Late as usual...

Michelle and I are over in NZ again for another wedding, this time my brother's! We are spending 3 days in Wellington, 3 in Auckland, then a couple in Kaitaia for the wedding before flying out from Auckland next Monday. Michelle has been blogging pretty consistently so I suggest you check it out.

Have been taking heaps of photos as usual and may even get some off the camera tonight at Dan's.

Long time no see...

Well, its been a while since the last update and a few things have happened! The internet was finally connected and normal life could resume, but it took me an age to find all the cables and get my computer set up. Nevertheless we have returned to the digital age!

The house is slowly coming together. We've been chipping away at it each night, cleaning up a little at a time, even though it dooesn't feel like we've made too much progress!


Yes Brendan, that is the room you will be sleeping in! We've had our alarm and foxtel installed, as well as getting the aircon serviced.


We also got a quote for a better aircon system... it seemed that every second day there was someone else on the roof! Everything is up and running now though, and in that respect the move was pretty painless. So where to next?


Off to Bunnings! The old TV cabinet was too long to fit in the space under the stairs, so a bit of DIY and a bit of elbow grease later and the unit was precisely 22cm shorter and now fits beautifully!

Our next big adventure is only a few weeks away, as Michelle and I are heading of to NZ again for my brother Greg's wedding. We are going to visit Wellington, Auckland and Kaitaia... a nice regression there! Michelle's last day at work is the day before we fly out, and 3 days after we return Brendan is coming over for the Ashes. Its gonna be a bit of a hectic time right up until Christmas it seems (work is pretty busy too!) but its better than having nothing to do!


Michelle liked this billboard for some reason.... 

Still no internet

Michelle and I are fully moved into our new home now. The place looks like a bomb site, however, and its going to be a little while until we get everything settled in. The final inspection of our old place happens today and we spent all last night steam cleaning the carpet (I also managed to completely soak my shoes and jeans!).

The new place is cool and I can't wait to get internet at home so I can post some pics. We are going to be doing a bit more DIY to get some more storage, so that should be fun. There is a kitchen design competition on at Ikea at the moment where you can win a $5000 kitchen and we are keen to enter. That would certainly help the renovation budget!

Otherwise, not too much to report.... just hanging out for that itnernet!

No Internet and No Beer Make Philip.... something something

Argh! Telstra disconnected our ADSL early in preparation for our move. Gee thanks guys, nice of you to let us know. So that means no internet at home for a few weeks. Madness!

Moving and Shaking

After getting the keys on Friday we were around at our new house again on Saturday to get quotes for an alarm system. It was also the perfect opportunity for some DIY. The first casualty?


You guessed it! The saloon doors on the kitchen just had to go! This does mean that our cowboy-themed housewarming is now unlikely to go ahead, but I am thinking thats a good thing.


Unfortunately I didn't take any after photos! I am going to blame the fact that it was my first DIY and I was feeling so giddy with success that the camera slipped my mind... yes, that sounds plausible. You will have to take my word for it when I say it is a vast improvement!

But I was not content with just the DIY! Consider the following photographic evidence...


Yes, that is me behind the wheel of a car! What you cannot see from this angle is Michelle panicking in the passenger seat... 

Its Official!

The settlement went smoothly and Michelle and I picked up the keys to our place today. We are now offically home owners! We sat down with the agent after we got the keys and had a good talk about all things strata and house related. She was quite curious as to how we came up with our final price as apparently we just scraped over the line!

Next on the agenda is to get a security system installed. We had a quote today and are getting some more tomorrow. We are also having an open home at our old flat to try and get a new tenant in ASAP. Because we are breaking our lease we have to pay rent up until either the lease expires or a new tenant is found. Its a nice place, though, so we don't anticipate any problems getting someone else in. Its going to be sad in a way though. We have both been here for quite some time and there are a lot of memories (good and bad). Its going to be great to finally have a place that is totally ours though. No more paying off someone else's mortgage!

Oh and I promised to give a shout out to Brendan, my readership of one! Can't wait til the Ashes bro!

Labour Day SA

Monday was a holiday here in South Australia. Michelle and I took a bit of a road trip out to the Aldinga Eco Arts Village Market Day. It is a self-sufficient community that aims to have zero impact on the eco-system. Kinda cool! We looked around a bit... Michelle bought a cactus!


We then headed out to the beach nearby. It was a beautiful sunny day here. Summer is almost upon us...




I even took the opportunity to skip a few stones! Wow, what a day!

...ahem...

We take possession of our house this Friday and have already organised some work to be done over the next week. We are going to be moving in over the following 2 weeks, so have started our packing mission. We are working through one room a night. Even so, it is proving painful... especially since Michelle bought me We ♥ Katamari for my birthday and it is stupendously addictive! 

Argh!

My PC crashed after typing in a mammoth blog entry detailing our busy weekend and next few weeks... I might feel inspired to try again tomorow, but until then I've resigned myself to posting from Michelle's iMac. Ho hum.

House Pics

 
I'm not sure if too many people saw them last time so I uploaded our house pics to flickr. Either click here or on the photo above to check out our new place!

Photos from the NZ Trip

As promised some photos of our recent trip to NZ. Either click here or on the pic above to be taken to see more! Looking through them reminded me of just how many people we saw in such a short space of time. It also reminds me how tired I must have been as I didn't take anywhere near as many photos as usual!

Michelle has a pretty good write-up of the trip over on her blog, so I suggest you check it out. Once again, click here or the link on the right.

To Mum and Dad, I am still working through the 500+ plus photos we (I?) took when you guys were over, but I'll have them ready soon, I promise! 

We're Back!

What a trip! It was a whirlwind as we'd expected, and we were both pretty tired by the end. I am still trying to recover from it! I'll post more later, but in brief; we caught up with a bunch of people at Dan's, the wedding was great and the reception was fun, we visited both Jim and Omi (my grandparents), went up the sky tower, out to a sex shop in Panmure (to visit Tama!) and out for brunch in Ellerslie!

The flight back to Sydney was delayed by 2 hours, though, and by that stage both Michelle and I were getting seriously tired and grumpy...

Nevertheless, it was an good trip and it was awesome to catch up with everyone again.

We are now officially in debt!

We both got this texted to us today! Hooray! Now things can really get going. We are making lists of things we need to do before, during and after settlement. There are so many things to move and organise, and we have a trip to NZ squeezed in there too...

Speaking of which, we are flying in on Friday. We are hoping to catch up with pretty much everybody! Dan has been awesome in offering to pick us up and put us up. He is suggesting a night of Xbox360 revelry and it is sounding mighty damn tempting!

Michelle has never been to NZ before, so its going to be fun to see her reaction to things. Its really not that different from Australia (or vice versa, depending on your frame of reference), so it will be interesting to see what differences she picks up on.

Well, we are off to dinner now. My camera was out of battery so I only just got the pics off the camera, so the show pics will have to wait until the next update.... I promise! 

Two steps forward, one step back

There was a minor hiccup with our house purchase today as our conveyancer spotted an error in our Form 1. This mean we had to have it reissued and go through the cooling off all over again! This isn't such a bad thing, though, and it is good that the error was spotted. It also justifies our decision to use an independent conveyancer and not the same one as the vendor (as our agent recommended!).

So after that minor hassle we both got text messages saying that our loan has been conditionally approved! Apparently the valuer for the bank thought we got a good deal on the place so that is cool! I tend to flip-flop between thinking we got a good deal and thinking we paid too much, so its good to get an independent opinion.

Oh, and Michelle scored some media passes to the Adelaide Show, so expect some pics!

Last Morning in Dadelaide

This morning Dad and I went out for one last coffee on Rundle Mall. It also allowed me to take a few last minute photos of Dad the tourist. I tried to get my camera out for a photo as he left but the taxi driver whisked him away super fast! He had no consideration for the emotion of the moment!

Michelle and I got our building and pest inspections completed today and things mostly look good. The only issues are ones that are covered by the strata fees, which is good news. Most of them are in the process of being resolved so we'll ride the strata management until they are done!

Other than that, we managed to catch Lady in the Water at the movies. It was quite fun! I would recommend it to anyone who likes fairy tales :) 

Mini-golf-tastic!

More golf, but this time its of the mini variety. We draggeed Michelle along this time and despite getting 3 holes-in-one I managed to lose to both Dad and Michelle by 1 stroke! Dad is heading home tomorrow so we are going out to curry tonight so that he has a nice comfortable flight home...

Michelle and I have received a copy of the contract signed by the vendor so the cooling off period has officially begun. Michelle's uncle (a civil engineer!) looked through the place on the weekend and gave it his stamp of approval. Everything is coming up Milhouse. 

Golf-tastic!

I managed to drag Dad out for a round of golf today. Dad started with a hiss and a roar but faded fast. The hill on the second hole proved his undoing and I stormed to the lead. Despite a few hiccups along the way I managed to overcome Dad's late challenge and win! On top of that, we got the clubs back into the clubhouse with a minute to spare!

In more serious news, Michelle and I have applied for our home loan and are awaiting the completed contract to be delivered. Everything is happening at a hectic pace, although I am told that it will slow down until settlement. I can't wait to move into our own place :)

And in more whirlwind news, Michelle and I have a 3 day holiday in NZ coming up in 2 weeks! Crazy! 

One step closer

We have just come back from signing the contract to purchase the property. Phew! That thing was like a million pages! My brain hurts now from all the info. Now all we have to do is talk to our mortgage broker, get a conveyancer, get a building inspection, get a termite inspection, show Michelle's family through, get the Form 1, wait out the cooling off period, pay the deposit, finalise a mortgage and do the handover on the settlement date!

Easy!

It Lives!

Well whaddaya know? I had a blog all along. Now seems as good a time as any to get this thing going...

Michelle and I just had our offer accepted to buy a property in Black Forest here in Adelaide! You can check the place out online right here.

This is our first foray into the wild world of property development so we were looking for a nice easy place to start. Hopefully this place fits the bill!

More details will most definitely follow.

The start of something big

I have decided to join the ranks of the bloggers. All I need now is an internet connection at home! Eventually you can expect to see all sorts of goodies appearing on this site. For now, though, its a barren wasteland.