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Walking in the Northern Paddock

Teddy and I went for a walk in the 'Northern Paddock' section of Hidden Valley this morning. It's still undeveloped and is really beautiful. I shot a few snaps with the iPhone ... check them out below.

The mountain in the distance (top left of the photo) is Mount Fraser.

That's our house circled - between the trees.

Teddy - the intrepid co-explorer.

It's the Bathurst 1000 tomorrow ... our favourite sporting event of the year. We're really looking forward to it. Go Lowndsey!!

New couches!

Yay! The new couches arrived - at last!! They are very comfortable, and look good in the room (in my opinion). A quick trip to Ikea returned some complementary cushions and a rug ... check out the following photos. And so finally I think we have the house the way we'd like it.

Teddy and I have been on a few longer walks around the estate this weekend.  I took a few photos .... the one below was taken early in the morning on the southern side of Hidden Valley.

It's a lovely place to walk except that it's soooo hilly - we feel like we're never walking on the flat. Takes a bit of a toll on the knees. 

Teddy had a haircut last weekend - he was getting so hairy that he thought it was hot even when it was only 5 degrees ... Anyway, I thought I'd take a 'before' photo as a record of him at his maximum cuteness. 

New TV

Today was another big shopping day ... we went looking for a 'smart' TV for Craig. This TV can surf the web and interact with other devices via WiFi. And Craig figures that if he's getting a top TV he should probably mount the TV on the wall, pair it with a good sound system, and have the two systems calibrated etc .... Starting to sound expensive huh? Yes well, hmmmm. On the positive side, it does have a very thin frame/surround - which looks great. Is also quite energy efficient and light weight (about 15 kg, compared to our plasma which weighs about 50kg).

Well after 4 hours of shopping about we think (hope) that we got a great deal from The Good Guys. We've organised for both the TV and the sound system to be installed in the new house on 26 July (the day after settlement). While they are there the technical guys will also mount our current plasma TV on the bedroom wall - hope the plasma won't get its nose out of joint about being demoted from #1 ... Will be nice to have such a lovely screen in the bedroom though. :)

We're on the count down now - tomorrow it is 3 weeks until settlement.

Shopping day

Woo Hoo! We're just back from a huge day of shopping - for new furniture for our new house. Today completely fulfilled any shopping desire I might have - quite an achievement for a shop-a-holic like me ... :-)

Couch from front. 

For the lounge area, we selected 2 x 2 seater black leather couches. We found them in Gainesville and were delighted to find them on sale with 30% off the regular price. We like the fact that the headrest sections fold up and down easily - you can see them folded down in the side view photo below, and one folded up in the image on right. We are really happy with the quality of the leather.

Couch viewed from side.

These couches are a bit less than 2 metres in length each, so will fit into the new lounge area quite comfortably.

The only aspect of this purchase that's not so great is that there is an 8 - 12 week wait while they are manufactured and shipped to Australia. So they may not arrive until a month or so after we settle at the new house. Oh well ...

The people who live in the house now had a glass sofa table behind their couch - we really liked the way it didn't impact on the view nor contribute to a sense of congestion in the not enormous space. So to go with the new black couches, we bought a glass sofa table, coffee table and lamp table.

Lamp table

The heights of the various elements all match up well, so hopefully they'll look good together.  The three tables are all from the same manufacturer, and look similar to the lamp table shown here. They are solid glass and pretty heavy, so we'll have to avoid stubbing our toes on these for certain.

And this is not all ...

We already have a gorgeous Tasmanian oak dining table, but the chairs we bought at the same time are clapped out (after only 6 years?). We thought that buying new chairs would freshen up the setting - there is certainly nothing wrong with the table. Anyway, we were walking past an Adriatic Furniture store and Craig suggested we drop in and see what it was that the rich people didn't want us to know about ... (don't you hate those ads!) We came across some solid, leather dining chairs - Billy chairs - on sale of course. They felt both comfortable and solid to sit on, and as we were in spending mode, we ordered a set of 8 new chairs. The images included below will show you the style - but please disregard the colour. We have ordered ours in black leather. As they'll be sharing the space with the couches this seemed a sensible solution. So soon there will be no more yukky microsuede dining chairs for us - can't wait personally.

Billy chair - various angles.

Bedside table

Nearly finished ... The last thing we bought was some bedroom furniture. We bought a new bed back in January when we moved into the rental house, but decided not to get a headboard until we knew what type of place we'd be living in, so we could match it with the decor. Today we selected a headboard and some bedside tables from Harvey Norman (on sale - don't tell me we chose a good time to go shopping for once?) Anyway, pictures follow below .... We selected this suite after traipsing around about 2 billion bedding / furniture shops - and ironically it was the first one we saw that we even vaguely liked. The headboard is covered in black leather - must be a theme going on here huh?

Bedhead - try to imagine this without the super groovy bed linens.

What this all means is that we'll soon have plenty of comfortable places for people who visit us to sit / sleep etc. We hope you have started planning a visit.

Measuring up

Took measurements on several of the rooms today - so we can work out what to do with furniture. All good. Nabbed a few extra phots ... following for your viewing pleasure.

Driveway - no houses overlooking our place from across the street.

Front entrance

Front door

Side gate - between garage and side fence.

Unconditional!

Great news - the house has passed its various inspections, and the contract has moved into unconditional state. Yay! Settlement day is Monday 25 July.

We're off to visit the house on Thursday morning - to measure up the living room etc. We're planning to buy some new furniture, so with a bit of luck this will let us order it before we move in.