Welcome to Chez K! May 22, 2009
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My UK rellies arrived today for a holiday. They’re staying with us. Mostly I suspect they are coming to see Princess Evie though!! The sofas arrived today (except the large lounge sofa), just in time as we needed one of the sofa beds for the guests to sleep on! So all beds made, all towels in bathrooms, house clean and spick and span, baby bathed and dog showered! So, all these rellies come to visit Australia and looking for better weather and hubby goes to pick them up from the airport and it’s absolutely pouring with rain like a monsoon! Typical.
Playgroup May 19, 2009
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So now that we’re settled in our new place I thought I would venture out of the house with baby Evie. We went to the playgroup at our local church. We walked down to the church as it was a nice day and I put Evie in her buggy. Got there are it was a bit scary as everyone else seemed to know everyone else already and I didn’t know where/what I was supposed to go/do. So I just picked up Evie and put her in amongst some other babies about the same size as her. Made some new little friendies for Evie and I got to talk to other adults!! Hurray. They’re very friendly and Evie had a ball playing with all the toys and interacting (even trying to feed other babies bits of her morning break snacks). Only problem is they are fully subscribed and have no more spaces. So I’ve got Evie on the waiting list and hopefully she’ll be able to join next term. So in the meantime I think I may have to find an alternative one to go to.
Evie’s Adventures with Food! May 16, 2009
Posted by graciek in Evie, Going Out, Life in General.Tags: Hurstville
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After swimming with Evie this morning (if you are my friends on facebook you would be able to see the photos of the drowned water rat!!!) we met up with my brother and went into Hurstville for a spot of lunch and wandering around the new locality. We stopped at Sushi Train in Hurstville. Evie loved watching all the colourful plates of sushi going by on the conveyor belt. [Note to self: do not put Evie into the booth such that she is closer to the conveyor belt as she likes to grab things off and eat them]. I’m pretty sure babies aren’t supposed to eat sushi, but she loved it (even the raw salmon she surreptisciously stole from our plates when we weren’t looking). She liked the fish roe and the crunchy chewy seaweedy stuff – such an adventurous pallette for a 10 month old!!!
Hurstville is an interesting place. It almost feels like being in China town there are that many chinese/asian people. Even a lot of the signs in shops are in Chinese so I had no idea what some things were. Lots of good food and good restaurants though. Parking is hellish at the weekend so we walked up from our house (well a slight lie as we drove to the top of the road then we walked – but next time we’ll prob just walk the whole way as it’s only about another 5 min walk).
10 Odd Things about the New House May 14, 2009
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This week’s ten things are ten things that are a bit odd/needed fixing with the new house. Although it may sound like I’m complaining, this is actually only a list of small foibles and we have certainly had worse surprises in previous homes.
1. The phone line: When Optus installed their line for the old owners they cut off the Telstra wire and pushed it under the house
2. Blinds: Almost all the windows have blinds on. They all hang the same way except one which always confuses me as when I go to raise/lower it it always does the opposite to what I expected.
3. Floors: The floors aren’t entirely level. Along with the diagonal carpet/tile edging it really does feel like you are walking at an angle. That part of the house is 50 odd years old.
4. TV: The previous owners had Foxtel cable and no other aerial points in the whole house. There is an antenna on the roof. Hubby managed to get it wired up but the reception is crap (may be something to do with the fact our antenna seems to be pointing at right angles to all our neighbours’ ones and also some of the arms seem to be hanging off)
5. Chimney: Yes we knew the chimney was a bit sqewiff already. It also has an interesting feature of raining. When it’s really tipping down it seems to rain inside the chimney. It’s not pouring down the inside walls but dripping right in the middle of the hearth.
6. Touch up Paint: At various places round the house they have touched up the paint and it’s either a slightly different colour and a different texture. It’s not overly obvious but when you stare at it you can tell.
7. Height chart: In the understairs cupboard there are marks against the wall with names and dates of the previous owner’s kids’ heights. We may leave it and add Evie in. Disappointingly apparently “Craig” was taller than I am when he was 14!! Judging by the names and ages/dates it turns out I am the same age as Craig.
8. Shower drains: There’s no leaking – hurray. The upstairs shower doesn’t quite drain properly. It needs more of a slope towards the drain hole as there is a little bit of standing water.
9. Two way switches: There are none. It’s a bit of a pain when you are going to bed and u have to fall up/down the stairs.
10. Car Modification: The driveway “modifies” your car. Everytime I drive my car up the driveway the first part is just that little bit too steep/bumpy on the crest and it scrapes the plastic moulding at the front of my car. There’s now plenty of white marks on the concrete.
Exploring the Locale May 12, 2009
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My friend Flora popped by this morning for a coffee. Decided to pop out to Allawah to see what shops there were and to find a cafe to chill in for a while. Walked up there and found there is no cafe. How can this be? Sydney, known for it’s cafe culture and there was not one in sight. We had to make do with the bakery instead (v bad on the hips). Came back via the park nearby and played on the swings.
Later I found that if we had walked south towards Carlton we would have found the Ottoman Cafe about 2 mins down the road!! Ha ha, typical!
Hello – I Missed You! May 7, 2009
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Finally 5 months after being packed up in our old house in Loughborough our belongings have been delivered to our new house in Sydney. We shipped our stuff with Doree Bonner (Levetts in Hucknall). Apart from the extraordinarily long time it took (considering they quoted 12-14 weeks and it took more like 21 weeks in the end from door-to-door) we were pleased with the service and nothing was broken or stolen!! Customs decided on Monday that hubby’s compound bow was in fact a compound bow and not a crossbow they finally released our stuff (though it was only inspected on Friday so that’s not the reason it took so long – it was the fact that it only set sail from UK at end of Feb). So 1 hr and 73 boxes were moved into the rumpus and kitchen! Luckily Evie was fast asleep and missed all the commotion and poor Mocha had to be locked into the laundry room (otherwise she’d run out onto the road). The stack of boxes filled our rumpus literally to the ceiling (and we have really high ceilings too). It’s so nice to have our stuff back. It was like Christmas opening all the boxes. After about 10 boxes the novelty wore off and it was more like a chore. Mocha could smell her beanbag in one of the boxes and tried to rip it open via the corner so I got it out for her. She jumped into it straight away and refused to get out of the beanbag all day (except for dinner). Managed to unpack the kitchen today. It’s so nice to have our lovely tableware and also possessing things to cook with (i.e. more than 1 spatula and 1 frying pan). Now to mammoth task of not only unpacking the boxes but also finding places to put all the contents!
First Dinner Party & Bloody Phones May 6, 2009
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We moved into our new place on Monday and had our first mini dinner party tonight. Because we’ve only got 1 frying pan to cook with each person brought along a small dish. It was kinda strange having people over in the midst of all the mayhem/boxes/mess!
Because we were meant to complete on Friday we’ve been paying for the telephone connection since then (even though we actually completed on Mon). On coming in on Monday there was no phone line. Apparently the Telstra engineer came on Tues whilst we were moving things and decreed that the phone line was working fine. Odd, just static on the line here. Checked the phone with the neighbours and the phone isn’t broken. Hubby decided to inspect the wires coming into the house. The previous owners were with Optus and when they changed the Optus engineer just ripped out the Telstra cable and pushed it under the floor board. 10 mins later and one very dusty, grubby hubby and the telephone was sorted out. Joy – now we can get the internet sorted out.
And We’re In!!! May 4, 2009
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Thank you God we completed on our house purchase today. So we now have our own little homestead. Spent the day packing up and driving across South Sydney moving things. It’s amazing – my little Nissan Tiida is actually a TARDIS. Even with Evie and her mehusive car seat in place we managed to move pretty much everything in 2-3 car loads (not including the huge items like hubby’s boat and the BBQ, etc). It feels so good to be in our own place. Now the joyous task of putting things away before the next load of items from the UK gets delivered and we end up drowning in cardboard boxes.
Completion Day … NOT May 1, 2009
Posted by graciek in Life in General, WTF?.add a comment
I am so pissed off! We were supposed to be completing our house purchase today. Their solicitors are completely inept! All was fine and going ahead until 4.30pm yesterday at which point my solicitor called me to tell me that they were stalling because of the vendor’s bank not being ready. Hubby rang up and gave them a piece of his mind – he was livid and shouting that he was going to sue someone (really, he was that irate)!! Now they’ve all known for 5 weeks that settlement was for today – yet they’ve left it till less than a week to go to get various bits of paperwork in place and even worse waited till the day before to tell us it’s not happening. Thankfully we are staying at my brother’s house so a couple of days extra is fine, but could you imagine what we’d have done if we were in a chain and our house being sold completed today and our purchase didn’t- yes we’d be homeless. And in the NSW contract there are only penalties if the settlement is delayed by the purchaser, so the vendor’s side could stall all over the place and not be liable for inconvenience and extra costs incurred. I even asked my solicitor to put something in during our cooling off period that would have something in our favour if they should delay settlement and was told that it was not the done thing so now there’s nothing to fall back on. We’re supposed to be having our furniture delivered tomorrow morning too 
If it doesn’t happen next week then we’ll be paying storage charges and redelivery charges – and who knows about the flipping utilities which are all being changed into our names today! Got another phone call this morning, now their solicitors aren’t telling my solicitors where the cheques are supposed to be going – so if they don’t get that information by 3pm today then Monday’s settlement is off too. I asked my solicitor what happens after that, and whether they can just keep stalling away and there seems to be no recourse for up to 14 days – what a joke. The system here just SUCKS!!
