.  We do see her regularly throughout the year and whenever possible we take her out, but life is much nicer when we are together for...

Nurturing Times

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It was over 10 years ago that we wrote a blog post about nurturing, simplicity and  Slowing Down  and we are happy to say we still feel the same way. We enjoy helping others, being with animals and nature - somehow we have carved out this path. We can manage on a small income with enough money to do what we want...buying decent food is always our priority and  maintaining our car. We do want to go on a road trip down to our house in France and that will happen at some point soon, but for now - we continue to creep and go. We live very frugally, but always feel our world is abundant and believe as a result, we often receive wonderful gifts - things we require often show up when needed...food, clothes, wood and books are always gratefully received. The kindness of others just blows us away.  A few weeks ago we met a couple while out doggy walking. It turned out that we had a connection with this couple - the chap's mother had been the housekeeper for one of the grand p...

Dartmoor

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We are spending a week on Dartmoor again at one of our regular pet sits - taking care of the usual menagerie... Along with this lovely chap - who is staying with the gang temporarily and we have come to adore him. Being professional pet sitters means we can only leave the animals for up to 3 hours per day, which suits us fine as we are content being here and pottering about. We have visited The Beehive Farm shop in Chagford and the Zero Waste shop in Moretonhampstead. Both shops are great for us and nice that they are close by. As well as feeding all the animals, walking the dogs and generally keeping an eye on them all, we are enjoying cooking simple meals, reading, sitting by the fire and watching YouTube videos of folks building and renovating small houses in remote places!  It has mainly rained since we arrived with just yesterday being dry, which was nice! Amazingly, we've only got a thorough soaking once and seem to be quite intuitive regards venturing out and have mostly cho...

The Rhythm of Life

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We are back in Devon on one of our regular pet sits and after arriving a couple of days ago to torrential rain and flooding...we woke this morning to blue sky, sunshine and a beautiful mist across the valley.  After our early walk we jumped into the hot tub to make the most of this glorious weather, soaking up the warm rays from the sun and marvelling at the clear blue sky - a rare occurrence these days! We are here for 6 days and arrived with everything we need for our stay - our intention being to use this time to completely chill out and enjoy the peace and quiet. It's great that we both feel the same way and neither of us has a desire to race around sightseeing. Instead, it is a real joy to get into a rhythm with the animals, walking, cooking on the Aga, eating, reading and spending time in the snug by the fire in the evenings. Every day is pretty much the same and that's just fine by us...we always bring lots of books with us and the dogs love to snuggle in the snug... Th...