House Frames and a Nerf War

My house was invaded today by five tween-aged boys playing war games. They had thirteen Nerf guns between them, ranging from guns that shoot one dart at a time, to fully automatic machine guns. I am torn between the sheer horror of my gentle baby boy choosing to play with guns and shoot his friends and pride at how well behaved all the boys were and how well they all got along while pretending to blow each other's brains out.

I told Tom he looked like Rambo when he was walking around with a gun in each hand, grenades hanging from his belt, several machine gun chains draped around his shoulders and fully loaded clips in his pockets (the boys are now laughing at me because I had to go and ask them what these things were called).

Tom asked me who Rambo was. I felt old.

Cassidy arrived home from Ballarat and seemed glad to see us all. I sure was glad to see her! Grandma said she had been very well behaved and even tried a few new foods while she was there. And her Pop Larry had done the sweetest thing and taken her to buy a new party dress all by himself.

As I mentioned yesterday, the frames are up on our house. Here are some photos of how it looks at the moment.

This is going to be our alfresco area.

This is our living and dining area.
The walls in the existing house are also all framed.

Tomorrow Abbey goes to creche and I hope to get some packing done, it is now only just over five weeks until we move. I have my fingers crossed that the rain holds off until the roof goes on the extension, then the rain can hold us up no longer.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Ikea

Ikea rocks for so many reasons. It has a huge range of pretty much everything you could need for your home. It is reasonably good quality. Ikea furniture is functional and it looks good. It is affordable.

What I do not like about Ikea is it's service, or lack of service to be more precise.

And yes, I know Ikea operates the way it does to keep their prices down and I do appreciate this fact but when you have to drive over an hour to get there it is very frustrating that they will not hold stock and cannot guarantee what will be available.

We drove to Ikea with the kids on Sunday to get our taps because they are just so much cheaper than anywhere else. I had my heart set on taps that pull out to make it easier to rinse dishes and to rinse around the sink. I had chosen the taps out of the Ikea catalogue and we had previously been to Ikea to check them out to make sure they were not so inexpensive for a reason.

Luckily enough my sister lives just near Ikea and offered to look after the kids while we went to get the taps because anyone who has been to Ikea on the weekend knows that it is an absolute nightmare there because it is ridiculously busy.

Anyway we drop off the kids, drive to Ikea, find a parking spot easily and go straight to the kitchen department.

We check out the taps but the one we want for the kitchen is not on display. My heart sinks, I just know it will have been discontinued. But the tap we want for the butler's pantry and the laundry is there, so we are pretty happy.

So we go to write down the warehouse location to pick up the tap but it says to find a staff member to inquire about this item. So we find a staff member. They say do we have a ticket? Ummm, do we need one? So we go get a ticket. We then somehow get distracted arguing about flippin' taps and somehow don't hear our number get called. They take pity on us and serve us even though technically it is no longer our turn.

We inquire about the tap that is no longer on display. Sure enough it has been discontinued and it is no longer available. Not to worry, we think, we can still get two out of three. So we inquire about the other tap. No, it has not been discontinued it is definitely still available. Oh, wait a minute, it is out of stock. We will have it again in around two weeks. But we can't get them put away or sent to us, we will have to come back in two weeks.

We wander away, pissed off that we have driven all the stinkin' way to Melbourne for nothing. And that our kitchen tap is now going to cost way more, and we still have to come back to Ikea in two weeks time, right when we will be far too busy to contemplate a trip to Melbourne.

So we go back to the kitchen department, choose two different taps that are not really what we want but are nice enough, take another ticket and pray that these are available.

These are the taps we ended up with.

This tap is the one that is going in the pantry and in the laundry.

And this is going in the kitchen.

And just for the record I forgive Ikea, they simply have too many great products for me to remain cranky with them.

On the home front we received news from my Mum and Dad and my brother and sister in law today that they all made it to Everest base camp. The weather in the Himalayas has been bad and they had not been able to see Everest though. They were beginning to think they would leave Nepal without catching a glimpse of the elusive mountain. My sister reckons you've got more hope of seeing a unicorn than Everest! But the weather cleared and they got to see Everest, I can only imagine how awe inspiring that would be.

Can't wait for them to get home this weekend and hear all about it. Might be a little green with envy but the gorgeous gifts they always bring from Nepal should soften the blow considerably.

Oh, and our house now has frames! Will post photos tomorrow.

We Have a Floor

More progress on our new home. We now have a floor, a ducted vacuuming system (well, it is wired in anyway), some bricks and the central heating unit is in the roof.

This photo was taken before the yellow-tongue was put down.

A few more slight hiccups, the brick wall on the south side had to be knocked down completely to put a new window in. The builder originally planned to cut the bricks out as it is only a half-height window but the piers in the bricks didn't line up so the all had to come out. This meant David spent the weekend cleaning bricks as we could only manage to get just enough second-hand bricks to build the extension and we would need the ones that were knocked out.

The second hiccup is our frames are not ready and will not be ready for another week, meaning, once again, the extension will take a little longer and we will be potentially homeless for little longer. We a trying to stay positive about this and the upside is that our builder can at least work on the existing house while he is waiting on the frames.

All the changes to the wall locations have been completed in the existing house and it is great to finally be able to see what the new areas will be like, not to just try and imagine from the plan.

David pointed out that there was not a good shot of the front of the house on here so, just for him, here is a shot of the front of the house.

School holidays have so far been going well and I cannot believe they are already half over. The kids have been to the movies, we've done some shopping, been to Melbourne, had friends over and just generally slacked off and relaxed. Abbey loves it when the kids are home and she has been kept very busy following them around.

Cassidy has gone to Ballarat to stay with her Grandparents and is having a wonderful time. The highlights so far, so she tells me have been doing some gardening, going for walks, visiting her Pop's yacht at Geelong, getting a new dress and having curly fries at Hogsbreath Cafe.

It is very quiet here without Cass and we all miss her. Can't wait to see her in a couple of days when she gets home.

Progress...

The weather this week has been shocking. Windy, rainy and freezing cold. I was beginning to think that our stumps wouldn't be able to be put in. Our builder also had both his labourers off one day and only one the next due to sickness.

But against all odds, the stumps are in.

Aren't they a beautiful thing?

The inside of the existing house is looking a little sparse, there is not much left in there really. The lounge, dining room (which is to become the office) and kitchen (which is to become Tom's bedroom) are the only rooms left in the house with walls. This photo shows what used to be two bedrooms.

The space shown on the photo will become the ensuite, walk-in robe and a bathroom. The room I am standing in to take this photo will be the master bedroom.

In other happenings this week Cassidy attended her first school camp. She was a little nervous getting on the bus but was trying so hard to be brave. The camp was at Phillip Island and the weather was terrible. I was told they nearly all froze to death when they went to the penguin parade but luckily the rain held off. Cassidy missed the penguin parade because by this stage she had come down with a flu-type virus and had a roaring temperature. She said she tried to stay outside to see the penguins but it was just too cold so she waited inside until it was finished, poor baby!

The teachers and parent helpers did a great job with her, especially when she had trouble sleeping and said they were so proud of her, particularly since she was quite ill for the last day. We are so proud too. It was a very big step for her.

She looked positively awful when she got off the bus, all glassy-eyed and flushed from her fever. Poor darling came home and got straight into bed fully clothed and fell fast asleep!

School holidays have also begun and tomorrow my sister is taking all three kids out for the day to do fun stuff like see a movie and go out for lunch. The kids are very excited and the girls have already had a fight over which room Lissy is sleeping in tonight! I'm sure she would like to take the pull-out bed in the lounge but I'm not sure my girls will allow that, having Lissy sleep over is to them one of the most exciting things that could happen.

Right now the sun has begun shining (for the first time in days) so I'm off to tackle Mt Washmore.

Have a great weekend!

Cutie Patootie

Our first Hiccup

I received a call from our builder this morning. It went kinda like this:

"Hi Bec, it's Trav. Now I don't want you to panic but we have a problem."

So I immediately think in the one second before he continues these possible scenarios:

1. The whole house is riddled with white ants, or
2. He has had some sort of family emergency and can no longer work on our house, or
3. The house is on an aboriginal burial ground (not likely I guess but the thought ran through my mind).

It was none of the above. Turns out they found an old septic tank. An engineer had to be consulted about the removal. This sent me in to a slight panic as in my experience the word 'engineer' is generally interchangeable with 'this is going to cost a whole lot of money'.

Trav assured me that even though some extra cost was going to be incurred because of this, it shouldn't be too significant.

Thank goodness for that!

He also assured me that once all the digging was complete there would be no more surprises.

Let's just hope that they don't uncover that burial ground tomorrow.

Everything Including the Kitchen Sink

Our new house is across the road from where the kids go to school so I thought I'd have a look at what was going on there today when I picked up the kids from school.

I could not believe what had happened in 7 hours!

There is barely any plaster left in the existing house, actually there is hardly anything in there at all!

There is a huge pile if rubbish in the front yard, basically everything that has been pulled out of the house.

There is an enormous, shallow hole in the backyard where they did the site cut for the extension and the big tree has been pulled out.

There were cars and trucks and tradies everywhere and it gave me hope that we may have somewhere to move to when our lease runs out here in 7 1/2 weeks!

We also had to finalise our order from Reece's plumbing and I agonised over the kitchen sink. Too many choices! We are having stone benchtops so I really wanted a undermount sink instead of an inset, I think they look more sleek and unobtusive. I also wanted one with square, not rounded corners. Of course, these were more expensive as everything I choose is more expensive! Here is what I ended up choosing.

I think it is a beautiful kitchen sink and I was particularly pleased that David liked it too (even with the bigger price tag).

Another choice I agonised over were the bathroom basins. Did I want above counter or semi recessed? Square or rounded? Tap holes? What size? I had no idea of the choice available!

We ended up going for this Porcher above counter basin in all the bathrooms. Which meant we ordered five! Lucky they are reasonable priced.

We found it pretty easy to choose all the other bathroom products, which was surprising considering the range available.

We stumbled a little over the toilets. Crazy, I know but there is a lot of choice in toilets these day. We were quite keen on having those toilets where the cistern is completely hidden and you just have a couple of buttons on the wall to flush but they were just too expensive, especially since there are three toilets in the house. So we once again compromised and went with this toilet.

It looks easy to clean and has a soft-close lid so I'm happy.

Speaking of easy to clean, we are going for wet-seal showers, except for the girls shower which means only one shower screen to clean! The wet-seal showers are just three tiled walls and open otherwise. I am thrilled as I hate shower screens, the soap scum eventually soaks into the glass (glass is actually a liquid!) and no longer comes clean. And for the remaining shower with screens I have been advised there is a product that can be painted onto the glass that seals it and stops the soap scum soaking into the screen so I'll give that a go.

More on the renos tomorrow, now I'm off to watch Man Against Wild with my boy, he loves that show. Me, not so much. All the bug and raw fish eating makes me queasy!

Beautiful....

....is the best word to describe my brother's wedding. It was so heartfelt and real, it didn't seem like they were just going through the motions.

The rain held off and although it was a little cold, the ceremony was perfect.

Here is the gorgeous couple.

Sorry about the crooked photo. I was holding Abbey as she refused to put her feet on the ground for fear her sparkly wedding shoes might get dirty. I was going for an artistic look but it only looks crooked. Oh well, photography has never been my strong point.

Here we are, all dressed in our finery. We scrub up all right I reckon!


My brother and my new sister are now in Katmandu getting ready to trek up a mountain or two.

It's a big week for Cassidy this week, off to her very first school camp. She is a bit anxious, asking lots of questions about what her bed will be like, whether there will be a light on at night, mostly questions revolving around the sleeping arrangements. It's a big deal for her, especially because of her Asperger's, she does not cope well with the unknown. She does seem determined to go though and I am so proud of her for being willing to try. In typical Cassidy style she is all packed to go already, she has crossed all the items off the list and has packed with coordinating items of clothing grouped together!

Construction of the extension of our house also begins this week, by the end of the week the foundations should be complete. It's all very exciting and as we need to move out of here in less than eight weeks, please, no rain this week!

For Richer and Poorer

My baby brother gets married tomorrow.

We are all excited to be part of this wonderful occasion. They are getting married at the most gorgeous location, the reception is going to be very original and the amazingly talented Nicole Finlayson is the photographer.

But I must admit, at the risk of sounding shallow and materialistic, that for both myself and my girls its ALL about the outfit!

Abbey is wearing this beautiful number from Big by Fiona Scanlon.

Cassidy is wearing this gorgeous dress, also by Big by Fiona Scanlon

Abbey is wearing a Metalicus top under her dress and the cutest leggings from Seed. She also has some glittery gold ballet flats from Seed. She has been so excited about her outfit that I have kept it hidden at my mum's house to stop her from wrecking it before the wedding (the dress is silk, it will mark very easily).

Cassidy's outfit is also being completed with a Metalicus top and her footless tights are from Target. Her silver ballet flats are from Kmart.

My dress is from Country Road and as it is from their Winter Collection I can't find a photo of it anywear. It is also silk and it will be a modern miracle if I manage to get out of the house without marking it. It is sleeveless so I am wearing a Metalicus top underneath. I haven't decided which shoes I am wearing yet, it will either be boots or ballet flats, depends on the weather.

Oh, and if you are reading this David each dress was bought on sale!

Lucky he agreed to the richer or poorer thing.

Tom is being outfitted by Target and Pumpkin Patch, not that he could really give a toss and David is wearing pants by Colorado and a business shirt, same as every other day.

I can't wait to get some photos of us all dressed up, it happens very rarely.

The wedding is at 11am so it will be a challenge to get us all ready by that time in the morning but they needed to get married that early as they fly out on their honeymoon to Nepal that night!

And the ceremony is outside so let's hope for no rain, our silk dresses will watermark!

Slow and Steady

The renovations on our new house are progressing slowly but steadily.

We have had mostly wins so far, all the walls and ceilings are in fantastic condition, the mountains of lino lifted without too many problems and we haven't found any nasty surprises.

We did discover that the hardwood floor is in perfect condition throughout (except for a small area in the laundry which has rotted) and is actually blackwood! Unfortunately the boards are running the wrong way, ie. across the hallway and since we are going to extend the hallway quite a bit and don't want a join in the middle we are going to cover those beautiful blackwood boards with a new hardwood floor. All the other rooms in the existing house are going to be carpeted or tiled. It makes sense to cover the blackwood but just seems like such a waste.

David had a hell of a time pulling up all the masonite that was under the lino. It was stapled down and he ended up having to use the grinder to get rid of the staples, it would have taken him weeks to pull them all out with pliers. Lucky we decided to cover the blackwood floors because the grinder made a fair mess of them.

Tom has been waiting for weeks to be able to smash something with a hammer and his time finally came, he smashed the bathroom to pieces with glee! He did a wonderful job of cleaning up after himself too. He gets special credit for his efforts as he had spent the entire week in bed with the flu and still helped out even though he felt a bit under the weather.


Abbey also gets a special mention as she woke up Saturday night with a raging fever. She spent the whole of Sunday lying on a blanket watching DVDs and snoozing on and off while we all worked away. She did not complain once.

Oh, and if you are wondering why there are never any photos of Cassidy it is because she absolutely cannot tolerate being at the new house while we are working, it is far too loud and boring for her, she goes to her cousin's house instead.

On Friday we chose all the materials and colours for our kitchen, bathroom and laundry cabinetry. This was so much fun even though David and I had a slight moment when we were disagreeing on the ensuite cabinets but we worked it out fairly quickly (I got my way). Below is an example of the colours we are using, sorry about the bad photo.



The builder started today so hopefully it won't be too long until I will be able to post some photos of the extension.

The Tooth Fairy

The Tooth Fairy that services our area is absolutely useless.

She is unreliable, tardy and often doesn't show up at all.

She needs to understand the the kids are really disappointed when they wake up in the morning and the tooth is still here and there is no money.

I try to placate them by saying things like "Maybe the Tooth Fairy had a very busy night and she simply could not make it here in time before you woke up" or "Maybe the tooth wasn't obvious enough and she didn't see it" but deep down we all know that she is just crap at her job.

When I was a kid the Tooth Fairy always came, she never missed a tooth. I guess it is as they say, it is hard to find a good employee these days.

So I'd just like to say that the Tooth Fairy in charge of our area needs a very big firecracker put up her nether regions to get her moving because there are still many teeth to be lost in this house, Abbey hasn't lost any yet, and the current situation is just not tolerable.

Finally...

The bank valuer said yes!

And so the renovations have begun.

Here are some photos of our progress so far.

Tom was a wonderful help whilst stripping wallpaper on the weekend and is now somewhat of an expert.

Abbey also helped for about 3 seconds before losing interest and moving on. She has the attention span of a goldfish.

The kitchen so far, the rest of the cabinets will be removed this weekend. There was also a wallpaper freeze in the kitchen up under the cornice and removing it was disgusting. It smelt like a billion roast dinners from fifty years ago.

This will be our office. It also had a wallpaper freeze under the cornice. Thankfully removing it was not as revolting as the one in the kitchen.

Our lounge room. Once again, there was a wallpaper freeze in this room about halfway up the wall. It was a pain in the neck to remove, the wallpaper came off easily enough but left glue all over the wall which took ages to remove.

Also while I was stripping the wallpaper I noticed that the plaster above the fireplace had a nasty bulge in it so David had to cut it out to see what was going on behind it. This worked to my advantage as I had been whining about replacing the extremely ugly gas log fire and David kept saying "We are NOT spending any more money! It works, we will replace it further down the track." But since we were pulling it to bits anyway he took it out to see what sort of condition the fireplace was in. It looks so much better without the offensive gas log fire! After all that effort we have decided to plaster over the fireplace completely to make the room more usable.

We also pulled up the carpet to reveal pristine hardwood floors! Aren't they a beautiful thing? It looks like the boards are like this throughout the entire house!

We obviously haven't made it into the bathroom yet!

It is a little hard to tell from the photo but the paint is actually glittery! But I am oh-so grateful there is no flipping wallpaper in here!

Stay tuned for more riveting renovation photos!

Can't get started...

...that's how I feel today, I can't get started.

I can't concentrate and don't feel like doing anything.

I feel like something's not right.

I tried vacuuming but even that didn't help (I find a clean floor usually fixes most things. Weird. I know).

So I have given up. At the moment I am sitting on the couch with Abbey, blogging and watching 'Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure" whilst eating copious amounts of colombines and starburst chews. Even the lollies aren't helping.

I'm pretty sure it's all due to the fact that the bank valuer has still not given us a yay or nay on our home extension. I am terrible at not being able to do anything if I don't have a complete plan and at the moment both David and I and the builder don't know if we can begin work planned for this weekend.

I can't stand not knowing. Someone put me outta my misery. Please.

I don't know how much more of Tinkerbell I can take.

It's a Conspiracy.

My kids go to the local public primary school and most of the time I am more than pleased with the going ons there. Admittedly, there has been the odd incident that has left me wondering, such as the time my eight year old was bitten in class by another eight year old. What the..? I thought only toddlers bit others and even then you were a leper if you had a biting child. But an eight year old girl biting? Makes you wonder...

Anyway, today Cassidy came out of school carrying a strange looking, cylinder thingy. Tom was already in the car moaning about how you wouldn't believe what Cassidy had made at school and that the teachers had gone mad.

And then I heard it. A great, big, loud farty sound. She opened the door to the car, somehow simultaneously making the most god-awful noise on this thing imaginable and telling me how Tom had threatened to murder her at the same time.

I understood why he felt that way. He then told me that every kid in grade three had made one of these things and all he had heard all day was the horrible noise coming from them.

Cassidy asked me if I liked her instrument which they had made out or a piece of thin plastic hose, a balloon and a cardboard cylinder, all joined together, in music class. Ah, no, not really! But to be kind I said "Yes darling it is absolutely fantastic, please don't blow it in the car. Or at home unless you are in your bedroom with the door closed."

Of course Abbey thinks it is wonderful and likes to blow on it really hard. So I resorted to bribing her with biscuits to let go of the damn thing and now it is hidden up the top of Cassidy's wardrobe.

What on earth were those teachers thinking? I get the whole making a musical instrument thing but what is wrong with a few rubber bands around a tissue box? I don't understand how they ever thought making something that sounds so offensive could be a good idea, especially when they then send them home.

So I think it must be a diabolical plan, cooked up by evil teachers to drive all parents absolutely bonkers. What else could it be?

The kid's have also got their school concert coming up and need costumes. I hate this as I cannot sew and they always need things like blundstones, flannelette shirts and other items that the teachers expect every child to have but mine never do. One year I had to make a mosquito outfit!

This year, to my delight, Tom is a Greek God and only needs a plain white sheet. Hooray, finally a costume I can provide easily. In the car on the way home from school this afternoon Tom says "I need to take my costume to school as soon as possible."

I say no problem, I have a white sheet you can take.

He then says "I need some really big safety pins to hold my costume together, the teacher says just some old nappy pins would do." Like that would be easy. Like I just have some nappy pins lying about from when the kids were babies.

Nope, not only did my kids wear disposables, the people I knew that did use cloth certainly didn't use nappy pins. Can you even still get them? I haven't seen one for years!

So tomorrow I am off to find nappy pins. I presume that you can still buy big safety pins so that will be what I will aim for.

I can't wait to hear what outfit Cassidy will need!

Our Owner Builder certificate came today!!!

I am so excited that this renovation will soon begin, the builder will be starting in one week providing the bank valuer comes to the party.

Hooray! We may not be living in a shed yet!

There are so many features in the new house I am crazily excited about, but the most exciting would have to be my new kitchen.

It has so many great features I can't list them all but some of my favorites are:

• stone benchtops
• inbuilt waste sorting system
• inbuilt full height cupboard with hide away doors for my laptop, pinboard, and other paperwork, like a mini office in the kitchen. This makes the organiser in me deliriously happy.
• a three metre long butler's pantry with a sink. The above photo is the inspiration for my pantry. Hopefully it will look a little like this!
• lots of drawers for storage (so much better than cupboards)

The other room that I am really pleased about is the laundry. At first I was disappointed as the laundry was a bit smaller than I had hoped due to trying not to move too many walls in the existing home to save money. But even though it is not a huge space I have still managed to get lots of storage in the laundry including two pull out laundry hampers and a large drying cupboard. There is also a large broom cupboard in the mud room off the laundry which will provide more storage.

So next week a fair portion of my spare time will be spent removing wall paper and ripping up old carpet and lino.

Feel free to come and help me!

Random Musings...

Feeling a bit deep and meaningful today. Not sure why. Might be because of my extremely low blood sugar due to trying to lose five kilos before my brother's wedding in September. Whatever the case, here are today's musings:

1. Why am I the only person in my family that is able to actually put dishes in the dishwasher? If they can take the dishes to the sink why can they not go that extra step and pop them in the dishwasher? Is it really that hard?

2. Where do all the odd socks go? Is there another dimension for odd socks? Do they spontaneously combust? There must be an answer.

3. Why do I crave sugar after each meal, even if I am full?

4. Why did Country Road send me a 30% of voucher the day after we finalised the quotes for our new house and I can no longer justify spending the money?

5. Can you believe my baby boy is going to be 11 in a month? Have I really been a mum for that long? He may be a big boy but he is still a big snuggler (but don't tell him I said so!).

6. Some days I think I might like to build a little shack at my brother's place at Jindivick, kinda like the house that Pa built on Little House on the Prarie, and raise chickens and homeschool the kids. And make preserves.

7. Getting older is weird. Today I saw a person who was a few years ahead of me at school and it really struck me how old they looked. Then I realised that I probably look that old too. And it just felt weird. Hard to explain I guess.

8. I have an unhealthy addiction to jersey caramels. I was complaining the other day to David that neither of the supermarkets in Warragul have jersey caramels at the moment. What is going on? Is there a jersey caramel shortage? He simply said "You have eaten them all".

Oh, and an update on the sleep front, I am getting some! Lots, in fact. Cassidy has stayed in her bed the whole night for the last three nights. This has not happened for at least four months. Seems all she needed were some calming drops from the kinesologist and some crystals under her pillow. Who knew it could be so easy? Let's hope it lasts.

Same old....

Not much happening here this week. More of the same. Sometimes it feels like groundhog day!!

I did take Cassidy to the Kinesiologist this week. This was a particularly interesting experience, I really had no idea what a Kinesiologist did. I had been told by a friend of a friend that they had had success with controlling their ASD child's anxiety with kinesiology and I thought that anything was worth a go.

Cass thoroughly enjoyed the visit and is happily taking her flower essence drops. She is also sleeping with a crystal under her pillow to help her control her fears.

Unfortunately so far she is still getting up all night but she doesn't seem to be as anxious anymore. Before when she got up she would often be quite visibly unsettled, often on the verge of panic. I think now it is habit and she simply cannot go to sleep in her room by herself. She is like a baby who needs to be rocked to sleep.

She is also still sleepwalking, I was hoping the drops might help to bring that under control. Early days yet I guess, maybe it will take a little while to work.

Hopefully.

The house plans are still coming along with pretty much all of the quotes in, all things going well we should meet with the bank next Friday. Our owner builder permit mustn't be too far away but we can can still begin work on the old part of the house if it hasn't come through by the time we sort out the bank side of it.

I am very glad for all the rain that we have been having as I figure the more it rains now, the less it will rain in spring. Interesting logic I know but it gives me hope that we still may have somewhere to live when our lease expires in November. I have completely given up hope that this house will be finished but I really do hope that we will at the very least have a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom completely renovated. And a new kitchen not too far away.

David has got 8 weeks work left on this contract in Newcastle and just quietly there is a possibility his next job might be in Melbourne! Fingers crossed, it has been a long time since he worked close by. We won't know ourselves having him home every morning and night.

Not much on this weekend, more house stuff and I think Tom has got a friend coming over for the weekend so it will be nerf war heaven. I am hoping for a weekend in my trackies and slippers, keeping warm and not having to leave the house.

Westminster Chimes and a Magic Show

My gorgeous Cassidy had her first piano concert last week. She has only been learning piano for a term but she was really keen on being a part of the concert.

My mum and dad came with us to see Cassidy perform and to help keep the toddler terrorist under control!

Cassidy performed Westminster Chimes perfectly. But the poor thing looked so nervous I half expected her to faint on the stage! I was so proud of her for going through with it in light of her obvious nerves. If it was me I would have ran in the other direction as quickly as possible!

In stark contrast to this was the show that she and her friend put on for us and four of our good friends when we were out for dinner Saturday night. She was full of confidence, pulling rabbits out of hats and performing various other dazzling feats of magic with her little partner in crime Katarina.

They also provided party games such as pin the tail on the donkey and Katarina put on a beautiful performance as a butterfly, complete with flashing antennae!

Later in the night the entertainment turned to Guitar Hero, and I was feeling quite full of myself when I scored really well on "Smells Like Teen Spirit", especially since it was my first time ever!

Unfortunately that seemed to be a fluke as I sucked at everything else!

I'm not sure what is happening this weekend. What I do know is it would have to be damn good to top last weekend's entertainment!

Healthy Lunches and other stuff

Our school has a canteen which opens every day for snacks, but only provides lunch orders on Fridays. So for a long time on the other four days lunches were available from the local milk bar. The problem with this is that the children would order things like sausage rolls and hot dogs for lunch.

Of course this is probably fine if it is only once a week but unfortunately there were quite a few children that were ordering these things every day. The other problem was that often these kids had not had breakfast, and the lunch orders were not delivered until 1.15pm so the kids were absolutely starving and then eating junk.

One of my friends came up with a wonderful, healthy option for those needing or wanting to buy their lunch at school. A group of volunteers take it in turns of putting together a healthy lunchbox for those who order them everyday. In this lunchbox there is two pieces of fruit, a homemade muffin, a packet of sakata rice snacks and a sandwich.

The cost of these lunchboxes is between $4 and $5 which make them really affordable. There is a choice of four different sandwich fillings.

A parent volunteer comes in every morning to put together these lunchboxes. It really doesn't take much time as the sandwiches are already made and frozen as are the muffins. They are delivered to the classrooms by around 10 am so the muffins are defrosted by morning tea time and the sandwiches by lunch time.

The kids have something healthy to eat at snack and lunch. This has got to be beneficial to their learning and behaviour for the day.

Every Tuesday I prepare the lunches for the kids. Abbey comes with me to help. She could probably do it all by herself! She is a wonderful helper and loves to chat to the office ladies, the teachers, the students, the principal, anyone who will pay attention to her really.

After making the lunches she goes to her friend Luke's house for a play. Luke is around the same age as Abbey and she adores him. She is always telling me how Luke is her best friend. She is pretty keen on Luke's mum Heidi too. She took Heidi a flower today and often insists on kissing her when we leave!

It is so nice for her to have a special friend all of her own. I find that because of the large age gap between her and her closest sibling (it's over 5 years) that she often just tags along behind the older kids and their friends. She now loves to tell her brother and sister about her special friend Luke. So cute!

In other news there was no action on the new home front the past weekend, the ground was too wet for the bobcat so hopefully this weekend will work for us. I am beginning to feel slightly nervous as there is so much work to do and we have to move out of the house we are renting in just over three months. I hope our builder works Saturdays!

Also, sadly, my washing machine has broken down. I really do not have much luck with washing machines. I have had two rather expensive, european made front loaders over the last five years and they have broken down 5 times between them. Do these companies not realize that I simply cannot cope if I am not up to date with my washing? Lucky my parents live five doors down from us, although I'm sure Mum has better things to do than my washing.

Hopefully it will be fixed really quickly.

Plans...

Here is the plan for the existing house...



And here are the plans for the extended house...



I can't wait for construction to begin, I've never been very patient!

It's got to be wrong how much I love house plans!

Peeks at our New House

Time for some sneak peeks at what is going to be our dream home. Our keeper. No more moving. Those of you that know me well are chuckling quietly, thinking to yourself "No way that girl is going to stay put." My husband thinks the exact same thing. But I am really feeling like this is our keeper.

This house caught our eye for a few reasons. First of all I love this style of house, the post war cream brick houses. They have high ceilings but not 10 foot like the home we are currently in so you still get the feeling of space, but without the insane heating bill. They are solidly built, have hardwood floors (often under layers of carpet, lino and goodness knows what else!) and double hung timber windows.

Secondly, the block this house is sitting on is huge. Over 1300 metres, that's 1/3 of an acre in the old measurements.

Thirdly the location was right. Within walking distance of the shops, in an area we love and the kid's school is across the road. I won't even have to get out of my PJs to get the kids to school and I will never have to tackle crazy car parking at the school again!

And best of all the price was right, we got it for a bargain!

Here it is.

Sorry about the terrible photo, will try to get a better one another day.

This is the back of the house.

We are going to extend the house out the back.

This is the lounge room, it is going to stay the lounge room after we renovate.

The empty beer case did not come with the house, it's one of our personal touches! The lounge faces the front of the house.

This is the dining room which is going to become the office after renovations. It a a lovely, light room, definitely the best room in the existing house (and no, I am not talking about it from a decor point of view!)

This is the kitchen which will become Tom's bedroom, lucky bugger gets the biggest bedroom in the house!

Here is the bathroom, this is going to be made slightly narrower and then made into a walk in linen closet. Thank goodness, it sure is ugly! And tiny!

This is a sort-of sun room that runs along the back of the house. It is going to become a mud room.

Here are the bedrooms.

The master is going to stay as it is except for knocking out the built in wardrobe. The bedroom next to it will become a walk-in robe and ensuite, and the third bedroom (which I didn't take a photo of) will become a bathroom.

This is the garage. It is also going to be knocked down.

The garage has a couple of rooms attached to it that were used as offices. They are getting knocked over with the garage. Tom thinks this is a great shame, he would like to use one of the rooms for his drum kit/music room and the other as a room for him and his mates to hang out in. Umm, maybe you could use your enormous bedroom?

Here is another shot of the backyard.

So as you can see, it all needs a lot of work, it took my a while to be able to see past what is there,

This weekend work begins with the removal of the tree in the above photo and site preparation. In others words this lovely back yard is about to be transformed into a mud pit.

Will post the plans for the new house later.