My Really Big Dream

Okay, so I want to share my really big dream with you and this dream is so big that I've been kind of hesitant to release it into the world. So, here is my dream and I'm just going to share what I envision for this dream with you. I really want to own my own farm-to-table restaurant. — [snorts] — And I've been talking a lot about my retirement goals and really my goal is to be work optional by the time I'm 50 and someone asked me yesterday, "Mika, what do you plan on doing with yourself after that? Like are you going to continue to work on The Budget Mom? " I absolutely will. I don't think I'll ever fully step away from The Budget Mom as that's where my heart and purpose and passion really is. But outside of that, I really want to create something called Shirley's Place dedicated in and honor of my mom who I lost back in April of 2023. Now, Shirley's Place would be my farm-to-table restaurant, but it would also be my barnaminium where the lower part would be for our animals and I'd love to have a little animal rescue where we'd have miniature donkeys and alpacas and cows and the goats, the chickens, the ducks. So, we'd have all the stalls, everything for the animals down below. Up top would be all my studio space. This would be big open space for like my pottery, for my soaps and my natural skin care. And then I would have a separate area where I'd have my big industrial ovens for all of my sourdough and sourdough goods, which would be amazing for the farm-to-table restaurant. That would be a separate building where it would have retail space for my pottery, for my natural soap and skin care. And then it would be my sourdough bakery, which would be attached to the restaurant. Now, the farm-to-table restaurant I can just see being super iconic, only open two to three days a week and it would be a four-course meal. Everything would come from our property, things that I have grown myself. And if I did have to outsource like maybe the meats, I would only use local farmers. And that's my really big dream. And if I'm being completely honest, this is something that I literally dream about at night. And every single time I talk about it or I think about it, I can just clearly see every detail of this dream. Of my restaurant, I can literally envision what it will look like. I always believe the first step in having a really big dream for yourself is believing that you're capable of achieving it.