It's been so long since my last blog entry, there's so much to update you all on!
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| Welcome to our home |
I picked up the the keys on Thursday 24 November at 1pm at the Celebration Homes office, then picked Warren up from the airport. We then drove back to our house to put light globes in. Ben from Jims Paving (also previous neighbour at Redcliffe) had also finished off the paving to the driveway. He said it will be ready to drive onto by Saturday. There were also a couple of little things that Glen our Site Supervisor was coming back to do on Monday 28 November. Theses were door jams, towel rain for the ensuite, and replace missing bayonette on gas cooktop. It's really good to have Warren home for all the tradies to come around... that way I don't miss out on work!
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| Ensuite Bathroom |
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| Master Bedroom |
We moved out of Beckenham in our new home on Saturday 26 November 2011. We hired a Budget truck from Burswood, which Dad picked up and drove. An 8 tonner... and it was a real bitch to drive apparently..... especially when the freeway is at a stop start battle due to a three car pile up!!
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| Kitchen |
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| Living Room |
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| Kitchen looking out to Living Room |
It took about 4 hours to pack up the truck, cars and utes and drive down. Once we arrived, the BBQ was unloaded first, and I was on BBQ duties getting lunch ready. Sangas! Joe and his daughter Paige met us at our house to help us unpack. Paige was my little BBQ right hand girl... she loves cooking apparently! The unpacking was quite amazing... it was all finished in about an hour! Dad also brought over our early Christmas present of a Hills Washing Line for around the side of the house. He only got to half install it due to the box not including the right screw plugs as promised! As long as the holes were drilled, we could finish off the installation anyway. Everyone left around 2-2:30pm and we laid down for a quick nap before tackling some unpacking of boxes.
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| Dining Room |
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| Outdoor Alfresco |
Warren finished installing the clothesline and Ben had finished the paving by I think Tuesday29 November.... from memory. We were sleeping in our new bedroom... but there was one problem.... getting woken up at 4:45am! Even though we have blinds, the morning sun blares onto our bedroom window and finds its way through the cracks to wake us up! There was another expense - blockout curtains. I knew Spotlight sold curtains and all their accessories fairly cheap. So we went to Cockburn South Central Spotlight on Monday just before they closed. They had a curtain we like, but unfortunately, not in the size we needed. They also had the accessories we needed, but not all of them. Bunnings had the curtain accessories at pretty steep prices, we were quite shocked. Luckily Curtain Wonderland is a 1min walk from Spotlight in Cockburn South Central, so we were able to purchase atleast some Blockout Curtrains, which are fairly expensive too! $49.95 per side, so all up $99.90 So it ended up being that I'd have to go to another Spotlight after work on Tuesday. We brought home the curtains, but they looked as if we were trying to match the curtains to the carpet, so on Tuesday I swapped these around for some silvery gray Blockout Curtains which suit the bedroom really well.
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| Laundry side of house with clothesline |
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| Side of house with gate Warren built |
At this point, our pets Lilly and Chester, were still at Beckenham as we didn't have a side gate. Warren bought all the timber, hinges, latches etc and started building the gate on Thursday, ready for me to bring the pets over after work on Thursday 1st December. Lilly isn't going to enjoy the next two weeks one bit! She has to stay inside the house for two weeks to get her bearings, and we have to deal with kitty litter tray once more! The gate looks fantastic... just needs a lick of paint now. We are going to paint it the same colour as the Garage, the Colourbond 'Surfmist' colour.
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| Chester |
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| Chester in the sand looking thoughtful |
It was towards the end of this week that Landscape Elements came around to install the front kerbing ready for next weeks lawn, mulch and gardenning. There was a couple of mistakes, but they came back to fix it, and promised more plants to fill up a garden bed which was meant to be quite skinny. All in all, the front yard is slowly taking shape!
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| Gate |
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| Gate |
I wanted to put up the Christmas Tree and some of the decorations up on the 1st December, but was helping Warren install the gate. So we both got around to putting up our Christmas Tree and the decorations on Saturday 3rd December. It looks so fantastic, I want visitors to come around now! Funny I should think that, because the following day, we had 5 lots of visitors pop over. I was only anticipating 2 lots, so I bought cake. But lucky I bought 2 cakes! At around 5:30pm, I put in a small Pork Roast for 3 (leftovers for lunch) using our new oven. As it was the first time using this oven, I had to refer to the instruction manual! It ended up being a yummy roast, even if the crackle took a while longer than it usually does.
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| Makings of the gate |
On Saturday 3rd December we also went to a couple of stone places in Success. Archistone ended up have a fantastic deal, 99cent limestone bricks. We ended up ordering two pallets of 100 bricks and getting them deliverd for an extra $110. It's deffinately not ALL the bricks we need, but it's a start. These are going to be used to the back of the garden beds and also as the foundation to the back of the garden bed. The limestone bricks will also end up being the garden bed for the six Lilly Pilly's we're getting. The lilly pilly's are from my parents holiday home,
Centro Perth Short Stay, and are almost fully developed. These will go along the fence line, so when you look out of the living room and study, you see green. As the bricks were delivered on the front yard on the sand, we had to move them before Thursday 6th December due to Landscape Elements coming out to finish off the lawn and garden beds. 3 tonnes of bricks were moved... one at a time!
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| Lilly Pilly's |
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| Close up of Lilly Pilly's |
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| Front yard after landscaping |
And lastly, we've taken off the gate and started painting it. We also moved the Mailbox once more to it's final destination yesterday after work. Landscape Elements finished off our front yard on Thursday 8th December and it's looking pretty good. I quite like the Chinese Tallow tree we got, a good size too. They will have to come back with extra plants and mulch however... hopefully before the end of today.
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| Sunset |
