Hello my pretty!

About a month ago, on a drive home from a Saturday morning shopping trip to Rutherford, I noticed a new 'opening soon' store in Neath (a tiny 'town' on the road from Maitland to Cessnock).

The name rang bells for me 'Vintage In The Valley', I LOVELOVELOVE vintage, when we were house hunting 3 years ago, Mr Mel was convinced he wanted a new build, and somehow we ended up with a Federation beauty built in 1908 (very happy Mel) :).

I've always loved vintage, when I moved out of home all I wanted was some of my Nan's overrun of pots & pans, instead of the brand new set of shiny pots my family bought me.

Don't get me wrong, I was very grateful for the generosity, but the 1 saucepan I took with me from Nan, her 'gravy pot', was and is, some 20 years later, my pride & joy.  It's dented and old looking, but I use it almost daily for cooking.

When I wanted some canisters for the pantry, I went to the Salvo's and found some anodised gems, my Mum & Aunt were horrified that I liked 'all that old stuff'.  And every time I moved (which was fairly often, 18 moves in first 16 years out of home!), they'd ask me I had got rid of 'all that old rubbish'. To which I would always reply, I don't own any rubbish thank you :)

So anyway, back to the point of my post!


On Friday, driving home from our 31 week ultrasound (all good, yay), I noticed that the 'coming soon' sign had changed to 'now open'.

Mr Mel didn't really understand my excited squeal, but agreed to come for a look on the weekend.

So on Sunday morning as soon as Mr Mel had finished his work, I excitedly said 'C'mon let's go hunting', he rolled his eyes and headed to the car.

On the way he said 'you know these places are never cheap', to which I replied 'oh bah humbug, let's just see what they've got, you never know, we're not in Sydney'.

We walked in and sitting on a table near the entrance was this beauty.

For me it was love at first sight, I have had it in my mind since we bought our home in mid 2009 that I would love to have a pendant light hanging over the dining table, to help separate it from the open living/dining area.

Mr Mel's reaction to my delight and sqeal of 'look look', was 'I don't see it'.  I must have looked at him like he was speaking martian, as he laughed and said it again 'I don't see it'.

I replied 'how can you not see it, it's gorgeous, it's perfect for over the dining table, gimme your mobile'.

I took the photo, thinking that I'd have a think about it, and imagine it over the dining table, work on Mr Mel for the next week, then go back and get it.

On the way out I realised I didn't know the price, I asked the lady as I couldn't see a tag.  She found the tag and said 'Oh it's $35', I had to bite my tongue, $35, holy moley.

Mr Mel & I went for a quick bite for lunch, down the road a bit, and I said '$35 is a steal, even if we get it home and hate it I think I could get $50+ for it on Ebay (my recent Ebay exploits!).

That seemed to tip Mr Mel to my way of thinking, we drove back to Vintage In The Valley, and I picked up the piece of gorgeousness, handing over $35.

Next weekend I'm going to head to a local renovation store and see what sort of roses they have to use on the ceiling (we have fancy ceilings and cornices), and change the white cord to something more suitable, plus get a lightbulb for it.

I'm not sure what she's made of yet, it's very light weight, shall do some investigating, it has a pattern of the inside of pearl shell, but not sure, yet!

The next dilemma is how/where we hang it, directly over the dining table is a steel beam covered in plaster board (from a renovation to extend the living area, before we bought).  But I'll let Mr Mel worry about that, I'm happy to look at my precious green lovely anywhere she sits.

I shall post more pics once she finds her new home :)

Till next time,

Burglary - how do they rationalise it?

Having just got news that our neighbour had an attempted burglary overnight (they got into garage, tried to access the house while neighbours were home!), it has got me thinking, how do thieves rationalise their behaviour?

Maybe I am way off base, and there is no rational thought to it, but surely there has to be a moment in every thief's life where they think "why?".

Why do they feel entitled to take what isn't theirs?
Why do they think it is ok to scare the life out of people by breaking into their homes?

I know most theft is for financial reasons, either needing money to survive, or to feed addictions, be it drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc. But I really do wonder if they understand how their victims feel, and if they do, do they care?

I have only had one instance of theft affect me directly (touch wood!), I stupidly left my backpack in my car when living in inner Melbourne, and the next morning the back door was open and backpack was missing, luckily it only contained a few easily replaced books, and some notes.

However what was lost is not the point, the point is the feeling of being violated and having someone pilfer through your things and life.

I can only imagine (I hope to the gods we never have it happen to us!) what people must go through if they have their home ransacked, even moreso if they are home when it happened.

Friends have had it happened, and one good friend still, some 6 years later, cannot be at home alone. She was asleep in an upstairs bedroom, when thieves broke in and ransacked her lounge and study, taking her stereo, tv, laptop, ipod.  She wakes to every noise in the house, and if her husband is away she will stay with friends/family instead of being at home.

That one instance of someone invading her home and stealing her things, has changed her, maybe for good. I find that terribly sad.

Mr Mel and I installed a monitored security system last year, we don't live in a bad area, we wanted it as peace of mind, as we are away a fair bit, with work or family commitments.

After last nights burglary next door, we are now going to install a sensor light in the front yard, it might be overkill, but I would rather take the extra precaution and hope like hell it never happens to us. And I hope karma catches up with all burglars/thieves sooner rather than later!!

Till next time,

Friday On My Mind - 15 - storage sorted!

On my mind this chilly Friday morning, our built-in robe in the 2nd bedroom are finished (almost) yay!!!

Following on from yesterdays post, the builder finished off the built-in robe in our 2nd bedroom yesterday, now all we need to do is paint the timber trim at the top, and have them back to re-align the 2 middle doors.  He said  because they are so large, they will drop once hung, which they have, at the bottom there is about a 6-8mm gap, at the top they are flush, so he'll hopefully be out today/Monday to get the weight/hang spot-on.

built-ins at end of Day 1

built-ins at end of day 2, just need to paint the trim at the top and get the middle rehung

end of day 1

end of day 2

love the door finish, much nicer than the built-ins in our room! hmmm

Very very happy, now I can finally unpack things and give them homes, instead of being stuffed in moving boxes for the past, say 10 or so years!!

Did I say yay?  :)

Till next time,

Thanks to Rhonda from the Down To Earth blog for her 'Friday On My Mind' idea, it's a gem, I've clicked through comments on numerous blogs on Rhonda's list, and on my own, and found some great blogs which I'm now following, and looking forward to discovering many more!

Yay more storage on the way!

When we moved into our home almost 2 years ago (17 July 2009), I bought with me several (ok well maybe 20!) boxes of 'stuff' that I had been dragging from house to house over the previous 10 or so years, during my never to be repeated (hopefully!) rental life!

Over the past 2 years I have gradually been going through the boxes, giving away what I no longer needed/want, and repacking into fewer (say 8!) boxes, and storing them in our 2nd bedroom and garage.

Our home is 3 bedrooms, but only the main has built in robe, the only other storage in the house is the linen cupboard, then the garage.

So we decided we wanted to get built-ins put in the 2nd bedroom, which (gods willing) will be our future kids room.  We had a local guy come and quote, he was great, very down to earth, great reputation, and reasonably priced, compared to getting a crew from Newcastle or Sydney.

We confirmed the work about 5 weeks ago, and yesterday the install began, woohoo!

These are a couple of dodgy pics form my phone, when I got home last night, the builder was back at 7.45am this morning, and according to Mr Mel he's currently 'working like a trojan on it'.  So hopefully when I get home tonight it will be all done! And I will take more pics tonight.

So not only do we get much needed storage, hopefully we have added some value to the house, now with 2 bedrooms with substantial built ins!

We have the built-ins going across the width of the room, up to about a foot below our 12 foot ceilings, we didn't want to ruin our lovely ceilings, so are stopping short, and there will be a decorative edging at the top of the robe, that will finish it off nicely.

Oh and ignore the hideous blue paint, the previous owners had painted it blue and cream, for their two young boys, I shall be changing that later this year!

Till next time,

Project - Garden Do-Over - Pt2

We are slowly doing over our front garden, as per earlier entry, since then we have removed the Geisha Girls, and while it doesn't look like much has changed, we're slowly getting there!

Our House the week we moved in - July 2009

House as at today 14 May 2011 - a couple of additions & deletions

Still very messy, but at least minus the GG's!

Since we bought in July 2009 we've slowly been making improvements, we have partly done some of the kitchen, we have added a gate to the top of the driveway to keep the pug safe when we drive in & out.

We also had a security system  installed in August 2010, because we spend many weekends in Sydney with Mr Mel's family, and in Victoria with my family, our house spends quite a while empty, so for peace of mind we installed a security system, so far no issues, touch wood!

Then in December 2010 we had a solar power system put in, it cost us around $9k (after Gov rebates), and so far it has generated around $900 worth of power, which offset against our usage has netted us around $360.  We were very happy with how it was going until the NSW Government announcement yesterday, which I won't go into too many details as I'll only get cranky!  

So back to the garden, we have removed the Geisha Girls, and found a few Camelia bushes buried under them, they had been struggling for light and had grown sideways to escape the GG's. There are also some small dark green bushes we're not sure what they are, but at this stage they'll stay, till we decide what to do.

We're still deciding what to do, and in the meantime, have put some manure and blood & bone etc, into the garden bed to feed it up while we work out what to do.

We are still thinking several Hydrangea bushes across the back of the garden, and then perhaps some green & bronze long grasses in front.

For now we're living with an ugly garden, but seeings as we had our first frost this week, and winter is knocking on the door, it's not the time to plant out a new garden anyway.  So for the next few months we'll remove the rest of the unwanted garden, keep building up the soil, and working out what we want to plant come springtime!

The bonus is I can take 'garden do-over' off my to-do list for the next few months, while I'm organising our wedding, and getting our new venture off the ground!

Till next time,

New Kitchen Partway Done

We have been in our home for 2 years come July, and since day 1 we have wanted to change some aspects of the kitchen, especially the fan/light.  As you can see we weren't starting from a good place.

Lovely...........not!

The above 'lovely' light isresident in each of the 3 bedrooms (on the 'to replace' list), and in the kitchen, yes I know, why why why the kitchen!

The one in the kitchen was doing our heads in, due to both it's ugliness, and lack of light providing, so we replaced it about a year ago, we wanted to keep a fan, to help both with cooking heat, and the general heat in the house during summer, the kitchen is open plan to the lounge, and can get very warm, and with the aircon being pricey to run, a fan is a better option.

We went with a brushed aluminium finish fan with a central light, from Rovert Lighting at Rutherford.

As the timber in the kitchen is quite dark (for now, reno pending!), we wanted to add some more light, so added a row of 3 brushed aluminium directional lights over the sink, similar to these but with brushed aluminium covers, not the opaque white

Kitchen - a week before we moved in, the hutch to the right went with the previous owners

Eventually we will renovate the kitchen, well at least replace the doors, in a lighter colour.  So far we have had an island bench made (not pictured above), in a creamy colour gloss (cafe cream) with a creamy ceasarstone top, colours below.

Almond Rocca Caesastone - island bench top, eventually use on all benches

Polytec Cafe Cream Gloss - island bench doors/drawers/walls, eventually to replace current kitchen

We picked up a couple of stools for the island bench from Ikea, a Sebastian Bar Stool, a bargain at just $39 (on special), the chrome look legs, timber seat with creamy white laminate top and bottom/back mix in well with our future plans, and still look good with current kitchen.

Sebastian stools from Ikea

We like the current tiles, and they're in great condition, with the previous owners only putting them down about 2 months before we bought it!

We're still considering what to do with a splashback, if we run the caesarstone up as a splashback or go for a coloured glass one instead.

Our full kitchen renovation (including new oven yay and a dishwasher triple yay) probably won't happen until early/mid 2012, as it's functional as it is, and with alot of expenses coming up over next few months (wedding, honeymoon!), we don't have enough funds to do everything at once. So stay tuned!

Till next time,

Attacking & Tracking the Mortgage

Mr Mel and I have a printout of the floorplan of our house, on graph paper, stuck on the front of our fridge (magnets not glue!).  Each week I send him a summary of where we're at with the mortgage, and overall finances, being a bit Excel obsessed, I have quite a few spreadsheets tracking everything!

A graphed floorplan was only natural progression, wasn't it?  :)

So I thought I should have one on my blog too, tracking where we're at.

We bought our home in July 2009, so closing in on 2 years, and have just passed the 60% equity mark, which we are very excited about, if we can keep on keeping on we are hoping to have our mortgage paid off in the next 3-4 years, but that all depends on what happens on the kidlet front!

Mr Mel does laugh at my obsession with our mortgage, but it's paying off so he's laughing in a good way! Does anyone else have the same obsession?  :)

Till next time,

Project - Garden Do-Over!

Another Friday rolls round yay, and another photo, well a couple, for the lovely Rhonda from the Down To Earth blog Friday Photo Feature - 'On My Mind....'

So what is on my mind this lovely mild Friday?.............................


Nothing like tackling a project in the middle of a storm!

When we bought our home in July 2009 we thought the front garden was ok, for now, that we'd get to it eventually. Well it looks like we, well really I have decided that eventually is now, in the middle of trying to get fit, getting our new blog/business up & running, planning for our engagement party/wedding, and working full-time!

Since we moved in the geisha girl plants (I think that's their name) have got a bit out of control, we removed the one immediately to the right of the steps as it was growing partly from under the steps, and we have tried to keep the other two under control by adhoc hacking.

Garden when we first moved in

We've never really liked the plants, the garden itself is a bit of a hodge podge of plants, none of which really take our fancy.

So we've decide its outskies for the current residents.  Haven't decided what we'll plant in their place as yet. The garden bed doesn't get alot of direct sun, it's shaded by the house most of the day, so we'll be going with shade loving/tolerant plants.

This weekend we're heading to Sydney to pick up our engagement ring (yay), and then next weekend we'll be getting stuck in to removing everything, then we'll give it a couple of weeks rest, to see what weeds pop up, and give us some time to plan.

At this stage I'm thinking green/gray and perhaps some maroon coloured plants with some height.  Or maybe even my favourites hydrangeas! We had them growing at our childhood home, and I've always loved them.

Hydrangeas - love them!

So if anyone out there has any recommendations, we're all ears!  :)

Till next time,

Happy Birthday House :)

It's amazing how time flies, it's 12 months today that we settled on our home. We put the offer in on 7th April 2009, and due to issues with an unapproved extension that had to go through council approval before we didn't end up settling until 13 July.

During those 3 months I stalked the local council website, they listed DA's on their site, and drove by the house at least every 2nd day or so, just to make sure they were looking after it :-)

This Saturday, 17th July, will be 12 months since we moved in, and we have a bottle of our favourite bubbles Dolce Per Tutti from Petersons Champagne House, to toast our first House birthday/anniversary. We bought 2 bottles in Jan 2009, cracked the first one on our verandah the day we moved in, and will be repeating the dose this Saturday :-)

We have made a few improvements since moving in, we've replaced the fan & lights in kitchen, had an island bench, with stone benchtop, made for the kitchen, and have redesigned the back yard.

Over the past year hopefully we'll be able to get a built in wardrobe put into the 2nd bedroom, repaint that room, get a dishwasher, and redo the front garden.

Till next time,

Let there be light! Our kitchen improvements

We bought our house in July last year, and have whinged about the terrible lighting in the kitchen ever since, it has a ceiling fan with a light attached, more of a bedroom fan & light, a very mellow light. If you're washing dishes after sundown you have to hold each piece up to the light to see if it's clean!  Very frustrating.

Mr Mel & I love to cook, we cook together almost every night, and have a cooking storm weekend every month, as you'll see from my previous post :-)

So last week we bit the bullet, went up to a lighting shop at Rutherford, and after much toing and froing we settled on a new silver ceiling fan with a bright light, looks more industrial than bedroomy, and a 4 spot light silver rod type thing (excellent description I know!)  We will put the rod over the sink, with 2 spot lights aiming directly down at the sink, and 2 aiming along the prep bench next to the sink.

The sparky is at home now with Mr Mel installing them, very exciting, can't wait to cook in good light!

Our kitchen also suffers from a lack of bench space, so we had an island bench made. It's 1200m long, by 900m wide, with a 30mm overhang so we can fit stools under it. It has 3 drawers (soft close yay), and a pull out double bin. It's on lockable rubber wheels so we can move it around.

Our kitchen is currently an older style timber one, it's nice, but not really our style, so we spent a few months going through laminate and benchtop samples, we wanted to decide on our kitchen as a whole, so down the track when we renovate the rest of the kitchen, the island bench won't be out of place.

We settled on:

Benchtop - Caesarstone Almond Rocca, 30mm with a double pencil edge - http://www.kitkitchen.com/images/products/17122007235855caesarstone-almond-roca.jpg
Cabinets - Polytec Createc Cafe Cream Gloss - http://www.polytec.com.au/images/sambles/cafe_cream.jpg
Handles - Brushed steel
Floors - already done, they're a dark biscuit colour
Walls - already done, cream, with a dark biscuit surrounds

We got the island 2 weeks ago and have booked Hunter Valley Granite & Marble to install the benchtop this week.

So by the end of this week we will have lights, more benchtop & storage.  Very exciting!  Will post some pics once done, before & after kind of :-)

Cia for now,

August already! eek

4 August 2009 - reposted April 2010


Cannot believe it's 5th August, that's crazy, April seems like a blink ago!

Few updates:

House - loving it, still getting everything unpacked/organised/decluttered etc, but it's so amazing to lie in bed and look at the pressed ceiling and think wow that's ours!! Amazing!

We cracked a bottle of beautiful Petersons champers on the front verandah on our first night, my lovely partner retrieved the cork from the middle of the road :-)

We cooked our first meal on the Sunday, a lamb shoulder in the slow cooker (first use), scrumptious, melt in mouth stuff.

Our neighbour is terrific which is a relief, he an DP have mated up, and his son jumps the fence to play with the puglet, so it's working well! Plus he bought the bins in for me last week, yay!

Pug - his usual happy self, had the weekend in the kennels while I was in Syd, he loved it, they spoil him rotten and he gets to play with heaps of dogs

Work - busy, working 8am-7pm most days, but loving it still, busy time of year about to kick off, so hopefully all the foals arrive safely and everything goes to plan.

Birthdays - had DP's nephew's birthday in Syd on the weekend, got some oldschool 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books on ebay for him, they're 2nd hand, but he loved them, yay. Was a good day, DP & I made pizzas, there was lasagne, wine, all the good stuff.

Business - we now have a pty ltd for DP to use when he goes contractor soon, alot of paperwork involved, but should work well, fingers crossed.

Kiva - I've now got 4 loans:

• Magdalena in the Phillipines - farming - 60% repaid
• Pillar in the Peru - vet supplies - 33% repaid
• Fotu in Samoa - farming - 0% repaid
• Evelyn in Phillipines - cattle frmer - 0% repaid

so far have $18.34 repaid, as soon as it hits $25 again I'll be re-loaning, yay, love giving a hand up, not a hand out :-)

New house bliss, maybe :)

22 July 2009 - reposted April 2010


Well we moved into our first home on Saturday, it may still resemble a bomb shelter, but it's our bomb shelter :-)

We both took Thurs/Fri/Mon off work.

Thur/Fri was the final packing session, with about 10 trips to the new house with breakables, kitchen stuff, clothes (luckily new house is about 3kms away from old rental).

Friday we had Foxtel booked at the new place, with their wonderful 5 hour window of 7am - 12pm, 11am rolls by and nothing, so DP calls them, and low and behold our appointment didn't get given to the installers! Luckily they took pity and we got a tech to the house about 4pm, he wasn't happy given it was 4pm Friday, but not our fault!

Saturday the removalist arrived at 7am, 1/2 hour early, excellent! (slight sarcasm there). They were loaded and unloaded at new place by 10.30, which was great. Had a gate guy give us a quote for a gate on the driveway to keep the pug in backyard, not cheap but has to be done!

Saturday was mainly unpacking & organising.

Saturday night we cracked a bottle of favourite champagne on the verandah, my lovely DP retrieved the cork from the middle of the road :-) followed by delivery Thai, and we were in bed by about 8pm.

Back into it Sunday, more organising/unpacking, trips from old house with garden stuff and other things left over from removalist.

Monday was hellish, cleaning the old rental, thankfully it's now looking better than when I moved in, but gees it was hard work!

DP headed back to Sydney Monday arvo, very teary farewell, more yucky than usual.

He's on a mission to get up here permanently now, hopefully within next 6-8 weeks, fingers crossed!!

Met with the accountant today, we're now officially business owners too, nothing like timing, not often in life do you become home owners and business owners in the same week!

Oh well, gotta do the hard yards to get ahead!!