}

15 July 2008

A sneak peek inside our new home

We were allowed a sneak peak today to measure the rooms for furniture. Bear in mind the furniture isn't ours. We don't have a stick of furniture so will need to go on a furniture buying spree soon. If you get confused about which bedroom is which, refer back to Ally's masterful floor plan. I am glad to say we didn't have a single twinge of buyer's remorse on this, our 3rd view of the house. It's as wonderful as we remember it!

Front of house
.Front porch
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Lounge and dining room area
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Kitchen
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Rear porch (for our barbecue)
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Main Stairs
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Main bedroom (floor 2)
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Main bedroom balcony (floor 2)
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2nd floor landing (where our study will be)
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Spare room (floor 2)
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Main bathroom (floor 2)
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Guest bedroom (floor 3) - notice the balcony
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Playing with ferry lights at dawn



14 July 2008

Opera House framed by arch...


Playing with blur at Luna Park





Gadgets make even mundane things fun.

One of our few extavagances (apart from our super dooper mattress) was this Dyson vacuum cleaner. I must admit I poo pood paying $350 for a vacuum cleaner when we could get one for $80. Ally stuck to her guns.

Well, I can now admit (after giving it a test run around the house), that Ally was right. It has three times more suction than I am used to and manouvres around like a pro. And it looks ultra cool - like something James Bond would use. It made vacuuming almost fun! From now I'll be actively asking to vacuum. So now I know the real reason for Ally's insistence.
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Our bed arrives

After a night or two of sleeping on our handy blow up mattress, our bed has finally arrived. We splurged on a good mattress and I can honestly say its the most comfortable thing I have ever lain on. Can't wait for our first proper test of it tonight (in all senses of the word!).
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Affirmation (2008)


Work

  • Financial projections in excel (for Warren)
  • Warren: "Extremely professional"


Moving into our new home

We have just spent an exhausting but exhilerating weekend moving into our new house - transporting boxes, unpacking boxes and assembling much furniture.

All our good friends came around to visit and help. A particularly huge thanks must go to Doug and Claudia and Andreas and Ingrid who spent many hours helping us to assemble furniture. This is not my god given talent in life and without their help, I'd only be a quarter finished with much furniture screwed inback to front.

Ally was in her element - how she managed to immaculately pack 10 boxes worth of stuff into her lovely new kitchen I'll never know - a most impressive feat indeed. We are both still in the throes of huge excitement and have to keep pinching ourselves.

Thanks to everyone for all their well wishes and texts - we really appreciate it and can't wait to have you all to stay one of these days...

Our boxes ready to go - at Mc Mahons Point. We also needed to transport all our boxes from Cambridge and Willow Road that we have been holding in storage.
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Our cheerful and extremely professional "man with a van", Stuart. I love the name of his company "I like to move it, move it." Despite the amazing abilility of Stuart's van to swallow huge amounts of stuff, we needed to do to trips to move everything. It started at 2:30 pm and as you can see, it was dark by the time we finished...
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All the boxes in our new place. This was when things got rather exhausting - lugging heavy boxes up the stairs to their appropriate rooms. Believe it or not, we managed to do the lion share of this on Friday night! We were itching to start unpacking! There was stuff in some boxes that I hadn't seen for over 8 years.



The fun began with the assembly of the furniture which mostly arrived during Saturday. Each delivery caused new excitement - like Xmas it was. Here is Ingrid, our IKEA assembly guru. SHe has built two IKEA kitchens from scratch in her day and seriously knows how all this stuff fits together. We watched her in awe as she juggled massive piles of wood and turned hundred of screws into furniture. She was a master of turning chaos into order.
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Our new lounge suite - leather in "pebble" colour, and so very comfortable. We love it...
. Our wicker basket drawer unit under the stairs. Notice the beautiful orchids that Eva brought us and the family heirloom (statue of boy and horse) in pride of place....
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Our study area with book case and computer desk -lots of space
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Here is the spare room - the book shelves and small table are not new (we had them at Mc Mahons Point)...
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...but the camera drawer unit that holds all my realms of camera gear is new - and I love it.
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Our dining room table only arrives in a couple of weeks, so in the meantime we are using our "outside table" to do the job. This will move to the front courtyard when the dining room table arrives.
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Look how Ally has immacualtely packed the kitchen drawers! The kitchen is only two years old and Ally keeps oohing and aahing at the clever the ways the inner draws and cupboards have been designed.
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And specifically for all you girls out there who like the detail on these things, here is the inside of our fridge which we inherited from the previous owners. Lots of space as you can see - particularly the freezer portion at the top...

More photos of the Opera House

I managed to get up early again on a couple of mornings to catch the dawn light on the Opera House. Here are some of the results. The Opera House is now officially my most photographed item!
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Orchids Galore

We were very proud of our orchid that we had in Cambridge and the beautiful flowers it created. Well, we are delighted to announce that our Orchid plant here in Sydney has also just given birth to some beautiful flowers. Gorgeous they are...
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Much to our delight (and purely by co-incidence), Eva also brought us some lovely yellow orchids as a house warming present. So now our house is adorned in orchid flowers...
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10 July 2008

Opera House from Macquarie's Chair at dusk


Evening at Macquarie's Chair, Sydney





Opera House Competition entry

With some photoshop assistance from Carleen (thanks Carleen!) in adding some white tones to the Opera House, here is one of my entries to the competition. What do you think?
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8 July 2008

The sun sets on our Mc Mahons Point apartment - we leave on Friday

We are excited to move into our new home but will miss the epic views from our McMahon's Point apartment.


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