Moving, Exams, and Leaving the Countryside Behind

Well it is done.
We have moved out of our house in the country and it settles (the sale is finalised and money in the bank) on the 9th of November.

We farewelled our chickens and bantams who have gone to live with the lovely Liz at Eight Acres. She and Pete kindly offered to take them and seem to be getting  lot of joy just watching the bantam antics and are hopefully getting lots of eggs too.

We have moved closer to Brisbane into suburbia and are gradually getting unpacked and settled in. Some of our amazing friends helped us move and this weekend we are throwing them a thank you BBQ. 
 Jessie is adjusting to a smaller back yard and all the new sights and sound that come from living in close proximity with others.  She has found a few good snoozing spots and is enjoying all the interesting smells on her morning walks.

The new house

The front room is still full of boxes.

Jessie's new back yard.  It goes behind where I stood to take the photo and across the back of the house and half way down the other side

Snoozing with her favourite ball

We still have quite a bit of unpacking to do but that has been on hold as I was studying for my last university exam for the year.  This is now over and I am feeling like I did ok.  Now I just have to wait for my marks.

Studying hard

I am hoping to get back to blogging a bit more now that things have settled down and catching up on what you have all been doing is a priority.

WOO HOO The House Is Sold!!!

After many months it is official our house is sold.

It has been a long journey, well it has felt like it anyway.

At the beginning of July we had buyers signed up and ready to go and then at the end of August just 2 days before the sale went unconditional the sale of their house fell through, and like dominoes so did ours.

Thankfully we had a second buyer lined up.  So while we were in New Zealand in September we renegotiated a new contract and started the wait all over again.

But now it is all go and we will be moved out of here in less than 2 weeks.  Yep less than 2 weeks to pack, move, relocate the chickens (I will miss them more than I thought), organise all the services to be connected as well as all the other fun things that go along with moving house.  

Oh did I mention that I am in the middle of studying for exams for Uni.

We have found some where to move to right in the middle of suburbia just north of Brisbane and it will mean that instead of Hubby getting up at 4am every morning he will get up at 5am.  Our requirements were pretty simple:  allowed to have a dog, big enough yard for the dog, easy access to the highway for Hubby to go to work, enough room for 2 cars and a trailer, low maintenance, fast internet for me to work from home, and big enough for us to store our stuff that we are taking to New Zealand.

The house is 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom and double lock up garage.  If this was our's the house itself would be too big but since we are down sizing from 3.5 acres and have only a small shed to use we actually need one of the bedrooms for storage.

There is a part of me that is really looking forward to moving.  Having no responsibility to look after a property and animals, minimal laws to mow and gardens to care for, more free time and to be able to walk or ride my bike to the shops or library.
But I know I will miss the quite, the stars at night that blanket the sky, the wildlife, the country side, the friends we have made who we will not see so frequently, the chickens an the space.  But this next step is only temporary.  It enables us to move on and make plans for the big move to New Zealand and that is what I have to remember when I start missing all the things listed above.

We Are Selling - We Hope

This week we signed a contact to sell our house. Woo Hoo!!

We have been offered a price we are happy with and have a settlement date in early October.

It is conditional to the usual building and pest inspection and buyers having an unconditional contact on their house but that is often how things go.  
The buyers have just signed a contract for the sale of their house but it too is subject to the sale of another property.  So it is one big game of dominos.

We are crossing our fingers that there are no issues or hold ups but at this stage are trying not to get too excited.

So You Might Have Noticed...

So you might have noticed that the content on my blog has been a bit light on of late. 
If you haven't noticed it that's good, but I have certainly felt it.  

I have so many draft posts, about things I am passionate about, just sitting there waiting to be completed and many more running around in my head.  But life is just like that sometimes and the reality is that behind the scenes there has been an awful lot happening here.

The house is still on the market and not under contract and as we head into winter I suspect that the inspections will be few and far between and we could be here for some time yet.
While it is great that we are under no pressure to sell we would just like to have it sold so we can move on with the next stage (albeit a transition stage) of our lives.  So here's hoping for another interest rate cut and more buyers wanting to live in the country.

Planning for our life in New Zealand is well underway and we are getting close to finalising our house plans.  This has been a long process and we have refined and scaled back from where we started but I think that we are almost there.  Now comes the scary part, getting a costing.
We have also been designing a shed for our property that will be built before the house and will give us somewhere to live, store our furniture from here and to store tools, building materials and second hand materials.  We hope to get the shed built before we move and it might even happen this year but we will see.

Because we do not know what the future holds and I want to keep moving my life in a forward direction I have made another big decision.  I am going to go to University.
I start studying in July working towards a degree in Psychology via distance, through Massey University in Palmerston North New Zealand, which is 20 minutes from our property there. 
I will still be working so I am only taking 2 classes in my first semester plus one over the summer school period.
I know that studying will take me in a new direction and I am really looking forward to the challenge although at the same time I am a bit nervous as well.
I have wanted to change my job for quite a while now but since we are going to be moving there is no point and I just need to suck it up and plough on through, plus I need to pay for my study as I want to limit the amount of debt I take on.

And finally Hubby and I are also at the point where we need to make another big decision that will have lasting impacts either way.
For the last 6 years we have been trying for a baby and to date we have had no success.  

We are now faced with the prospect of going down the IVF path and to be honest we are not sure that we are prepared to invest the additional time and the money, not to mention the emotional investment.  
I am 36 and Hubby is 39 and to be completely honest if we are not pregnant soon I think we will just get on with life.  
There is a big part of me that thinks we should just live the life God dealt us but other parts of me worries that if we do not give it a go we might regret it.

We are also conscious of the fact fact that our planet is already over populated and there are many kids out there who need a home, so perhaps if we do not have one of our own we will investigate other options.

So as you can see there has been lots happening behind the scenes.

If you have any thoughts about going down the IVF path vs dealing with what life has dealt us feel free to comment.  I am not overly sensitive about it so don't be afraid to speak your mind.

I hope to get a few of those posts out of my drafts folder soon too.

What We Started With 6 Years Ago - A Renovators Journey

When we purchased our property back in 2009 it was a bit of a dump and was in desperate need of some TLC.

What gardens there were were overgrown and the shade house was collapsing.  There was no driveway until we put one in.

The deck had never been oiled and was all grey and mouldy.

The front room had kids drawings on the ceiling and the walls were painted with exterior house paint.

There was no carpet in most of the rooms and most of the window dressings were broken.  The office was painted with exterior paint too.

The main bedroom had a horrible old rattly air conditioner and some of the lovely fake wood paneling that featured throughout the house.  Thankfully Hubby was able to make a massive improvement.

The kitchen had a horrible old recirculating fan above the stove that was covered in grease, and the dinning room was a sea of wood paneling.

The lounge was more wood paneling and a timber floor covered in paint spots and a green painted edge around the entire room.  We were really glad to repaint and get carpet laid.

The bathroom had a concrete floor and old vanity and a bath with horrible wall tiles and a scratched bath and we lived with it for 5 years until we renovated.

Outside the ugly tin sheds were on full display.

There was a number of poorly maintained trees that had been pruned badly and were all misshapen.

The lawn was growing over everything.

The lawn was so overgrown at the back we could not even open the back door and it turned out there was a concrete slab under all the grass.

The property did come with a tractor that we used a few times and then sold for $800.  There were no fences other than the boundary and the cows had been keeping the lawn mowed.

There were no gardens just random trees planted in the lawn, where gardens might have been at some stage in the past.

There was a bent pine tree that was removed as soon as we moved in and an old low retaining wall that we replaced and turned into a fire pit.

I bet you are now wondering how we could see past it all.  Looking back I am not sure either, but we did and we thought it could be a great place to live.  And it has been,
We have put in a lot of man hours and a bit of money (but not that much) and lots of sweat, tears, four letter words and a few god old tantrums too.

So now we just hope it sells in a reasonable time frame so we can move on to our next adventure.

We Are Selling

I will give you full warning that this post is picture heavy.

Over the weekend we finally signed the paperwork with an agent and our house is officially on the market.

These are the photos the agent took and later this week I am going to show you the journey we have been on in photos.

The paperwork was signed Saturday, the house was officially on the market on Sunday and the agent emailed me today to advise some one wants to come and do an inspection tomorrow.  We are encouraged by that but do not want to get our hopes up.
The plan is to sell here and move to Brisbane until we move to New Zealand.  It is such a strange feeling to have not jobs that need doing around the house other than keeping things tidy.  But I think it will be a nice change as we have been working hard for so long.  We even got to spend Sunday morning at the beach and enjoyed fish and chips by the seaside, such a treat.

And now the real fun begins, trying to find somewhere to live in Brisbane.

A Busy Weekend In The Garden

Over the Weekend we spend a good 12 + hours doing the last of our garden tidy up before we put our house on the market.

After weeding all of the gardens, mowing the lawns, trimming the edges and doing some pruning we moved about 30 wheel barrows of tree mulch (about 6m3) and spread it around the garden.

We did the fire pit...

The garden along the back of the shed...

The worm farm garden...

Around the bore water tank...

Around the raised veggie beds...

The succulent garden...

Around Jessie's kennel...

The orchard...

And a few other gardens as well.  At the end of the day we were both quite stiff and sore but relieved to have it so much done.

I now have just one of the two back veggie gardens to mulch with sugar cane mulch and then it is just a matter of keeping on top of the weeds.  Because we have had so much rain lately and it is still over 30 degrees most days the weeds are almost growing in front of your eyes.  So every day as I wander around the yard I just pull out a few weeds and this seems to keep them at a manageable state.

Did you spend any time in the garden over the weekend?  What jobs did you get done?