Woohoo!
We've taken the leap.
We've committed ourselves to living here; not somewhere else on realestate.com.au, though I continue to scan that site obsessively just-in-case we've made the wrong decision. Perhaps I have some disease whose main symptom seems to be indecisiveness... but that's a whole different blog.
It's hardly a leap to decide to stay in the house you already live in, I hear you mutter. (And Yes I am a voice inside your head as well as my own). The leap is, we've decided to renovate.
To us that is a hugely big deal. It's a commitment to stay put for a bit at least. My gypsie genes are all-a-flutter...
We've refinanced. That only took 6 months - what with a combination of a financial crisis which saw banks devalue homes for a while, as well as a very dodgy broker in the first instance. Long story short: that's done and the first stage of our renovations is based on up to 80% of our redraw.
We've decided that a 1979 bathroom just ain't cutting it anymore. What's more it wasn't a classy 1979 bathroom to begin with (although classy and 1979 don't usually go together in the same sentence). They reckon that bathrooms usually need updating every 15 years, so both ours clearly make the grade, and if I showed you photos you'd be in absolute agreement.
The ensuite bathroom is circa 1990 and was also done on the cheap the first time round.
In fact, we suspect that most of this house was actually done on the cheap. But again that's another whole blog... don't get me started. I'm sure in purely dollar for dollar terms (not taking into account inflation and the changing cost of money), then our new bathrooms will cost more than the original building of the house.
So renos begin in one week. It's already been a long road to this point. The actual work, I'm hoping, will be anti-climactic. Now we know what we want, and we've engaged a reputable builder on a fixed price contract who supplies all the necessary trades, I feel kinda relaxed. Strange. We did all the worrying about costs during the lengthy quoting process and we've been incredibly happy so far with the open communication we've had with our builder.
Stay posted as I tell you how it goes!
Monday, August 24, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Chookie chook chook, bushfires and ecological footprint
Well lots has been happening in our neck of the woods lately.
First we got chooks.
Second we had to evacuate with said chooks as well as Fish, Chips (our two dogs) and Olive and Gizmo (or black cat and white cat as our daughter knows them) to our good friends, P & J's, place.
Third, we returned home to our unburned house and installed chooks in their "Chicken ranch": not my name the name on the very classy coop we bought. And no, D and I did not have an argument putting it together (this is the usual course of things when we buy an assemble yourself number. Needless to say the couple of days following an IKEA splurge are spent wishing we hadn't gone near the place. Like childbirth though, we always forget.)
Fourth we evacuated again when there was a BIG fire in Upwey just around the corner. We may have to evacuate again tomorrow. We'll see how we go.
The solar powered radio is doing overtime playing ABC fire alert updates continuously. Sick to the back teeth of living with emergency bags continuously packed and not being able to make plans. People who have lost family and friends and property in these recent horrific fires, though will have little sympathy for my crankiness I imagine. :-)
But back to the chooks - we have got our first eggs! Our morning ritual of letting them out and giving them food scraps is delivering dividends. We are on our way to being egg sufficient. Woohoo.
Plan is we'll eat less meat and more eggs and reduce our ecological footprint. Well that's the hope. Ha.
Now we're discovering all sorts of cool things about chooks. Like, they follow you around the garden, they eat the insects that eat our vegie patch :-) and they eat new seedlings in our vegie patch :-(
Methinks the purchasing of chookie chook chook related paraphernalia: coop, feeders, hay, wood shavings, grit, grain, and pellets is more an exercise in adding new pets to our menagerie than an attempt at food self-sufficiency! But Ssssshhh don't tell D I said this. The other argument was what worked in getting him to cave. Worked so well, even had me believing it.
OK maybe in ten years we'll work out ahead in the cost-benefit analysis, but in the meantime I'm just enjoying hangin' in the backyard looking at our ever so busy but easy-going chookie chooks.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Chocolate Crackles
Put the following in a big bowl:
4 cups of rice bubbles
1 cup (and a bit extra I reckon) of desiccated coconut (this brings to mind Keating's most excellent snaky remark that Howard is a "little desiccated coconut" - check out this excellent article for the top 10 best political insults http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3797745.ece
3 tbsp of cocoa
1 cup pf icing sugar.
Mix dry ingredients then add:
melted 180 g of copha (the copha packet has a chocci crackles recipe and recommends you use the full 250g, but I reckon this is way too much and makes a solid, teeth breaking choccie crackle).
Mix well and hen spoon into patty pans and place on a tray in the fridge. They should be set within an hour or two.
They look a lot like the scats of a large animal but man are they YUM!
4 cups of rice bubbles
1 cup (and a bit extra I reckon) of desiccated coconut (this brings to mind Keating's most excellent snaky remark that Howard is a "little desiccated coconut" - check out this excellent article for the top 10 best political insults http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3797745.ece
3 tbsp of cocoa
1 cup pf icing sugar.
Mix dry ingredients then add:
melted 180 g of copha (the copha packet has a chocci crackles recipe and recommends you use the full 250g, but I reckon this is way too much and makes a solid, teeth breaking choccie crackle).
Mix well and hen spoon into patty pans and place on a tray in the fridge. They should be set within an hour or two.
They look a lot like the scats of a large animal but man are they YUM!
Friday, February 13, 2009
A trip to Bunnings to buy a backyard bunker or the Sarah Connor Chronicles of bushfire warfare
DH went to a local fire meeting up here in the Melbourne Dandenongs and came back armed with new information for our fire plan. So we sat down and went over the plan again last night. We realise now that we had not read the CFA “living in the bush” info kit closely enough. Nor had we taken the threat of bushfire quite seriously enough.
We thought our fire plan had to detail either our plan to defend or our plan to leave. And because we live in a multi-level cedar house on the side of a hill with a massive deck we call “the fire platform”, we have always planned to leave and leave early. Our plan is now much more detailed about what our triggers to leave are and we have rules we’ve now set about what we do on Total Fire Ban days.
What we now also realise however, is that a thorough fire plan has to take into account every eventuality, and therefore we have to plan how we would defend the house if we had to. And when I say ‘defend the house’, I really mean how would we use the house and what we have on hand to protect ourselves.
So while we’ll attempt to leave early, we now realise we have to have everything ready to go in case we can’t get out of here in time. This scares me so much that I have to joke around a little… but I’ll get to that.
So to have this house ready to go to fight a fire we need to install at least three water tanks. That’s OK, we wanted them anyway to be able to keep our vegie patch and garden alive.
We’ll also need a water pump that has a diesel generator.
We’ll need at least 4 or 5 outside taps as well as taps off the water tanks so that we have an independent water supply in case the mains fail.
We’ll need an extensive sprinkler system on our roof and deck and before we turn that on we’ll need to have brass fitted hoses and taps, changes to our gutter guards, and downpipe plugs.
We’ll also need a few more buckets and mops as well as some second hand woollen blankets that we can wet to protect ourselves if things get really hairy and a hose fitting inside our house to be able to hose down any fires that breach into the inside of the house.
We’ll have fire bags packed for each family member at the beginning of the fire season (and cat cages and dog leashes ready to go) and in each bag is a pair of long sleeve tops (natural fibres), sturdy boots, bandanas, broad rimmed hats and gloves as well as a change of clothes. Precious belongs are already packed as well.
Before the fire front approaches, we’ll have to patrol the outside of the house with buckets and a mop and put out embers. As the radiant heat becomes too intense we will have to retreat inside to a house that has all windows and blinds closed, all doors buttressed by wet towels and lots of buckets full of water ready to put out fires inside the house.
The fire front usually passes within 20 minutes and as it passes we will need to check outside to start the real bushfire warfare, which is about putting out embers which pose the greatest threat to the house. And that fight lasts up to twenty four hours. That, or we get out of here after the fire front has passed - if that’s possible. The latter is my preference.
I thought we’d be able to go to a nearby fire refuge but DH found out at the local fire meeting that the park down the back of our yard is no longer a refuge as we had thought, so like every other person around here, we’ll be heading down the Burwood Highway, if we can…
This is not the scary bit yet. We’ll have to plan for me to be able to implement this ‘last resort’ plan, by myself, or worse, with our one year old to look after at the same time – not forgetting that we also have two dogs and two cats to think of.
And let’s get real here. We’ll have to hope to hell that we aren’t dealing with a fire like they had in the Kinglake area. Because we won’t stand a chance.
I had to start joking at this point. Call it my weird sense of humour, or maybe my way of coping. DH indicated that we’d need a big box at the backdoor with all the necessary supplies to fight the fire, and as he started listing off all the equipment, an image of a large hidden cache of military weapons came to mind, something in the style of Sarah Connor in Terminator. To pull this off alone, I would need to go into a berserker mode and take a leaf out of Sarah’s book.
To my mind this all seems too scary and out of control. Far fetched even. So it got me to half-joking, half-seriously thinking about a bunker in our backyard.
We’ve all seen movies of paranoid US citizens building bunkers during the cold war in an attempt to survive a nuclear war. I mean the chance of nuclear war was low but the fallout (‘scuse the pun) would have been great. Here we live in a wildfire zone so the chances of fire are fairly high and now we know after Feb 7, 2009, that the effects can be almost as a great as a nuclear bomb.
So we could get an old shipping container, dig it into the slope of our backyard, make it air tight so the fire couldn’t suck out all the oxygen, and create a comfy set up with couches and a wind-up radio and a good stash of vintage wines kept in the cool confines.
Why worry about all this bushfire warfare when you could just lock yourself in a separate backyard bunker as your last resort and then just wait until the fire has passed. I’m sure there’s fire experts out there who will tell me this is a mad idea, but it seemed less far fetched to me than the Sarah Connor approach.
If only we could head down to Bunnings and ask for the aisle where we could buy ‘backyard bunkers’.
Seriously though, in the hour it has taken me to write this, I’ve been sitting on our deck amongst the smoke haze, listening to the Church service on a battery radio for the hundreds that perished tragically in Melbourne’s fires last weekend. Words can’t express how much I feel for those affected.
There is a smokey haze everywhere from the easterly winds blowing this very real reminder of tragedy back towards where we live. We have been without power here, in my part of Upwey, for nearly 20 hours and also in the time I’ve been writing this, the CFA fire sirens in Tecoma, Upwey, and I think Upper Ferntree Gully, have been ringing.
Without power I couldn’t check the CFA website so I rang the Bushfire information line, the batteries on my mobile are almost out and scarily our landline requires electricity to work. Though it was a small fire that is now safe, I can’t help thinking that our best bet is to “get the wuck outta ‘ere” at the first sign of danger so that neither the bunker nor the Sarah Connor Chronicle is required.
We thought our fire plan had to detail either our plan to defend or our plan to leave. And because we live in a multi-level cedar house on the side of a hill with a massive deck we call “the fire platform”, we have always planned to leave and leave early. Our plan is now much more detailed about what our triggers to leave are and we have rules we’ve now set about what we do on Total Fire Ban days.
What we now also realise however, is that a thorough fire plan has to take into account every eventuality, and therefore we have to plan how we would defend the house if we had to. And when I say ‘defend the house’, I really mean how would we use the house and what we have on hand to protect ourselves.
So while we’ll attempt to leave early, we now realise we have to have everything ready to go in case we can’t get out of here in time. This scares me so much that I have to joke around a little… but I’ll get to that.
So to have this house ready to go to fight a fire we need to install at least three water tanks. That’s OK, we wanted them anyway to be able to keep our vegie patch and garden alive.
We’ll also need a water pump that has a diesel generator.
We’ll need at least 4 or 5 outside taps as well as taps off the water tanks so that we have an independent water supply in case the mains fail.
We’ll need an extensive sprinkler system on our roof and deck and before we turn that on we’ll need to have brass fitted hoses and taps, changes to our gutter guards, and downpipe plugs.
We’ll also need a few more buckets and mops as well as some second hand woollen blankets that we can wet to protect ourselves if things get really hairy and a hose fitting inside our house to be able to hose down any fires that breach into the inside of the house.
We’ll have fire bags packed for each family member at the beginning of the fire season (and cat cages and dog leashes ready to go) and in each bag is a pair of long sleeve tops (natural fibres), sturdy boots, bandanas, broad rimmed hats and gloves as well as a change of clothes. Precious belongs are already packed as well.
Before the fire front approaches, we’ll have to patrol the outside of the house with buckets and a mop and put out embers. As the radiant heat becomes too intense we will have to retreat inside to a house that has all windows and blinds closed, all doors buttressed by wet towels and lots of buckets full of water ready to put out fires inside the house.
The fire front usually passes within 20 minutes and as it passes we will need to check outside to start the real bushfire warfare, which is about putting out embers which pose the greatest threat to the house. And that fight lasts up to twenty four hours. That, or we get out of here after the fire front has passed - if that’s possible. The latter is my preference.
I thought we’d be able to go to a nearby fire refuge but DH found out at the local fire meeting that the park down the back of our yard is no longer a refuge as we had thought, so like every other person around here, we’ll be heading down the Burwood Highway, if we can…
This is not the scary bit yet. We’ll have to plan for me to be able to implement this ‘last resort’ plan, by myself, or worse, with our one year old to look after at the same time – not forgetting that we also have two dogs and two cats to think of.
And let’s get real here. We’ll have to hope to hell that we aren’t dealing with a fire like they had in the Kinglake area. Because we won’t stand a chance.
I had to start joking at this point. Call it my weird sense of humour, or maybe my way of coping. DH indicated that we’d need a big box at the backdoor with all the necessary supplies to fight the fire, and as he started listing off all the equipment, an image of a large hidden cache of military weapons came to mind, something in the style of Sarah Connor in Terminator. To pull this off alone, I would need to go into a berserker mode and take a leaf out of Sarah’s book.
To my mind this all seems too scary and out of control. Far fetched even. So it got me to half-joking, half-seriously thinking about a bunker in our backyard.
We’ve all seen movies of paranoid US citizens building bunkers during the cold war in an attempt to survive a nuclear war. I mean the chance of nuclear war was low but the fallout (‘scuse the pun) would have been great. Here we live in a wildfire zone so the chances of fire are fairly high and now we know after Feb 7, 2009, that the effects can be almost as a great as a nuclear bomb.
So we could get an old shipping container, dig it into the slope of our backyard, make it air tight so the fire couldn’t suck out all the oxygen, and create a comfy set up with couches and a wind-up radio and a good stash of vintage wines kept in the cool confines.
Why worry about all this bushfire warfare when you could just lock yourself in a separate backyard bunker as your last resort and then just wait until the fire has passed. I’m sure there’s fire experts out there who will tell me this is a mad idea, but it seemed less far fetched to me than the Sarah Connor approach.
If only we could head down to Bunnings and ask for the aisle where we could buy ‘backyard bunkers’.
Seriously though, in the hour it has taken me to write this, I’ve been sitting on our deck amongst the smoke haze, listening to the Church service on a battery radio for the hundreds that perished tragically in Melbourne’s fires last weekend. Words can’t express how much I feel for those affected.
There is a smokey haze everywhere from the easterly winds blowing this very real reminder of tragedy back towards where we live. We have been without power here, in my part of Upwey, for nearly 20 hours and also in the time I’ve been writing this, the CFA fire sirens in Tecoma, Upwey, and I think Upper Ferntree Gully, have been ringing.
Without power I couldn’t check the CFA website so I rang the Bushfire information line, the batteries on my mobile are almost out and scarily our landline requires electricity to work. Though it was a small fire that is now safe, I can’t help thinking that our best bet is to “get the wuck outta ‘ere” at the first sign of danger so that neither the bunker nor the Sarah Connor Chronicle is required.
Monday, February 9, 2009
1st birthday parties, upsy daisy cakes and non mumsy-mums.
Upsy Daisy Cake
I am the most non-mumsy mum I know. While my friends in mothers' group were all planning and looking forward to our first 'fruit of our loins' one year old birthdays, I seriously couldn't be bothered.
No, it's more than that: I would rather put my hand in a blender than organise a 1st birthday party.
I mean the kids aren't gonna remember it are they? And I'll be running around like a pork chop making sure everyone has enough food and drinks (man will I need a drink, what with 10 toddlers on the scene). Baaah humbug.
So, I know it's not fashionable amongst the more earnest set of mums that I know, but seriously folks! Is the malarky of a 1st birthday really worth the effort? I think not. But I am prepared to be corrected. Maybe there's some aspect of the first birthday I just haven't appreciated... yet.
I mean there's the cleaning and preening the house beforehand to show the world that despite having a toddler, you are still the hip and ever so happening person you were before you had kids. Yeah right.
Then there's the preparation of party food. Now everyone expects party food, but how do you cater to toddlers whose parents (including me) don't give their kids anything with sugar or salt in it? And do the 'big' kids (AKA adults) eat party food?
The staple of every good birthday party in Australia is the chocolate crackle. Now I love a chocolate crackle... so maybe I have mused upon a small silver lining in this 1st birthday fiasco...
Hmmm but back to my rant...
And then there's the clean up of smooshed in cake in carpet after the event... not my idea of bliss. And while I can't complain about my DH on any particulars, it will be me who notices what needs doing. Such is life.
Instead we had a small family affair at home with my mum and brothers along too. And OK I'll admit it, aside from the immense benefits of chocolate crackles (please note we actually discussed the fact that alongside bananas and peanuts, chocolate crackles would be the best thing to have a lot of if you were stranded on a boat like in the Life of Pi).... Anyone who doesn't know what a chocolate crackle is... well where have you been? I might have to post a recipe...
No, it's more than that: I would rather put my hand in a blender than organise a 1st birthday party.
I mean the kids aren't gonna remember it are they? And I'll be running around like a pork chop making sure everyone has enough food and drinks (man will I need a drink, what with 10 toddlers on the scene). Baaah humbug.
So, I know it's not fashionable amongst the more earnest set of mums that I know, but seriously folks! Is the malarky of a 1st birthday really worth the effort? I think not. But I am prepared to be corrected. Maybe there's some aspect of the first birthday I just haven't appreciated... yet.
I mean there's the cleaning and preening the house beforehand to show the world that despite having a toddler, you are still the hip and ever so happening person you were before you had kids. Yeah right.
Then there's the preparation of party food. Now everyone expects party food, but how do you cater to toddlers whose parents (including me) don't give their kids anything with sugar or salt in it? And do the 'big' kids (AKA adults) eat party food?
The staple of every good birthday party in Australia is the chocolate crackle. Now I love a chocolate crackle... so maybe I have mused upon a small silver lining in this 1st birthday fiasco...
Hmmm but back to my rant...
And then there's the clean up of smooshed in cake in carpet after the event... not my idea of bliss. And while I can't complain about my DH on any particulars, it will be me who notices what needs doing. Such is life.
Instead we had a small family affair at home with my mum and brothers along too. And OK I'll admit it, aside from the immense benefits of chocolate crackles (please note we actually discussed the fact that alongside bananas and peanuts, chocolate crackles would be the best thing to have a lot of if you were stranded on a boat like in the Life of Pi).... Anyone who doesn't know what a chocolate crackle is... well where have you been? I might have to post a recipe...
But as I was saying, so aside from choccie crackles, I DID actually enjoy making my daughters cake. It called for a bit of lateral thinking - what lollies to use to help make an Upsy Daisy cake. Anyway, check out the photo of the cake (above) and tell me what you think.
At first when I realised I was the only one in my mothers' group that wasn't doing THE party, I wondered if I was somehow deficient.
Naaah! While I'll love celebrating my daughters birthday when she is comprendes mendes about it, I am not prepared to go this further sacrifice right now, at a time still too-close-for-comfort to the day I gave birth!
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