Florida Musings
We left our “home” at Bethpage Camp Resort in Urbanna, VA to drive down to Florida for a family vacation (Russ’ Family) we had planned last summer. We decided to drive down early to get all of our Florida residency “stuff” taken care of. Lucky for us, we were able to do just that because our friends Jay & Karen are super awesome and let us stay in their house in Palm Harbor. They have such a lovely house in a wonderful neighborhood. On Monday, we took care of all the “legal” stuff and are now official residents of the Sunshine State (because it says so on our license plate!).
We spent the week catching up on the blog. It’s about time we get up-to-date with our journey so far! We vow to never fall that behind again! While we are technically live with the blog, we will finally be ready to go social with it. You can subscribe to receive email updates when new posts are made. Sign up here (pretty pretty please, with a cherry on top!).
We had planned to have some maintenance done on our Honda Pilot while we were here this week. However, it became a little more important when our air conditioning died on our trip from Virginia to Florida. That last hour in the car was a bit sticky and smelly as we started sweating more and more as the sun was beating in the windows. We were hoping for a minor fix for the air, but it ended up needing some pretty serious maintenance (a big ouchie for this month’s budget)! A big thanks to Courtesy Palm Harbor for getting us back on the road in "cool" style!
Haircuts were also on this week’s agenda! Karen had recommended Aveda Institute, a training salon/beauty school for those studying to become licensed stylists. Russ also decided to get a trim. Note that this is the first time in 10 years he has paid for a haircut. Remember, he typically sports a bald shiny head. We will definitely keep these type of places on our radar for a cheap cut. Know any other money-saving salon/beauty tips? If so, we would love for you to share them with us in the comments below.
Before we hit the road in May, we had down about a half dozen or so mystery shop assignments. We have only done assignments that have been at restaurants. I mean who could blame us for wanting a meal with our work! Since hitting the road, we have started checking the app (iSecretShop) as we travel to different areas. We scheduled a mystery shop in the Clearwater area for my birthday. I would give details, but in the interest of staying anonymous as a mystery shopper, the restaurant will go unnamed! We definitely won’t get rich doing it, but the pay usually covers the cost of the food, which equals a free meal! That’s a pretty sweet gig so no complaining here. We would like to sign up as mystery shoppers for a few other companies, but haven’t done enough research to weed out the good from the bad companies. We would love to hear your suggestions….
The week also featured a celebratory birthday beach day. I would consider that a pretty perfect birthday gift. We spent the day relaxing on the beach at Honeymoon Island State Park. Beach chairs & books in tow we spent the afternoon relaxing by the Gulf. The water was incredibly clear and ridiculously calm. The water was just to our liking – warm and hot-tub like! The air temperature was perfect without the typical Florida humidity. I could get used to spending all of my birthdays like that. To top off the celebration, ice cream was on my wish list! Thanks to another recommendation from Karen (a fellow ice cream lover), we splurged with a sweet treat from Strachan’s Ice Cream & Desserts. A couple scoops of Peanut Butter Cookies N’ Cream nestled in this waffle cone was a pretty darn “sweet” way to end my birthday!
This week we also applied for our first workkamping job in Florida. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, put a rabbit foot in your pocket – in other words, send good luck and sweet vibes our way. Don’t worry we will most certainly keep you in the loop.
While the theme of this week was supposed to be “paperwork catchup” and“blog work”, we definitely fit in more than our fair share of fun. We could get used to this lifestyle. Let the fun times continue….
