Christmas Camping

We had a lovely few days away over Christmas at Deep Creek Conservation Park. We spent 3 nights at the Cobbler Hill camp ground and loved just relaxing. We fell in love with the view towards Kangaroo Island from the Cobbler Hill picnic area so spent the majority of our time either at the campground or the view point! We also did the Blowhole Beach hike which was great fun going down, but hard work coming up!

On our way back home we dropped in at our house for a picnic in the alfesco area - very surreal, but a very nice way to end our trip away.





























































The view from Cobbler Hill

Panorama of Cobbler Hill on CleVR.com

Our street!

Someone asked me yesterday what creative activity I would be doing this weekend... well, I've just discovered a site called CleVR that very kindly helps me to display panoramic photos...

This is my first attempt so please excuse its 'roughness'! It gives you the general idea though!

It's Wall-some!

"The bricklayers have started on site and might even be working some of the days throughout the Christmas break..." were the words we received in our weekly update on Wednesday (of course we thought, yes we know.. we saw him there last Sunday).

Apparently we are one of the lucky few who are going to have brickies on site over the Christmas break so I am really hoping to reach 'lock up' stage soon in the new year. That will of course mean another BIG bill but at least it means they'll start on the internal stuff.

It was great to see today that the brickies had been working hard. We were a little frustrated that our brick work seems to be taking forever compared to everyone else but we've modestly put it down to our house being such a beast.

Kissing men in our living room?... Yeah!

We have decided not to buy each other Christmas presents this year but to instead treat ourselves to a canvas print for the new house. When we visited Berlin a few years ago we were really impressed with the remnants of the Berlin Wall, and were particularly taken with a photograph we took...

Today the canvas was delivered and we opened it with great excitement. It was meant to wait for the new house but we love it so much it has gone straight up on the wall of our rental!































I can hear you saying 'what a bizarre image, what's with the two men kissing?', well here is a little social history taken from http://litestraboen.blogspot.com/2007/12/history-of-kiss.html...

History of a kiss

One of the greatest kisses in History is the one that took place between communist leaders Erich Honecker, from East Germany, and Leonid Brezhnev, from Soviet Union, during the 30th Anniversary of the German Democratic Republic in June 1979. Despite the controversy and ridicule arisen in the West, this was actually a common sign of socialist solidarity, very used since Khrushchev era. It seems, moreover, that both leaders were very keen on kissing. However, this kiss has a greater story.

The good kiss

Honecker had become the leader of German Socialist Party in 1971, after the fall of Walter Ulbricht in disgrace, thanks to Brezhnev support, and in 1976 had become president of the Counsel of State of the GDR, also aided by the latter.

In the new 70's spirit of the "détente", the Soviet Union achieved, in exchange of a relaxation of weapon tensions, that the United states recognised its influence area in Eastern Europe. In this political atmosphere appeared the "Brezhnev Doctrine", that imposed the right for Soviet military intervention in European socialist states. This happened, for instance, in the invasion of Prague by the Warsaw Pact in 1968, with the passivity of Western allies.

Honecker carried out a series of economic reforms in the GDR that lead the country to a so-called "consumption socialism", that resulted in an improvement of the population's standards of living. Apart from that, relationship with its Soviet colleague were a true love story. GDR and the USSR needed each other, the first became the greatest ideological defender of Communism in a time when this system was more than questioned. In turn, the Soviet Union guaranteed the Red Army intervention in case of a popular revolt similar to that in Prague, which was pretty probable considering the number of opponents to Honecker's regime. Finally, the GDR was interested in furthering all possibilities of German reunification, so the "détente" politics was very useful to follow.

Nowadays, a painted version of the "Fraternal Kiss" can be seen on the eastern side of Berlin Wall's ruins, performed by Dmitri Vrubel after the collapse. If one looks to it attentively, one can realise that this kiss is typical of a Greek tragedy, a suffocating kiss, in which lovers get too compromised on each other, despite of knowing that there is no future in that poisoned relationship. Actually, the painting is named "The Kiss of Death", and one can read under it "God, help me to survive this deadly love".

Never mind all that history and deathly kisses between men, my favourite bit of the image is where someone has written 'Happiness is possible if you have the right pen' - someone else obviously loves paperchase as much as me!

Boardies & Beauties

We had a fun party yesterday called 'Boardies & Beauties'. Proudly introducing 'The Boardies'...

Bricktastic!

After our disappointing visit last week I was adamant that I didn't want to go to the house today but Dan wanted to, so off we went.

It's been a very wet week here so we didn't expect to see much difference but it was great to see a brick layer hard at work on our first wall when we arrived!














Fingers crossed next week there will be some more walls to take photos of!

Nothing.

Words cannot explain how disappointed I was to arrive at our building site this morning only to discover nothing had changed! They'd maybe finished off a few bits and bobs but nothing even worth taking a a photograph of...

So instead of an amazing brickwork photograph, or a photo of me with the front door, instead the best I can come up with is a photograph of the delicious D'Arenberg 2007 The Hermit Crab (Viognier) that we consumed at the fab new Three Corks wine bar in Semaphore earlier this evening...

We saw this last night...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1991283.ece

We have a roof!

And to keep things spicy, I think I will use this post to show you how my world has changed since purchasing a polarizing filter for my camera...

Without the polarizer...












With the polarizer...












Notice how the reflection from the roof disappears when the polarizer is used!

Oh, it's just all toooooo exciting!

Sometimes we gotta go walkabout...

I know you're all tuning in to check the progress on the house build but we haven't been so can't give you an update!

Instead I'm going to tell you that we just had a fabulous weekend in the Flinders Ranges. Highlights included lunch at the Prairie Hotel, Parachilna (population of 5); staying at Wilpena Pound Resort; climbing Mount Ohlssen Bagge; and a fantastic drive through Brachina Gorge.

I can't wait to see the new Australia film and heard about the new adverts Baz Luhrmann had made for Tourism Australia. I googled them on Sunday evening when we returned and thought "yes, I really went walkabout...!" Dan and I have found ourselves dreaming of the Flinders Ranges since our return and the Aboriginal child in the advert even visited me in the night on Sunday night - honest!



Here's some random photos from our trip -

We have gutters!

BROWN PM is just not the same..

You can't quite imagine 'Hello, i'm Gordon'. Even the Australian Prime Minister is cool and laid back.

The big plan...

We've received our weekly email update for this week and it was a bit of a 'copy and paste' effort from last weeks update... The good thing is that the builders are communicating with us really well, the bad news is things sound like they've slowed up a bit... watch this space - we'll go and have a look ourselves tomorrow and see what's new.

In the mean time, I've realised we haven't put any plans on here about what we're actually building! Here goes...

This is the plan for the front aspect of the house -









This is the floor plan -













Plan of the development (we're lot 27)

Proudly introducing...

...our brick colour! Coming to a house near you soon!














And... our bedroom frame and window!

Our first visitors (other than the centipede...)

It was very exciting on Sunday to show our first visitors around our 'frame' - Taryn, Mark, Nigel & Anne-Marie. Even nicer that we'd all had a lovely Sunday arvo lunch at Red Poles in McLaren Vale.

We look forward to many more visitors in the future! We'll get that spare room ready! (we'll even arrange for some bricks)

Roof and windows!

Enough said.

They're making good progress on the frame...

More frame!

Popped down last night to check on progress! As expected we had more frame and it was great to finally be able to see the rooms laid out!

We marvel every time we visit at how sometimes it feels small and other times it feels huge! There were some lovely surprises seeing our room sizes - I particularly like the living area and formal lounge as it all feels very spacious. It was also nice to see the size of the walk in wardrobe and plan our super-organised clothes! (?)

Here's some photos from our mobile phones:

Snakes & Ladders

Today has been a lovely hot day, with our car thermometer reaching 33c. I love days like today because it makes everywhere have that 'foreign' feel which reminds me how I'm living on the other side of the world to where I'm from! Ooo, you can't beat that migrant feeling!

So this morning we set off on our usual round trip to see how our build is progressing. We have found a new route that we have called the 'airport route' which basically means that it'll be the route we take through McLaren Vale when visitors arrive to take them to our house because there are some stunning vineyard views that really show off the area we've chosen to live in! We've also named it the 'guaranteed kangaroo sighting' route as well because we've discovered at twilight heaps of kangaroos come out to play in some of the fields! (and occasionally venture on to the road, eek)

Today however, we have upgraded the name of the 'guaranteed kangaroo sighting' route to be the 'guaranteed Australian wildlife sighting' route because we saw our first SA snake! It was just sitting (do snakes sit?!) in the road but scarpered (if snakes scarper?!) as we approached. I felt like I was at one of those drive through safari parks!

I didn't take this pic, but it was like this -
















We presume it was a brown snake (because it was brown) and these snakes are "considered to be one of the most dangerous snakes in the country; even young snakes are capable of delivering a fatal envenomation to a human." (thanks Wikipedia) Eeek.

Anyway, back to the purpose of the blog update. We were ecstatic to discover that the carpenters had been on site and begun putting our frame up! Yet again we realised just how big our house is (hehe) and did a few little dances of joy. The site is such a mess at the moment and I'm feeling bad because they've delivered our entire roof but put it bang in front of next door. Oooo, I'd be annoyed if someone did that to our house as it'd mess up the photos!

I started my photography course last week and one of the things we talked briefly about was photographers capturing the moment where something happens that just makes it a fantastic photo. There wasn't a lot of action happening on site (other than those little dances of joy) but I was practising ISO and shutter speeds and if I were to pick a photo that summed up this visit it would be this one - blue sky, sunshine and frame!













But as I'm not a pro (just yet) here are a few more pics to help explain!

A Septic Tank!

We had a drive down to the house this evening after work to see if anything had happened over the last week.

Last weeks site update was "...the frame carpenters are likely to start on site in about a week or so as they needs to finish of the current site they is working on first." so we didn't expect to see any dramatic changes.

We were really excited however to see that the 'underground services' have been put in, including our septic tank. The concrete top of the tank is in the front garden and bang in line with our front door... Another slight moment of panic but nothing too worrying. The mound of earth at the front of the house has now been cleared so it looks great.

There are only a few empty blocks of land left now. It's really exciting there at the moment with everyone at very similar stages of their build.

Will pop down again at the weekend to get some latest photos! I started a photography course this week so watch the photos improve over the next 9 weeks!

By the way, we were gutted this week to learn that the $7000 first home owners grant that we received has been increased to $21000 for the next year as part of a plan by the Government to boost the economy as part of their 'Economic Security Strategy'! Just missed out on that one!

Greetings home watchers

Apologies for the delay in the update, just been sooooo busy watching the changes to the land that we have not had time to update the blog.

As you can see from the photos things have moved on quite dramatically. We now have 293 sqm of concrete, with some metal and plastic sheeting. It seems a bit like Blue Peter, but on a larger scale, still expecting them to bring out the double sided tape to hold everything up.

It has taken over two weeks, but we have now finally reached the end of the first stage and have the invoice to prove it.

There have been a few moments of ‘Arghh’, such as when we saw the space that is down each side of the house which you can just about fit an anorexic model down. However, we have soon got over that as we have found an anorexic rainwater tank and digger if we need to get them into the back garden.

Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours. Luckily we seem to have two very good neighbours at the moment. Dragon on the right and Travis on the left, and both have been nice and interesting fellows.

The Mansion in the Flat is finally taking place and we are very excited, especially as our house takes 2 seconds longer to run the length of than anyone elses.

So, keep posted, Beck’s is updating the blog next so it should be a little quicker in coming!

Peace out, we are off to the races this weekend to see if we can win enough money for a front door.

It's all go!

"Your site update for this week is that the site works started yesterday, good news so now you can crack open the champagne" were the words we received in our email update this week...

Our last visit to 'the land' a week and a half ago was a little disappointing as nothing had really changed since our previous visit so we were prepared this week for further disappointment, despite the encouraging email from the builder.

However, we couldn't have been more wrong! We turned into our street and saw in front of us a buzz of activity! There was a real life person actually working on our land! He'd been there since Thursday (I presume he'd gone home in between, though the portaloo now makes camping possible!) and the work he'd done was amazing - he'd dug all of the trenches for our house with his little digger.

We were in shock at suddenly seeing some proper action and we were soooo excited! Seeing the house shape was awesome and I reckon was even better than the 4 peg moment (though we think that was significant in its own right!). We were also really pleased with the size of our back garden now that we can see it properly.

We even got to meet our next door neighbours who had come to mow their weeds. They are still waiting for planning approval from the Council and were very nice about the mounds of earth our builders had put on their land!

9 houses have now started being built and another site was being worked on whilst we were there too.

So the next step will be the pouring of the slab... that's when our first payment is due to the builder so whilst it'll be a very exciting moment it'll also be crunch time!

Some photos of 'the best trip to the land EVER'...

It's all go!












Finally able to see the size of our garden













Imaginary dining in the alfresco area