Living on a budget has guided my hand to “dollar-conscious friendly” wines. In Boston, I tried the $7 dollar wines but with the power of my biweekly paycheck, I always went straight back to my known Chilean & Californian wines which ranged closer to $10-14 dollars.

Since, we’ve quit our jobs there have been some adjustments. Some luxury items are off the table and others, like wine….let’s just say, you can take the wine glass away but where there’s a way there’s a will. I’ve noticed that I still take my time to choose a wine, if anything, even more-so now. I’ve noticed I no longer talk about the quality of the wine, in fact, Mike & I don’t really talk about the wine, we exchange looks that say oh too clearly ‘yup, it’s that bad but it’s not vinegar or sweet juice’. Recently Mike read the side of our boxed wine for the first time and burst out laughing. The marketing language rang close to home in it’s straight forward message which read: ‘this wine is for the drinking not the discussing.’

We spent Thanksgiving with my parents and family friends The Lainos. Mike and I rented a car and drove down from Beaufort, NC. It was amazing how zoooooming 50 knots down the street; passing stores left and right made me feel ritzy. Living on a boat slows you down, it minimizes your needs, and living space.

I was most excited to hug my parents before Mike & I embarked on a sailing passage of a life-time to the great abyss (aka, the Atlantic, Bermuda)! A close second was the food. I prepared my belly and tastebuds for the over the top banquet that awaited us. My mom really puts forth an effort to get the fresh, the real, true homemade ingredients and Mrs. Laino is a mother who puts great pride into her food and presentation. So you can see how we left the boxed wine on the boat for this excursion.

There was a day for golf and a day for strolling the beaches and a day for meandering the beautiful lands of Brookgreen Garden. Brookgreen Garden is truly an amazing place. The sculptures are life-like, expressive, artfully created so as to leave an impression on you. The entire landscape covers 9,100 acres and was once 4 separate plantations. The philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington was a billionaire of his time in the 1920s and bought it all. He moved South for his wife’ health in hopes the warmer climate would ease her tuberculosis.