Mellissa Rose: September 2015

We have just one month left of living on Anna Maria Island, FL. We knew that our six months living on the most wonderful island in the US (in our opinion) was going to fly and it has!

Yesterday & today have been good days. Some days are horrible (I'm looking at you Thursday), others aren't as bad. When my pills wear off, it isn't good still. It can literally change hour to hour too.

Tropical storm Erika mostly broke up before it hit us here in Anna Maria Island. We did have some great rain storms though. I love the drama of Gulf storms.

"Our" garden (i.e. our rental garden) is due for a good clean up. My hubby started this past week. I will miss these moss covered stepping stones.

FL has lizards everywhere. They spook easily and run away quickly so I don't have a problem with them. Plus, they are kind of cool.

Has everyone else tried cotton candy grapes? Yum! They are a bit pricey here ($3.99 a pound) but they are totally worth it.

My favorite activity is to sit at the beach and read. Thankfully we have a library just down the road about a mile. I loved that a previous reader fixed the grammar throughout my last book.

When I get to the library, I just kind of wander and pull books off the shelf. I'll read almost anything that doesn't look scary. This was one of those books. I was reading it and it turns out the book setting was Anna Maria Island! They reference so many of my favorite AMI places including...Publix! That is our grocery store. We shop there weekly and it was fun to see in a book.

And speaking of plopping down on the beach...I have gone through several beach chairs this summer. I cannot lower myself slowly into the chair due to my legs. So I wind up plopping hard and ripping the fabric. My wonderful hubby fixed this by using a piece of wood instead of the usual fabric. It has held up for over a month now. Nice!

It is still in the upper 80's here (today it did hit 90!) but we can tell the water is turning colder.

After the storms, we had a lot of seaweed on the shore. This day the Gulf looked more like a lake.

Waves! I don't mind even though it keeps me out of the water. I can still soak my legs and read, read, read.

This was today (Tuesday) and the water went back to being clear.

Shells! The tide was out this morning and you could see all the shells.

Now...some real news!

Our home in PA

We accepted an offer on our home back in PA. The buyers had the inspection last week and it seems good. The next step is to have their bank appraise it.

And... We also put a deposit on a small villa/home here in FL. We may have a place to live when our rental is finished. So that is great news.

How great are these post cards?

It is about 9 miles from the beach in a gated community. We are calling it small but it is around 1300 sq ft. with basically no garage or basement. We are going to have to get creative with storage. Our villa is across from the community pool which is heated year round. I don't have a photo of the villa just yet (well, I do, but the outside shot is blurry).

This isn't a "done deal" since we know from experience that our buyers can back out last minute. But we are trusting God.

With that said, we have been selling off some of our yard sale finds. We didn't know what furniture we needed when we started collecting stuff and so we collected a lot. Ha.

Now that we know we will be in a villa, our space is a bit more limited. We are pairing down once again.