Have you ever had a moment where you visited a place and thought to yourself, “man I could get used to living here!” Of course when I say that I don’t mean somewhere incredible like Maui or Bora Bora- or maybe I do 🤔..LOL!
Well, that’s sort of how the idea of moving to the Kelowna transpired. Our family has been visiting the Okanagan every year since Olivia was 2 and every year we’ve visited (mainly Penticton and Summerland) my husband and I would always ponder about what life would be like if we moved up there. It’s also a place where we’ve built other family memories too, for instance we were camping up there when I announced to everyone we were pregnant with our precious little boy!
For those of you not familiar with the Okanagan, allow me to have you picture this: a lake view at nearly every turn, a smaller town vibe with a bit of big city flavor and those two things right in the heart of wine country. HELLO!
But, at the end of every trip we’d leave and look forward to the following year. Until last year when I decided to book a table at a local market in Kelowna in early May to check out the market scene out there. It was a couples trip, so while I went and did my market thing, my husband took full advantage of the scenery and went for his usual morning run and chose Knox mountain. “I could get used to this view!” he said, as he made it to the top that overlooks downtown Kelowna and of course, Okanagan Lake.
It was a trip where I was secretly trying to plant the seed to move up- I showed him listings of homes, we knew we’d both have work up there, it really felt like a no brainer. Alas, he was not convinced and so at the end of the weekend we were making our way back home and back to life as we knew it.
Our next trip back was our annual camping trip to Summerland. This time we had my mother in law in tow with us as she’d never experienced wine touring (which we ALWAYS do when we go camping LOL) and we wanted to show her the way we know the area.
Serendipitously, our trailer had a flat which meant we needed to replace both of its tires in order to get it up and running again. We called a mobile tire service to come to our campsite to do the repair and coincidentally the guy mentioned he had just moved up from the Fraser Valley and just loves his new life in Kelowna.
So, at the end of our usually fabulous trip, we took a detour and drove to the neighbourhood suggested by the tire guy LOL, and had a look around in West Kelowna. While we weren’t crazy about his neighbourhood, we were loving West Kelowna so we explored an area near the wine trail and loved what we saw… and pretty much at that moment that we decided to make the move.
Crazy right?! I know.
A lot of you guys have asked why, so here’s the why! We fell in love with the idea of raising our family in a place that’s still growing and not yet overgrown. We loved the idea of a beautiful property that was minutes to the lake and would keep our kids active and give them the much needed break from technology that they’d need and allow them to just be kids. I loved the idea of having an actual garden that grew fruits and vegetables and maybe a studio for me to continue creating desserts and expand my services to consistently wholesale.
And the affordability? Insane. For what we could buy in our hometown versus what we could get within the same budget- we scored and THEN SOME. It would have been impossible to find that where we currently live. It’s far and few where I live to find a house on a piece of land the way we did in Kelowna- so that definitely tipped the scales in favour of moving 3.5 hours away.
Has it been easy sharing that news? UM. NO. LOL. And I completely understand people’s’ reactions when I tell them I’m moving away. No extended family out there, everyone is here, our families were in denial that it was happening: but friends, it was happening.
This is the part in my explanation of moving where I say you have to seize your moment. Like seriously, seize it. It might not be easy (well, cuz if it was then we’d all be doing it) but if it is right for YOU, you just have to do it. You’ll know it’s the right thing because you’ll be excited and scared and doubtful all at once. You’ll review every last angle of a move, calculate and recalculate every decision, every penny you own until you’ve memorized what your actual mortgage balance is right down to the cents..LOL. But you’ll do it because it feels like the right thing to do and the best time to do it.
Now we’re finally at the stage where we’ve sold our townhome, bought a house and are eager to get the keys to our home in our hot little hands!
We are currently staying with my parents for the next month and while that’s already started to become an interesting living situation, LOL, we are making the best out of family time and I’m just soaking it up and loving it.
As for The Cake Mama, there already are plenty of opportunities for me to come back to the lower mainland for work so this isn’t the last of me! LOL I’m also very much looking forward to serving the Okanagan area with plant based treats and meeting new faces and connecting with likeminded people and businesses! So far, it’s been pretty awesome- and I’m not even up there full time yet!
If you’ve made it this far, LOL, you deserve a medal, but more importantly- thank you for caring! It’s been such a joy to build a community here and I hope I can still count on your support as we navigate through this next chapter of life!
