About Me

About me

Hey, thanks for popping by! Here is a little bit about who I am and what my blog is about. My name is Natasha and I’m from Toronto, Canada. I’m married to an amazing husband and partner and together we’ve been raising our three equally amazing (we’re clearly biased) young men.

I gave birth to my first son at the age of 27; that was in 2003. At that time, I was working in the service industry. I loved my job. A few years later, in 2008, our second son arrived. After he was born, I struggled with the notion of going back to work at the end of my mat leave. I just couldn’t wrap my head around returning to a job that would barely cover the (even back then) crazy costs of childcare, so I came up with a plan that allowed me to stay home while earning a much-needed second income for our family. I opened up my own home-based daycare. I found a few kids (or rather, they found me) whose moms and dads needed before and after-school care, a hot lunch, and coverage during school holidays, and I made it happen. I ran Little Coconuts (cute, eh?) for a few years while raising my boys and, minus the odd minor hiccup, and occasional spit-up, everything was working out great.

In 2010, my third son was born. I continued to run the daycare, however, as they do, the kids I was minding were starting to get older and more independent. Rather than starting over with a new group of kids (and parents), I decided to find another way to help keep our family afloat. The best option was the service industry. I just needed to find somewhere to work a couple of nights each week. This way I could still spend my days with my boys while my husband could take over in the evenings while I was at work. It didn’t take long for us to find our rhythm. I found a busy restaurant around the corner that needed part-time service help and my plan was off and running.

Everything was working out nicely until my husband lost his job in late 2013. As an Art Director, he was able to find contracts with a few different companies over the next couple of years but nothing that offered the stability our young family needed to make ends meet. It was kind of a tumultuous time but we still managed to have a good life. A few years earlier we had bought a fixer-upper (ie. falling-over) cottage a few hours away in Bancroft, and we still had our ‘starter (ie. tiny) home’ in Leslieville, so we still had a roof or two over our heads but it was all starting to feel a little unstable. Everything was okay, but by now we had started dreaming about a different kind of life. After all, who wants to settle for “okay?”

So, in 2014 we started planning our new life. What had begun as a “What if we…?” conversation culminated in the decision to give up our (lower-end) middle-class East-Toronto lives and start a new one abroad. We started over from scratch: no company transfer; no job offers; no dual citizenship. Just pack up and go. Needless to say, the months leading up to our departure were busy.

Where would our new life be, you ask? Well, with a little help from Google, we decided on Valencia, Spain. Of course, we didn’t completely throw caution to the wind. We visited once as a family for a two-week holiday/scouting mission in 2014. After all, we had to know if it was somewhere we could live. My husband and I returned a year later to find our new home (and to celebrate my 40th birthday!) and become better acquainted with the city. Finally, with five duffel bags, long-term visas (almost) in hand, fresh CELTA certificates, and a shipping container with the contents of our lives soon to depart Montreal, we moved in August of 2016 and never looked back.

As an aside, you may have already seen a version of our story portrayed as an episode of House Hunter’s International which was shot in 2017 and aired sometime after that (Season 116 Episode 9).

There’s a lot more to this story, but it’s one better told in pieces. You’ll be able to read about (in excruciating detail at times) in my blogs and journals. It may seem voyeuristic in principle but what isn’t these days? Maybe reading about some of the things we have gone through as a family will even help you find a foothold or two as you set sail on your own adventures.

So that’s it in a somewhat wordy nutshell. So, why follow my blog? Well, I have lots to talk about that you may relate to. We all have our own story to tell. Our unique experiences, qualifications, triumphs, failures, struggles, and fears are what make us human, and that’s what we all have in common. Everyone’s life is just another, yet no two are alike. You don’t need to be rich and famous to make your story worth telling.

So far, I’ve studied personal training, makeup artistry, and fashion design, and amassed countless hours in the hospitality and ESL industries. To date, I have been lucky enough to travel to several of the fashion capitals of the World. I have also been fortunate enough to have grown up with loving and supportive parents, who didn’t always understand the choices I was making but have come to realize what the big picture has meant to our family. I should also mention my brilliant and hard-working, extremely fashionable brother, and a Professor of Fashion Theory and Inclusion at one of the most prestigious universities in Canada. All that being said, I’ll be discussing fitness and health, fashion and beauty, and of course travel and food! But most importantly, I’ve always been a dreamer and I absolutely believe that when you set your mind to something, those dreams can come true!

“You are never too old to set a goal or to dream a new dream.” - Malala Yousafzai