Time for a Change!

We love our Tybee Cottage and have found we prefer living in a smaller space with everything on one floor. Our Mountain house has three levels and is larger than we need with rooms we seldom use.  
Since we are spending more time at Tybee and at  Smith Mountain Lake on summer weekends we have decided to sell the Mountain house  and move to a simpler and smaller urban space. Living in Downtown Roanoke has been on my mind since October 2000 when I attended the first Downtown Living tour of renovated spaces for living in Downtown Roanoke. We have attended every year and enjoyed seeing the increasing number of unique spaces being developed. We have looked at many different possibilites and have found a space that we feel will work for us and Hershey. We are excited and are looking forward to the process of decorating and then moving to our new urban home.  We have much to do in editing down the contents of our Mountain home. We plan on keeping some things that have a sentimental connection for us like Dad's Grandfathers clock and a small telephone table hand crafted by PaPa Hogan. We will find homes for much of our existing furniture either with family or friends or through donating it to the Salvation Army. We enjoyed decorating our Cottage in Tybee to create the look and feel that we wanted for a beach cottage. It was exciting and great fun. We worked with Jane Coslick and together we created something quite special. We continue to get 5 star reviews from guests who stay at Paws & Paddles Cottage. We have a chance to work with designer, Gary Sexton, of Reids Furniture here in Roanoke on our urban home. He is coming by this week to help us decide which of our existing pieces might work for our new space. He will help us find our way in creating a unique and special home in Downtown Roanoke. We want to find pieces of furniture that have clean straight lines, are simple but beautiful, comfortable and provide additional storage whenever possible. We are excited about the move and having a new project. Less excited about the moving, packing and dealing with all the details of making a move. Thankfully Mike is retired and he will have time to handle the things that need to be done during the day while I am at work. My commute time will be reduced to one block to work and the gym! Getting to the gym has been a challenge with juggling my schedule, Hershey's schedule, and wanting to spend time with Mike and family. Now we can hit the gym together early each morning. I won't have to cart all of my clothes and makeup to get ready for work. I'll just walk a block back home to get ready! Mike and Hershey have promised to walk me to work each morning. On the weekends we will be chore free and won't feel guilty heading to the Smith Mountain Lake or to Tybee.  We are looking forward to walking to the Farmers Market each day for fresh local produce. Downtown has a host of great places to eat. We enjoy live music and look forward to exploring what is available Downtown. It will be fun to explore the art galleries, The Taubman, and Center in the Square. We will miss the wildlife on the Mountain and Mike will miss the 8 to 10 hummingbirds that he has feed all summer. We realize there will be pros and cons and adjustments to be made but we look forward to trying something new. Please wish us luck...we have a lot to accomplish in the new 30 days. More soon.