Fabulous Florida

Our Villa at Villas Capri, Largo, Florida

From mid December 2012 to the end of March 2013 we absolutely loved getting our Villa furnished and decorated to our liking.  With a brand new 20 x 12 patio laid with beautiful oyster buff coloured pavers that so match the Villa's wall colouring, it is now complete and wonderful.



This is the front of the Villa with our truck, Tommy, in the driveway.



This is a back view of the Villa before the new patio.

Here, we are decorating the Kitchen having already laid a new floor.  We painted after removing wallpaper that could have been up for thirty years!!  The door in the photo leads to the garage.  It took us three days to remove wallpaper, prime the walls, trim the cupboards, adjoining walls and door with blue tape then paint the whole Kitchen and it's only galley-size!!

This is our furnished Living Room that we treasure so much with the room-divider made of Caprice seashells that shimmy and chime when the front door is open and the Floridian table lamps that adorn the heavy wooden side tables. Lin knitted the wool Afghan blanket  where Dolly (our Lamb from New Zealand) and Bosun (our Bear from the Titanic Exhibit Show in St. Petersburg, FL) sit and relax.






This is our new patio that has amazed and delighted us.  When Lin called a number of contractors for quotes she listened to how the patio can be designed; when it can be laid; how much it will cost; and, what colours were available.  Then she choose Victor Lamb (maybe she was impressed with his name because she loves Dolly, her Lamb!) as the professional to do the work.  Within six days, the oyster buff coloured pavers were ordered and cut then the jobs was completed in five hours and exactly as Lin had ordered.  We are thrilled with the finish and with new patio furniture and a lovely table umbrella we foresee many a relaxing time on our patio and hopefully with family and friends.

Within ten days of arriving at our Villa in December we had a wonderful visit from Tony's brother Geoff and his wife, Sue, from England who had enjoyed a lovely cruise before arriving back to Tampa where we picked them up then enjoyed six days over Christmas.

Here we are ready for Christmas dinner.  Trust Tony to wear his Christmas tie!!

Other family who have visited us so far at the Villa are our two grandkids from California.  Amelia, age 11 and James age 8 came for a quick weekend visit in early February while their Dad, Paul, attended a conference in Orlando.  Here they are exhausted from swimming and running in the water then building their sand-castles after searching for those wonderful sea-shells on Indian Rocks Beach.

During our time at the Villa, we enjoyed the short trips to Indian Rocks Beach where we relaxed and sunned ourselves on the clean white beach.  Although we only went six times during the three and a half months we were there because we worked so hard to get our Villa ship-shape!!  Next year will be different for sure!

We also enjoyed great golf at our local Largo Golf Course that we can easily walk to pulling our golf clubs, bag and cart.  We took "short game" golf lessons every Saturday morning for 1 hour in the month of March from Mike Riso, a golf pro originally from Buffalo, NY who gave us great tips on putting, pitching and chipping for a total of five hours in the month that cost us only $40 each!!  He must have helped Lin because in March we entered the Annual Villas Capri Golf Tournament and Lin won the Ladies Winner Cup as having the lowest round of the Ladies.  Here is Tena presenting the Cup to Lin.  Don and Tena did a fabulous job of organizing the Golf Tournament, getting all the prizes and arranging for the food that we all enjoyed in our Clubhouse after the tournament.
 

Lin also won this lovely golf jacket. 

There were lots of prizes for everyone and Tony picked a lovely black and beige golf shirt for his prize that was well worth at least $60!!  We had a fabulous time and Lin so enjoyed hitting the ball and managing the golf course based on what Mike Riso had suggested.

We made some great friends in our community and because we planned to leave Villas Capri before the"Annual Going Away Party" which this year is scheduled for April 6, we decided to have a Party get-together at our Villa on March 26th. 

These are our new friends from Villas Capri and we hope to spend quality times with them when we come back.  From the left to right, Tony, then Bernie and Gwen (from British Columbia in Canada but hail from Cardiff in South Wales), Micheline and Marcel (from Quebec in Canada), Bev and Roger (originally from Wisconsin but are now full-time in Florida), and, Tena and Don (from Wasaga Beach in Ontario), the province where we lived for almost twenty-five years!

On March 31, we left our Villa and started our drive to Texas to pick up Harvey in his storage place for our tour of the Mid-West States.  Hope you can catch-up with us over the next few weeks when we post subsequent blogs.