Sunday, September 26, 2010

Playing Catch up

Because the house has taken priority lately, I've fallen behind on non-house blogging and photo editing. So I'm going to do one big catch up post where I'll post about all the non-house-y things we've been doing in the past month or three.

I'm going to start at the most recent and work my way backwards...

This weekend
This weekend has been very productive, despite a rather exciting footy match in the middle of it. Paul and I have got stuck into the garden, but that's house-y so I shouldn't mention it. Today I caught up with the Monash girls for brunch. Stefania and Marleen brought their families along so we could all meet their new arrivals, Martina and Evi, respectively. It was lovely to catch up with everyone again.

I think I'm the only person whose excited at the prospect of another grand final. I was a bit depressed that footy season was going to be over, but now that's delayed for another week. AND, most importantly, I now get to do all the grand final games I normally do because Adelaide friends will be here for the weekend. :)

Meeting Martina
Paul and I visited Stef and Matt a couple of weeks ago to meet their new baby, Martina. I got to have a cuddle and I also played with their 2 year old Giorgia who is getting cuter and more and more interactive by the day. We read stories and put her toys to bed and rocked them to sleep. Martina is gorgeous. She has so much hair!! And gorgeous chubby cheeks just like Giorgia.

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Another Trip to the Yarra
We visited the Yarra Valley with my new work friend, Candice, her partner, Jono and Yarra regulars, Ali, Carter and Jenson.

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Mum and Dad's 40th Wedding Anniversary
Mum and Dad had a massive party for their anniversary and a number of other family celebrations. It was a fantastic party, but the preparations were pretty intense for Mum, Dad and Megs. Fortunately Paul and I turned up after most of it had been done!! I'm not going to post all of the photos from the night, but here's a selection...

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Beautiful rainbow the day before
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The morning light looked pretty on the hares and the almond(?) blossom
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Flowers from the UK branch
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Dad's speech
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I may have got a little teary when I was wishing Megs all the best for her move to the UK.
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Megs baked a cake

The following day, Granny got taken for a spin in Ross' new "toy".
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Mornington Peninsula
Stefania and Matt took us for pizza in Balnarring on the Mornington Peninsula. Yes, it's a long way to go for pizza, but it's totally worth the drive. Do yourself a favour and try out Ciao Bella if you're ever in the area. They've been judged the best pizza in Victoria at the restaurant and catering awards.

After a very tasty lunch, we headed off for a sight seeing drive to Flinders (where there is a seriously yummy chocolate shop).

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Christmas in July
Finally, we're all the way back in July when we celebrated Christmas in July with Ali, Carter and Jenson. I cooked my first ever turkey and even made Cranberry sauce to go with it. Ali made Pumpkin Pie and it was amazing!

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Monday, September 20, 2010

The Countdown is On

It's less than a month until we fly to France. Yay! I should really look at putting one of those countdown ticker thingos in the sidebar.

Paul and I have been pretty busy lately, so we haven't made any progress with the house and as a result I don't have any more photos to add. I do have an awful lot of other photos that I need to put up that date back to June!!! I'm just waiting for a big stretch of free time so I can get to them.

On Friday night, our friend Tash took us out to dinner as a thank you for letting her crash at our place when she was between houses recently. Tashy booked the restaurant and kept the location secret until we arrived at the door. It turned out to be the Press Club (George Calombaris's restaurant) and it was fabulous. Yay! We did the degustation and wine matching. It wasn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but it was fantastic, so a massive thanks to Tash for taking us there and shouting us such awesome food!!! I didn't take any pics, but Tashy did and hopefully it won't take too long to appear on her blog Melbourne Boozehag.

On Saturday, Paulie and I stood in a queue for ages so I could buy a new camera. Then when we got to the front of the queue, we found out they didn't have that model or the lens in stock, so we had to order it in. Disappointing!! And now that I don't have it, I'm worried about whether or not I've done the right thing. Aaarrgghh!! Nikon are just about to release a new model, but it will be when we're on holiday, so I won't be able to get the duty free, and Nikon are doing cashback on the model we purchased, so this will be significantly cheaper than the newer model, but it does mean that it's out of date before we've even got it home. But because it's already much newer than my current camera, I know that I'll see a massive difference in the picture quality. Much higher megapixels for starters, better sensor for another and this one takes HD video too. So I guess I'm really overthinking it and it's going to be awesome, but I wish that I had it in my hands so I could know just how awesome it is.

So that's the not-so-brief update on life in Melbs at the moment.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

The master bedroom

We've just about finished our bedroom, so I thought I'd do a set of before and almost after shots, so we/you can see the progress.
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Almost After:
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Saturday, September 4, 2010

All moved in!

Thanks to Mum and Dad, the move went very smoothly and we were all unpacked after 3 days. Not everything has found a home yet, but we're getting closer!

We're still making improvements to the house and will probably continue to do so for quite some time. It's fun to plan what we'll save for next. Today we signed up for and paid the deposit on double glazing, which will hopefully be ready to install in 6 weeks.

Now onto the photos...

On Thursday night the old house was all packed into boxes.
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On Friday night we were still in boxes, but in a different house.
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We celebrated the new house in style - well the beverage was stylish even if we weren't!
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On the Saturday, we bought new furniture as we needed more storage space for kitchen items. Dad and Paul put together the new display case and buffet. The buffet was quite complicated and they even needed to look at the instructions.
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Finally they're finished!
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And now it's full of plates, glasses, platters and bowls.
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Dad and Paul also took down a couple of trees outside the kitchen to a) let in more light and b) prevent them doing any more damage to the window frame.
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Morgan helped to get rid of some of the debris.
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And both dogs helped with the packing material. Myf wanted to nest in it, but Morgan was more interested in playing in it.
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We finally started to see some progress once the kitchen had been unpacked.
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So we decided to celebrate with a trip to the local park
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One week later and we're almost finished downstairs.
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