Garden Update

I was supposed to upload these pics a couple of weeks back. My garden has flourished even more since then but I'll leave you with these images for now.

Hallway Makeover

As part of my goal to become more organised, I decided to make over the hallway as it looked crap, to put it mildly.

This is what it looked like:



You can see why I had to take action. It grated on my aesthetic self every time I looked at it. Which was everyday, as it is the hallway.

Now it looks a bit better.


Recognise the chest of drawers? That's the one I bought from Ikea. The bowl was a wedding gift. The Buddha head is from Thailand. I found the mirror in our shed and painted it brown (it was whitewashed blue previously, go figure). The vase was from a $2 shop but I need to put something in it.

But I'm really quite pleased at how it turned out.

I don't know what to do with the shoe rack though. D thinks it's an eyesore. I have to think about that.

What did I do with the shelf, you ask? Painted it brown and green and called it avocado. No, seriously.



It's now living in our lounge room (yet another project in the works).

We were able to cull out a lot of books and D has put a lot of his books in storage (in the toy box that used to hold my bags, how efficient are we?) in the shed. This is how I got my space in the shelf. The right side is mine (and the second shelf from the top). I still have space, woohoo!

Ms. Organised

I'm in an organising mood these days. So much so that I went to Ikea last night. On a weeknight (unheard of). By myself (even more unheard of). I even managed to move a very heavy box from the cart to the boot of my car (yes, I say boot now. cringe.) without any help at all. I am woman, hear me roar.

I let D carry the box into the house though. I am woman, I know my limitations.

I decided to buy a chest of drawers for the hallway and a shelf stand to organise my bags.

I should have taken a before picture of what my bag storage was like (it was basically a toy chest with all my bags stuffed into it) but believe me when I say it was bad. It became a dumping ground for all my stuff, I couldn't find the bag I was looking for at a given time and I forgot all about my fave ones. It was a mess. I'll take an "after" picture to show how it's looking more organised now. What with my red shelf and all.

I'll try to remember to take a before picture of our hallway before I start re-organising that part of the house. I'm hoping the drawers will help reduce the clutter that seems to accumulate every day. Two years without maids and I'm still not on top of my mess. I better get a move on.

Update: Here's the after pic of my bag shelf. It's so good. I've rediscovered bags I forgot I owned.

I Feel Accomplished

The state of my clean laundry pile was atrocious. Today, I decided enough was enough and I was going to have to knuckle down and fold my clothes.

I really really hate folding my clothes. Now, I don't mind doing the laundry. In fact, I kinda like it. I will happily sort out the clothes (lights vs. darks), put them in the washing machine and hang them (or put them in the dryer) out to dry. But that's the limit of my laundry liking. I absolutely detest sorting my clothes, folding them or placing them on hangers. Don't ask me why. I just don't like it.

Well, 2 weeks of laundry and no folding had resulted to this mess:





















Yes, it was quite gross.

But I'm happy to report that after 20 minutes of hard labour, this corner of our room is now quite clean.






















I feel very proud of myself.

Moving Day

Got our connection sor-ed. Woohoo!

I've uploaded our Moving Day video. Watch it.

We've moved!

I've been trying to upload the video I made of our moving day since yesterday but there's something wrong with our broadband connection. I am now sponging off someone else's account and it's not a very fast one.

I'll post the video once we get our connection sor-ed.

We're moving!

Sometimes even I think I'm too silly.

I took videos and photos of our new place using my cam phone and played with iMovie on my mac. This is the result.

Aerial view

Since I love Google Earth and I'm silly, here's our new house:

Bugger all

With the state of my recent and future workloads, I've decided to quit my MAHH updates and just make a long story short.

After looking at more crap houses that Wednesday after MAHH Part 4, D and I decided to stick with House #16. We did get approved for House #17, but since the agent was an unhelpful abrupt b*tch, we told her to forget about it.

We start our lease with the new house on the 1st of April but we can get the keys already by the 30th of March. We still have the old unit until 16 April though so at least it gives us some time to get our stuff together and move. And do lots of cleaning.

We're moving during the long Easter weekend (starts 6 April) which is good as it gives us 4 days to get settled. We've decided to do it ourselves (with the help of the boys--D's brother + friends) since it's not too far away and it'll save us around $300.

These are the only pictures available (from the real estate ad)

I'll take more pictures this weekend. I'm excited.

MAHH Part 4

I'll blog about the Mornington trip another time. Wanted to finish all the house hunt blogs in one go.

Tuesday, 13 March

We didn't do any house hunting that day but I did fax our applications through (after encountering some technical difficulties, that is. i'm not very fax proficient, apparently). Managed to fax through all 3 applications by lunch time. (Shut up! It did take me the whole morning but I was in a 2 hour meeting as well!)

Around 2pm, I got a call from the property manager of House #16 and she said our application was approved!! It was good news! Absolutely. The only downside was I COULD NOT REMEMBER THE INSIDE OF THE HOUSE AT ALL. We had seen so many houses that Saturday in a very short span of time and the places all got jumbled in my head. The long relaxing weekend did not help things either.

I emailed D but he couldn't remember the place either! No, we're not silly. Not really.

D also said that the agent for House #11 called and asked that we redo our applications and lie about how long we've been in our current employment. He said we should put down 2 years (I've been with NatFoods for 6 months and D with Telstra for about 18 months). Apparently, the owner had issues with employment being too spotty. Which is weird, since both D and I had been with our previous jobs for 3 years. We both decided to pass on the house as we didn't really want to lie.

I told D to call House #16's property manager on Wed and ask whether we could see the place again. D, being D, was able to sweet talk her into showing us the place that afternoon. (This was after we went to look at the house by ourselves on Tue afternoon, knocking on the door to see if the tenants were home [they weren't], and still not remembering the place clearly)

Wednesday

With schedules being tight, I had to take the tram from my office to House #16 to meet D and the property manager there. (Had to bail out on a meeting and do manic work again to be able to get off early. This house hunt was beginning to take its toll.)

The house still looked good but was smaller than we envisioned. It didn't have a dishwasher in the kitchen but we might be able to fit in one in the laundry room. The lounge area was too small to fit in both our sofa and the dining table. The kitchen wasn't big enough to fit in our table (it's huge! 8 seater! don't know why D bought one that big). The 2 rooms were HUGE though. The study was a bit small but it had a backyard and a storage shed. Parking enough for more than 2 cars. The manager said lawn mowing was included in the rent.

We weren't completely sold on the house so we told her we'll call her the next day as we wanted to keep our options open.

We had some more hunting to do.

MAHH Part 3 (Delayed posting)

(I've been so busy at work and haven't had a chance to catch up on my blogging.)

We didn't do any house hunting on Friday so we could work the full day. However, we packed our Saturday morning with inspections.

Saturday

We planned to see 10 houses that day but ended up seeing just 8. Still not bad work for 2 1/2 hours.

House #15 was in Albert Park (nearer to my work and the city but far from D's office). It was a quaint 2BR townhouse. So quaint that there wasn't space for a dining area. Too bad since the kitchen and the bathroom were recently renovated. Too small.

We passed on seeing two 2BR apartments in Toorak and Elsternwick as they were only 2BRs and we were behind schedule as House #15 was too far from the other inspections.

House #16 was in Caulfield South and was showing at the same time as House #17 (Glen Huntly). They were both 2BR houses + study. We were in both places for less than 5 minutes but we did put check marks on the list for both of them. Both were also reasonably near public transpo.

House #18 was a 3BR apartment but for some reason we didn't like it. I can't remember too clearly now.

House #19 was a 2BR + study but the layout didn't seem to work. D didn't like it.

House #20 was a HUGE 3BR house in Bentleigh. It was nowhere near PT and was just way too big. Bit far from everything too.

House #21 was a rundown 3BR house. It was scary. The floor of the main bedroom was wobbly and askew. Pass.

The last place to see for the day was House #22, a 2BR + study apartment in St Kilda East. The study was tiny but it had a dishwasher and was near the city and near PT.

Out of the 8 houses, we decided to apply for House #s 16, 17 and 22.

After the last inspection, we headed directly to Mornington Peninsula where we were going to spend the long weekend. After a brief stop at Dan Murphy's, of course, for some drinkies.

MAHH Part 2

A lot has happened since my last post. Had a couple more MAHHs and then went to Mornington Peninsula for the long weekend. I'll try to write about it all tonight.

Thursday

Thursday turned out to be more of a bust than anything. D & I left our respective works early, just like we did last Wednesday. We had 6 to 7 houses on our list that day.

House #8 turned out to be a non entity. It was keys in office so we went to the agent's office (which was not too far from my work) to get them. The house was located a few suburbs away but since there was another place that had keys in office near House #8's agent's office, we decided to kill two birds in one stone.

We got the agent but the keys were NOT in office. Apparently, a tradesman had come earlier that day to pick up the keys as he was going to do some work on it. He was going to hold the keys for a week. TCH.

We decided to scrap House #9 as we weren't all that keen to see it and we were only picking up the keys as it was on the way.

House #10 was keys in office as well, but guess what? Keys were NOT in office. The owner took back the keys as they were planning to do some repairs on the house. Story of the day.

House #11 was, luckily, keys IN office and from the same agent as House #10. D really liked this place. It was huge, older style, heaps of storage, and seemed to work. No dishwasher but we thought we could put one in the separate laundry room.

We immediately filled out the application forms. We had just left the agent's office and on our way to submit our application for House #5 when D got a call from the agent. He wanted to show us another property in the area.

So we met him at House #12. He proceeded to give us the hard sell for the apartment. It was only a 2 bedroom so we thought it a bit small for our needs.

He also gave us a background on House #11. It was going to direct to landlord, meaning we would have to deal with the landlord on rent, maintainance and other issues. Apparently, no tenant has lasted the full 12 month term on this property. Something to do with the landlord. Which was not good news at all. Also, he said that other applicants had offered more for the place and he suggested we match their offer. As the place was already at the maximum of our budget, we told him we'd keep our application to the asking price. But we knew we wouldn't have much of a chance with that. We didn't want to be paying more for a place with a landlord that could prove problematic.

On the way to the next place, we dropped off our application for House #5.

House #13 was a bit too small for us.

House #14 was a pretty spacious 2 bedroom apartment but it was still just a 2 bedroom.

Throughout the day, I was bleeding quite profusely. More than usual. Way more than usual. I actually felt dizzy by the end of the MAHH.

We still had to go to our last spanish class so off we went after having a bit of a rest at home.

Mad Adventures in House Hounting (MAHH) Part 1

Yesterday marked the beginning of our house hunt (I don't count that one apartment we saw last Friday as it was such an unliveable dump). We saw 7, count them 7, houses yesterday.

D and I have arranged early time offs from our respective works for yesterday and today. This means longer hours on the other days. And lots of scrambling around for me to get things done quickly. I got dumped with work late last Tuesday that was due by this Friday. Since I am amazing and barely breathed yesterday, I have managed to finish what I had to do by this morning (hence, the time to blog).

Wednesday MAHH

We were on our way by 2.30pm.

The first house on the list was keys in office (this means the house is empty and you can get the keys from the real estate agent so you can view the property. this is ok if the house and agent are fairly near each other. it becomes problematic when they're suburbs apart.). When we got to the agent's office, we were informed that we had just missed the keys by minutes. The helpful receptionist said we should try and see if we could catch up with the other house hunter so we could view the property together.

D drove like crazy (nothing unusual, really) and we got to the house in good time. But, no house hunter with keys. It also turned out that there were 2 properties for let, side by side. But still, no keys.

D, being Curious George, discovered the back door for the other one (House #1) was open. Woohoo! Got to go inside to have a look. It was recently refurbished but it was minimal work done. It still needed a lot of work. It had heaps of space but the bathroom was atrocious. Had a huge backyard though.

House #2 was locked but Curious George managed to sneak in through a window. The house looked very similar to House #1 but this one had an even bigger backyard. It was like a forest!

Verdict: the houses had potential but since we were renting, we can't do much with it. D and I agreed that it would be something we'd buy and then renovate but not something we'd necessarily want to rent.

House #3 was keys in office as well but when we got to the agent's office, the receptionist said it had already been let.

House #4 was an open inspection at 4-4.15pm. When we got the place, there were about 15 to 20 people already waiting. And more people still coming. The agent lady came and opened the unit. It had only 2 bedrooms and was very small. So that was a NO.

Houses #5 and #6 were both showing at the same time (5.00-5.15pm). We had already prioritized these 2 out of the 5 houses showing at the same time. Since we had some time, we decided to scout both places first and see if we could look at both together. D didn't like my idea of us seeing one house each and looking at them together seemed doable as they were only a few blocks apart.

House #5 was my favorite. It had heaps of space in the back, a spa, a back deck with BBQ facilities and a dishwasher. It was right next to a train station (the noise will take some time getting used to) and off the main road. But, there were 20 or more people during the inspection who are our likely competition. We'll submit an application and hope for the best.

House #6 was fairly small and only had 2 bedrooms. No dishwasher as well. The person I called on the phone screwed up. I was asking about the property next door and she gave the inspection time for this smaller one. Oh well.

House #7 was a 2 bedroom unit in Caulfield North. It was a decent size, had a dishwasher and a private balcony. We're looking for more space though.

House #8 looked gorgeous in the pictures but turned out to be disappointing in reality. Too small.

We ended the hunt at 6.15pm. We were SO tired.

But we still studied for Spanish class and then discussed today's game plan. We're hoping to see 5-6 houses today.

House Hunting

Our lease in our apartment is ending by the end of the month. Since our real estate agent is unbelievably horrid (an ex-tenant even put up a blog about them. i'll link to that site once we've vacated and gotten our bond back. better be safe than sorry.) and we need a bigger space, we're going house/apartment hunting.

My only non-negotiable is that it has a dishwasher (or can fit in a dishwasher). D needs either an extra room, a study or a garage which he can soundproof so he can practice his music and jam with other people, if necessary.

Wish us luck!

Bored

I haven't been posting as much lately. I was really (and i mean really) busy this past Monday and Tuesday. I had to take home some reading on Monday night and was working until 11.30! And the next morning, I was at work before 8am. Yes, v busy.

So, after all that stress, I decided to take it easy yesterday. So I got caught up on my emails, internet browsing and other pertinent things I neglected to do. I refused to start another project as I was getting burnt out. It was a good easy day.

Today, I'm working on a new project but it's not too urgent. Which is good. I'm bored though.

I've also been surfing online for places to rent. Our lease terminates by end of this month and since we absolutely hate our real estate agent, we're vacating the premises as soon as we can. Which means some frantic house/apartment hunting for the next few weeks...