the big kahuna! :)

from a travel perspective, shannon and i headed up camping to a place called kahuna for the melbourne cup long week.  we spent three days relaxing, reading magazines, swimming and sunning ourselves next to the river.  i've never done so little but it was a very restful and much needed break for both of us!

we didn't finish the bathroom until mid-october with an entire weekend devoted to priming, painting and doing the trim.  whilst it looks great, if i'm to be completely honest, it's still not finished!  the grout applied by the tiler hasn't dried or sealed correctly and so he's having to come back and re-grout the entire floor L   and the toilet we bought had a leak which caused staining and water damage in our ceiling on the floor below.  we're dealing with the insurance company which is taking some time!

otherwise, we've been doing traditional life stuff and getting ourselves ready for the christmas break!  we've bought all our presents and they're wrapped under the tree which is awesome as the shops are ridiculously busy with people and i don't handle the madness very well J  we also celebrated our first year anniversary at the new house – it's hard to believe that a year has passed already!  it's true what they say – time speeds up as we age :) 

we're heading on a driving  holiday after christmas, driving 18+ hours to queensland for 11 days which i'm excited and not excited about…  that many hours in the car sounds very daunting but it'll hopefully not be too painful!

wishing everyone a happy and healthy christmas and all the best for 2015!

hugs,

s  

home transformation

The new bathroom!!

my dad and his partner, gail, came to visit for august and september which kept us fairly busy with tourist-like activities and home repairs J  i took a few days off when they landed so that i could show them around Melbourne and we headed along the great ocean road for some gorgeous coastal views! it was probably best that i offered to drive as dad spent significant time snapping pictures and ogling the scenery ;)  unfortunately, the weather wasn't great on the second day so we had poor visibility for some of the rock formations around the twelve apostles.  among other highlights, we headed up to the yarra valley to check out a local zoo filled with native animals, went penguin watching and visited a miniature train show. 

in addition to sight-seeing, we spent some time on home repairs.  shannon and i wanted to redo our bathroom upstairs as the shower was narrow and uncomfortable to shower in so dad & I spent a couple of days demolishing it which i really enjoyed!  it was much quicker demolishing it than I has been putting it back together :)  (the bathroom is now a bright green!) we also build some fantastic garden beds for the front yard, stained them and the fences and built sliding pantry drawers which have effectively tripled our storage space!  all up, it was a pretty busy two months, even more so for them as they did heaps of traveling too! 

the weather's starting to warm up and we've had some ridiculously warm days already!  the garden's starting to grow in earnest – we've got broccoli, tomatoes, capsicum, carrots, beans and squashes growing, along with a couple of flowering plants – i'm looking forward to eating some of the fruits of my labour.

take care!

hugs,

s