With a little help from our friends...

Firstly, I'd like to start by saying that getting the new house ready to be lived in is very tiring... for all parties involved.

After hiring cleaners and then realising that if you want a job done properly, you have to do it yourself, we re-cleaned the new place and were ready to start the painting. We also had some electrical work that needed doing, so brought in our friends Ali and Carter to give us a hand. Here are some photos of all the things we achieved this weekend.

Ready to get stuck into painting



The first brush stroke


Ali and Paul getting stuck into the painting


The comparison between the old (right) and the new (left)


After a couple of coats the house is looking so much better


We now have one of these in each of the bedrooms. Thanks Carter!!


The powerpoint in the fridge space has been moved higher, so we can push the fridge back closer to the wall.


Ready to paint the feature wall


After one coat


After two coats. The paint is wet, which is why it's so shiny and you can see all the brush strokes. We're yet to decide if we'll need a third coat. We'll see how it looks during the week.

I'm really pleased with how the house is shaping up and I can't wait to finish it all.

It's all in the preparation

I'm blogging from my new house!

Today we're washing the walls in preparation for painting. Unfortunately the house hasn't been left in a state that I would call clean, so we're going to have to get cleaners through at some point before we move in.

Here are some before shots of the place:

The Front

The Kitchen

Living/Dining

Courtyard

Stairs/Hallway

Master Bedroom

En Suite

Main Bathroom/Laundry

Spare Rooms

Home Owner

Today we became home owners again. Yay! We've got some appointments lined up to get double glazing and landscaping. Still no pics though. Soon I promise!

Unfortunately I'm stuck at home with a viral infection. :(

I've lost my voice and my doctor has ordered me to speak as little as possible. I'm sick of it already!

I'm over daytime tv too. I have a doctor's certificate for the rest of the week, but I think I'm going to have to go into work tomorrow. I feel like too guilty staying at home and doing nothing.

The puppies are loving having me at home though. They've been snuggling up to me and have been very sooky. I hope they don't get too used to it!

Morgan's Little Shop of Horrors

I'm sure I've mentioned previously how destructive our new(ish) addition is. We've bought a whole heap of soft toys for her to systematically destroy so that she doesn't attack anything that she's not supposed to. Morgan has taken on this task with much relish and is starting from the face down. She just can't get enough of the plastic noses and eyes. Whenever they get loose enough to threaten injury, I cut them off and sew up the hole that remains in their place. As a result, we now have a very disturbing looking bunch of soft toys in our house - disturbing enough to give a small child nightmares...

After further surgery...

So tell us how you create this look, Morgan...

After a hard day of maiming and dismembering, I like to curl up on a couple of soft toys for a nice nap...

Breaking the Rules

Paul and I have been doing very well eating at the dinner table and we're both enjoying it. Well, I'm enjoying it, at least.

Tonight however, we broke the rules. I blanked out the weekend in the calendar so we didn't have any plans and could have a relaxing one. As a result we got take away pizza for dinner and automatically ate it whilst watching a movie. About halfway through the pizza I remembered my goal. Oops! Well, there wasn't much we could do about it then, so we decided it was a halfway treat.

We deserve a bit of a treat since we've had some pretty good news lately. Paul and I now own a very small slice of Brunswick and are about to get back into debt. The house settles on 3rd August, but we'll still be renting here until the end of August, so we've got time to get in there and paint etc. I think both of us are looking forward to having a place that we can do what we like to again. I'm looking forward to getting our art back up on the walls.

We don't have any pics of the house, but when we can get into it, I'll take some photos and then hopefully I can do before and after shots.

Yarra Valley (again)

I think the yarra valley is practically our home away from home. We've been there a number of times. It's so close to Melbourne, but you feel so far away. We're even getting to appreciate the wine, despite the huge difference between them and the big SA wines that we're used to.

My sister, Megs, and her friend, Lauren, were visiting for a long weekend recently so for Queen's birthday Monday, we thought we'd take them up for a wine tour. And we knew that it's not a trip to the Yarra without Ali and Carter, so we organised to meet them up their with baby Jenson.

The first winery on our list was Helen's Hill. The guy who served us was really lovely and hung over, which somehow made him even more likeable. They had a fantastic french oak fermented Sauvignon blanc, which had such a different flavour to the Crisp grassy New Zealand sav blancs that I'm used to. A great start to the day.

The next winery was Bianchet, which had a couple of Italian varietals that I'd never heard of before; one of which I ended up buying - a Verduzzo. To be honest, I can't remember exactly what it tasted like, but the bottle tells me nougat. I guess I'll find out sooner or later how accurate that is. Haha!

Next stop was lunch and beer tasting at the Coldstream brewery. The food, beer and cider here was great, but the service was lacking. They were either seriously understaffed or very lazy. I think it was the former.

We bought this tasting sample of beer, my favourite of which was the Naked Ale. The porter was just a bit too heavy for me and the chocolate ale wasn't my thing. The cider and the pilsner were both very good.

Beef and Winter Ale Pie

Twice Cooked Lamb

Jenson had loads of fun in his high chair with his new toy, the toothbrush, and was very tolerant of the paparazzi. He only threw the toothbrush at me once and I'm sure that was just a miscalculation.

After lunch, we continued on the winery tour, the next stop of which was at Yering Farm. The labels for Yering Farm are very cute and have cartoon farm animals on them. You should check them out. As with most wineries, the view from the cellar door is lovely.

The fourth was Yarrawood, which again had a lovely view and a great tree. My cellar and visa bill tells me I liked the wine here. I bought two very reasonably priced Rose's for $15 each, a delicious, liquid gold tokay, a verdelho and a cab sav.

This is where we parted ways from Ali and Carter who had to get baby Jenson back home but not before I got some family snaps.

And they got one of us...

The final winery on our list was De Bortoli. I wasn't sure what to expect from this. Sometimes the biggest labels don't have the best cellar doors. But there's was good. They did a cheese platter that you could match to the wines. The cheeses were delicious and the wines were great. I fell in love with their bubbles and bought 3 bottles of fruity sparkling shiraz and one sparkling white.

This winery also had a great tree in a courtyard.

The sun was setting as we left the Yarra Valley after a rather expensive, but fun day.