New House!

As promise, here are photographs of our new house. We're slowly still putting things together so there is a bit of a mess but I figured people would want to see photos sooner rather than later. So here we go, a tour of my house, starting with my boys relaxing on the couch:

Lounge room from the entry hall, the dining room is through the opening on the right

Our bedroom with it's lovely feature wall finished. The other walls are a light sand colour that matches the bedspread. Also, opposite the bed is a wall of closets that have mirrored doors.

My office, those bookshelves were already there which was great because all I had to do was paint and move in.

Family room/kitchen from the end of the family room, the sliding doors on the right go out into our backyard which is paved, has a two car garage and is where our driveway is.

Family room/kitchen from the dining room door, the door on the far right side leads down to the bedrooms, my office and the bathroom.

From our garage, you can see the sliding door where we enter the house, take a look at this earlier blog to see how much more open this is now that we've removed all the sails from the property. View of our deck, again without the sails. The house just looks so much brighter now.

The next step will be to move the fence so that we can have a nice big green yard as well to relax and garden in.

Coming Soon

Well this past weekend Andrew and I finally moved into our new house, big yay! The weekend was full of hard work moving all the furniture and boxes, trying to unpack (so far just the kitchen, lounge and family room are together), trying to stop the puppy from peeing on things, eating packing material and getting stuck in small spaces. We also had to buy a new fridge, which is big and amazing compared to our old one which has become the party fridge in the garage.

Andrew and his dad spent most of the time cutting away all the shade clothe from overhead, it makes such a difference, we can see so much sky now when we go outside, they even trimmed some of the planters which has made the backyard seem so much bigger now that the garden isn't taken over the space.

I managed to paint my office and desk and get 3 walls done in our bedroom, we're going to do the feature wall this weekend so we can finally move into our bedroom and unpack all our clothes, as of now they are strewn about the spare bedroom where we're set-up at the moment.

Coopa is absolutely loving the new house, he just runs all over the place happy as can be. The guy who lived there before had dogs too but didn't want them going on the grass so the backyard is all paved with even the planters fenced in. The big problem with this is that for the first day Coopa couldn't find a place to go to the bathroom because he kept looking for grass. Finally we kicked the end off one of the planters and he now trots happily in there to go to the bathroom, a fairly smart dog I'd say.

He loves to be with us at all times and has a great time when we bring him into the lounge with us in the evenings so he can nap while we watch a movie or tv. Oh, and speaking of movies and tv, the old owner left us his very flash surround sound and dvd player, this player is so good that it plays my American dvds (freakin sweet) which means that Andrew and I had to curl up the other night and watch Star Trek, because how can you pass that up with movie theatre quality surround sound.

So the bit that will be coming soon is the photographs, we're going to get everything put away and straightened into its place this weekend so I can take some photos to show you all how awesome our place looks now that it's all ours. In the mean time, if you're in need of some photographs I've started a new blog to try and keep my creative juices flowing and force myself to take photographs now that I'm out of uni. So check it out and keep an eye on my work as I try some bizarre things over the next few months: http://beautifullyunexpected.blogspot.com/

I shall call him Squishie, and he shall be mine, and he shall be my Squishie

Yesterday we picked up our puppy and he is absolutely adorable and loves us so much already. He's been fairly good so far, only going in the house twice, and once was in the night while we were sleeping but he's starting to get good about going outside. He was so timid when we first got him but it didn't long before he was crawling all over us and wanting to play.

As this is the first puppy for both of us, Andrew has had dogs before but never a puppy, we took tons of pictures and thought we'd share them with you, so enjoy the wonder that is Coopa.







That's not actually how his face is, he just got his lip caught on his tooth and Andrew thought it was cute because it looked like he was snarling.

So that is our puppy, I hope you guys like him. There will be plenty more photos of him over the next, oh, 12-16 years :)

Hit 'em up!

This is just a quick note to finally explain the mystery that is 2-Up (which apparently is also a nice Australian wine according to Jess). So, the game. Think of the stock market with everyone running around waving pieces of paper, someone yelling 'Sell! Sell! Sell!' and someone else yelling 'Buy! Buy! Buy!' and when they find that they find each other they trade. Well, this is similar, except everyone has been drinking, and instead of yelling 'buy' and 'sell' people are yelling 'heads' and 'tails' along with how much money they want to bet. If someone is yelling '$20 on head' they will find in the crowd someone else who is yelling '$20 on tails'. At this point the person who is betting tails will hold on to the money until the results are in.

This yelling goes on in one room, there are three tables set up to form a square that is open on one side, this is where the officials are and where the coins will be thrown. Once most of the bets have been made people start yelling 'Hit 'em up' (refering to the coins). A person enters the middle of the square with a flat stick that has 3 coins on it, this person then uses the stick to throw the 3 coins up in the air above their head. Since there are 3 coins there will always be a definitive winner, either heads or tails, and then the winner gets the money....and that's it.

It's such a simple game but people get right into and get very excited. You're only allowed to play on ANZAC Day so people take full advantage, I've even bet a bit myself. I came out even so I feel I did pretty well, Kate won about $100 so we started to just bet with her since she seemed to be on a streak. I don't think it's something you can really understand until you've done it because I know I was quite skeptical before I tried but it was a blast.

Besides ANZAC Day we haven't had anything exciting going on. We're moving out of our townhouse this weekend to live with Andrew's parents for a week before we can move into our house. Last night we had our first work social event that I organised with the help of Sam, one of the guys at work. We all met at a local bowling alley and played a few games while eating burgers and having some beer. Afterwords some of us went to this great ice cream shop for dessert, it was a lot of fun and I think everyone had a really good time.....and that is all for now so I'm off to do more work, oh, except for...we got a puppy :)

We haven't picked him up yet but we get him tomorrow afternoon. He's so cute and tiny. His name is Coopa (that's how Andrew spells it and pronounces it although I say Cooper and it sounds the same). He is almost 8 weeks old, a mix better kelpie, bull arab, pit bull and white pointer, two from his mom and two from his dad I just don't know which two go to which parent. I'll be sure to post pictures of him as soon as we pick him up because I want everyone to see how absolutely adorable my puppy is.

Oh, and, I have a photograph on this magazine's website, they are an academic art magazine that I'm actually trying to get an article published in. Here's the link: Afterimage
Mine is on the first page, bottom row, second from the right. Enjoy!