Minor fireworks

Things have started to hot up this week after 5 viewing last week. We then got two people bidding, one only offered once which was too low, but the others started low and increased four times, the last one we accepted which was lower than we wanted but we are taking a chance.

The big news is that they want to move in by the end of February, alot sooner than we wanted. I have three courses i want to finish delivering, all these end at the start of March so hope we can stay for these. We are hoping that we can stop in Diane's mother in laws empty house for a few days so we can arrange the ferry.

We have meetings planned this week with the movers,Surveyors and our solicitors. Most of our things will go into storage, it depends what we can fit into the car, which has got to last us until we buy a house and have our things shipped up.

Our friends Beryl and Maurice are helping to sort out some rented accommodation in Shetland, we know of one property so far so that will help. Cannot believe how quickly its moving, we expected to have around 10-12 weeks but it never goes to plan.

Round the corner a house which had been sold for the third time is back up for sale again, must have bee down to the survey. Another house a bit further away is also having these problems, lets hope ours goes through smoothly. They are first time buyers and have today confirmed their mortgage details and details have been passed to both solicitors.

However you can never count your chickens, things cannot be taken for granted so for now we are not getting too excited. Just hope the survey comes back ok for them.

Strange week

Since Christmas things have been picking up on the viewing front. Suddenly we have had four viewings booked for this week, three have taken place already. One first time buyer arrived and didn't look that interested really but came back the next day with a low bid.(Monday) which we rejected.

The following day nothing, then Wednesday another bid came in a bit better but still less than we could afford to accept, so rejected that one as well. Thursday morning came and the estate agents said two people were now bidding, one who came three weeks ago, again with a low bid and then followed by another revised bid from the first couple , falling just short of what we could accept.  We decided that if we changed a few things we could now come down slightly more than first thought so that left a £2000 short of the very lowest we could accept.

Just to remind us, if we needed that, i also gave an illustrated talk on Shetland Thursday night to stir up a few memories so it would appear this might be our year

                                                                                     Sunset over Quendale Bay

This week has been very busy as well with trying to get all my course work and presentation ready for the micro teaching session and assessment next Wednesday. Not very happy that i will have to travel to Leeds for this when i had originally booked to do this in Sheffield. Will be glad when this is completed as next week I will be delivering three different photography courses at different levels, so alot of preparation

Need to relax doing some photography after next week

2014 dreams

Happy new year  -Well I hope you got the Christmas presents you were looking for. We decided to hold off for our main present and look forward to receiving it early in 2014. The sale of our house !!

On the 1 February it will be  year since we put our house up for sale, sometimes its seems longer. We are not getting disillusioned yet, we still have hope and as we may have mentioned, we still have the option to reduce the price again .

We saw some friends last week we hadn't seen for a while, they informed us that they will be moving to Orkney by June, so we could have close neighbors when we eventually move up to Shetland.Christmas would have been a bad time to move anyway  as Shetland had several snowy days and a run of more than 10 days of gales.

One thing we will miss is visiting Diane's sister and husband and the rest of our friends, its never the same on the phone, that's when its working. We still want to visit Sheffield each year if we can afford it, but we have Skype so at least we can see them as we speak.

There is so much to look forward to, these far out weigh the negatives, no one can move and not feel some regret yet moving becomes a new adventure, a new chapter in our lives and we are keen to explore the islands, see the wildlife, meet the people and see the northern lights and other night sky delights

In the meantime I am taking my PTTL's qualification later this month which allows me to teach adult education courses, so that might be one avenue to go down once we have moved. I really enjoy delivering courses- both photographic and wildlife , meeting people and even building the content. We will see what happens, any way for now we will wait and see who comes to see our house and continue our dream in Sheffield until it happens then we can fulfill our dream.