Our Story...

About fifteen years ago our lives were very different to what they are today, we (Dave and Naomi) had a house and mortgage, we both had pretty good jobs working all hours, frequently got take-aways, ran three classic cars, and would quite happily drive the length of the country in a weekend to escape for a while. We lived about 20 miles outside London in a noisy, reasonably built up area and dreamed of moving to the Lake District.....

Roll on a few years and with a few redundancies between us (some voluntary, some not!) Dave was head-hunted for a new IT job up North, in Wigan,  and we were off...house hastily finished off and sold, cars packed to the roof and our new life had begun. The new job promised us much higher wages, the dream of living near the Lake District was happening as the commute was so much easier than the ones we were used to and things were looking good. A few weeks later we found out we were expecting our first child so the plan for Naomi to find work was put on the back-burner and we were ready to relax and enjoy our new life.... Unfortunately this wasn't quite as we had hoped. The company Dave was working for folded and he was again redundant after six months...Within another six months we were broke, the money from the house had been used on paying off rent, paying off some of our debts, and generally getting by and there was no prospect of any IT jobs in rural South Lakes. We had frittered away so much of our money when we thought everything was rosy.

Looking back now there are lots of 'what ifs'...what if we had kept the house down South and had some income from renting it out? What if we hadn't moved at all? What if we had just given up and moved back where there was plenty of work around?.....what if,what if..... However, we had dreamed of living up near the Lake District and we certainly did not want to go back to crowded roads, smelly fumes, noisy flight paths and jobs we were caged into especially with a baby very nearly here.

After trying college to get qualifications, which in all reality, meant very little at the end of it, taking any work going, including delivering phonebooks , which at six months pregnant is really not much fun, joining a well known door to door catalogue company, working long hours with two babies now in tow, for not much reward we decided that being self-employed was a better option.

Onto now and where we are....we live in a lovely house (owned by the council) and we are fortunate enough to have green fields front and back and a beautiful views of mountains, so possibly one of the best council houses going!  Naomi works one day a week in a small haberdashers and spends time selling crafts online, Dave has a Handyman business which at present is on hold while he recovers from a Hernia operation. As Dave has not worked for six months now due to the hernia we are really at the bottom of the rungs and trying to claw our way back up, we can survive on very little compared to others and yet there are people still below us on the ladder of life and we can only wonder how they get by.

So we are here...and we can only really go up!! It all sounds very bleak, reading it back but it really isn't, we have a wonderful life with two gorgeous children whom we Home-Educate, in one of the most beautiful parts of the country and beauty and love are free!

As our circumstances have changed dramatically so have our views of many things around us, the world is ours to look after and care for, from being greener to becoming more self sufficient, and as money is tighter, we've had to learn to re-use, recycle and care for the things we have. We are green novices and this is our journey as we learn more and more....

Please also read our Big Dream page to find out where we would love to be in the future.......