Hello, we are Fiona and Mike
We live in North Canterbury, a semi rural area located on the East Coast of the South Island in New Zealand. Our three children are all adults and flown the coop. In a full circle moment we are suddenly back where we started, just the two of us plus Charlie the Golden Retriever and Peaches our tortoiseshell cat.
A couple of years ago we took some time to think about where to from here. What next? What is our dream? What will the next stage of our lives look like? How do we want to spend our financial resources, time and energy? What do we need to do now to prepare for the future?
Deceivingly simple questions with no easy answers. Turns out, it takes work to know what you want.
It isn’t easy sifting through years of consumerist conditioning and marketing, or recognizing when keeping up with the Jones bullshit is clouding your judgement. It takes even more work to do this together and come to a consensus after thirty plus years of marriage.
In the first phase of ‘Operation Dream Catcher’ we stumbled upon the idea of collecting classic cars. Mike had a hankering for spending time doing up old cars after watching shows like Kindig Customs and Wheelers Dealers. However, like many things that just aren’t meant to be the obstacles soon started mounting up. We didn’t have the room to store cars on our property, the cost of building a garage and buying land to place it on was prohibitive, and while this idea might tick some of Mike’s boxes, it didn’t particularly excite me.
After a few months we decided to move on and pursue a long held idea of mine to own a cabin in the bush, somewhere we could escape to from the daily grind and immerse ourselves in nature. Interestingly, when we shifted our attention to this dream the stars started to align without too much effort. It felt right. We started searching for a piece of land and soon after we found what we were looking for.
This blog tells the story of our journey turning the dream into reality. We are discovering that dream-making is rewarding work. We are continually learning new skills and challenging ourselves physically as well as mentally. We are learning that imperfect is okay, breaking the rules can be liberating, solutions arise when we get creative and think outside the box, and most importantly, we get to decide what our ‘happy’ looks like together.
We hope you enjoy reading our story and it sparks a desire in you to go out and catch your dream too.
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Fiona (and Mike).
“First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.”
(Attributed to Aristotle based on his writing in the Nicomachean Ethics)
Rimu & Rain 