The evolution of the trip to Italy

After redecorating the bedroom, redoing the deck, transforming most of the basement into livable space, and reconfiguring the mud room to be organized, I decided that the kitchen was next in line. I hate white cabinets, it's not laid out well at all, and the lighting is terrible. I had originally intended just to paint it,but then it expanded into new appliances, cabinets, lighting, and flooring. Then I decided that I'd really like to knock out a wall and expand the kitchen into the dining room. I never use the living room, so that would be re-purposed as the dining room. I love the warmth of Tuscan style decorating and started searching for decorating ideas and collecting it on my Pinterest board. Of particular interest to me is this one lighting fixture that is just SO ME....

Yes, those are mason jars...what could be more perfect for someone who loves to can as much as I do? Anyway, that's sort of how the whole kitchen renovation idea grew after I started pinning ideas.

A coworker mentioned that he and his wife went on a wine tour...brilliant! So, naturally I started to think about what my next vacation would be, and of course I love wine. But then again, I love to cook and want to redo the kitchen, so wouldn't it be great if I could combine it all? So, I googled cooking vacations, and low and behold, what should appear, but a slew of links for Tuscan cooking vacations. OMG - that was too coincidental since I wanted the kitchen to have a Tuscan feel to it. OK, vacation theme and destination - done. I found a lot of different tours and bounced several of them off of Marianne, my travel agent from Classic Travel and she helped narrow down my choices. After speaking with the owners of this company, she thought we had a real winner with Culture Discovery Vacations. She suggested the tour that included chocolate because it had availability for the week I was looking at going in June (when I was scheduled to not have kids again). But I liked the food in the Tuscan Sun tour better, plus we get to stay in apartments instead of a hotel. So, I had chosen which tour I was going on...wow, I'm on a roll! Looking up flights, I happen to check a variety of search engines and they also show calendars with prices on different dates so you can see when you'll get the best deals. Hmmm...flights in June are kinda pricey...what's that I see at the end of April? Flights for $700 less than June? Ummm, yeah...no brainer. Did some quick checking at work for deadlines, swap children visiting Dad from June to April, and Voila! It's done! In the span of less than a week, an idea was spawned, developed and implemented. For me, that's some serious shootin' from the hip. Especially since the end result was a big overseas vacation in only 3 weeks!

So, that's how the travel plans for Italy evolved.