WOW, time flies when you are having fun!!
We have been really busy since last post, but of course that's no excuse for not posting on the blog... so here's a bit of news on what's been going on since last post.
First of all, we picked up our new car :-)
It is quite big, as you can see on the picture below...
In the last couple of months, I (Yasmin) spent some time considering what to do with my career, and I decided to try to change industry and go into real estate, which I have been considering a few times before. This time, I decided to try to get into the New House sales area, as we have quite a few Display Villages around this area where we live where they sell new house & land packages. So essentially, you work for a builder who builds new houses according to the client's specifications.
I sent off 3-4 applications, and luckily I was invited to two interviews. The first interview was with a recruitment agent, sort of a preliminary interview which only lasted 15 min, and the main activity was filling out an application form. I managed to get the client details out of the recruitment agent,... Mimosa Homes, to where I had also sent an application directly, as they also advertised directly. The day after, the recruitment agent emailed me and said I had been unsuccessful :-( so you can imagine my surprise when I received a call the same afternoon directly from Mimosa wanting to see me for an interview!!!
The interview with Mimosa went well, and I had a 2 hour trial working in one of the display homes with the sales manager on Sunday 13th June, which went so well that they offered me a job :-)So now I am a Sales Consultant at Mimosa Homes!!! You can check out their website here: www.mimosahomes.com.au At the moment they are still building the website, so they want more content there, but it gives you an idea. Because it is real estate, and most clients only have time to look around on weekends, my working hours at the display homes are 12 - 5 PM Saturday to Wednesday, and a few meetings/activities in the office on some mornings, which means I have my "weekend" on Thursday and Friday. But with those working hours, I'm pretty happy with that! :-)
Kasper also picked up a new contract - at Woolsworth (one of Australia's biggest supermarkets) in Sydney!!! So starting this week he works in Sydney Monday to Wednesday, and then at Transurban in Melbourne Thursdays and Fridays.
In our "spare time" we have been getting on with our garden project. Not only do we have a proper lawn now :-)
... we have also started construction on a patio area, so we can enjoy the outside a bit more when it gets warmer again. Kasper has been doing most of the work, even though I have helped a bit with raking the base and sand to level. See images below.
Another big weekend!
First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LISE for Saturday!!Friday I called the furniture store where we bought our new lounges to hear when they expected to deliver our lounges. As all things down under, someone had messed up at the store, so the "delivery order" had not been put in the system...However, we were able to schedule delivery for yesterday (Saturday), so the driver of the delivery truck would call us Saturday morning and give us a 2 hour window where we could expect delivery. Call came mid morning... delivery would be between 3.15 and 5.15 PM. Excellent.Thus Saturday morning/afternoon was spent re-locating our current lounge arrangement to the family room, where we now have reading/sun room. Here are a few images:
At around 5 PM we then received another call, the delivery truck had been delayed, so new arrival time would be 7.15PM. Alrighty then....
We reached 7.15, 7.30, 7.45, 8.00 PM, still no sign of the delivery truck... at 8.15 PM we received another call, "you are next, we'll be there in 45 min." OKI-DOKI.
Unbelievable.... anyways, they finally arrived at 9 PM with our lounges and our coffee table. And their truck was still half full.... so they still had more deliveries. Glad I'm not in that job.
Below are the images of unpacking and setting up our new lounge room :-)
Job done @ 10.30 PM. Different way to spend a Saturday night for sure....
We have had a busy couple of weeks.
My car, the Golf, had been for sale for approximately 2 months with only 1 interested person looking at it, so last week I decided to drop the price a little, -- and hey presto -- all of a sudden there were heaps of interest!!!
We had 2 sets of people looking at it Saturday, and the 2nd person bought the car!!! :-) On one hand, I am happy I got a good price for it, on the other hand I am sad to see my beloved Golf go... :-(
The roadworthy test has been done today, and the new owner will pick up his car tonight, so I've said my goodbyes by giving it its last clean and wash, and removed my St Kilda member stickers (new owner is a Geelong supporter (Australian Football teams)).
Saying goodbye to my Golf.
Kasper has also put his car up for sale. When it sells the plan is to get 1 new car - possibly a Honda CRV. So that means I am car-less :-( However, we will probably arrange it so that I will have the car 1 day a week for shopping etc. and Kasper will take the train to work that day.
We have also been cleaning out some of our old exercise gear, so both my crosstrainer and Kasper's racing bike + indoor trainer have been sold on Ebay. 
Last weekend we went shopping for new lounges (couches) and coffee table, as there are a lot of "end of financial year" deals going on at the moment. Our new lounges and coffee table will probably be delivered in a week or two, but I have included an image of one of the lounges below.
Colour is charcoal or "liquorice" so quite a different look to our current white lounges. Our white lounges will probably take new residence in our family room, as this room is currently very empty :-)
For the month of May, we decided to extend our monthly Kiva loan to a group of entrepreneurs in Peru, the Los Alegres De Anyaypampa Group lead by Margarita, who raise trout in their community river. They began with one deep pool and now they have 18. They first started selling their trout in the city of Ayacucho but now sell in their own community because the buyers come to them. Margarita formed a group with some of her relatives and they hope to keep growing the business. Her loan will be used to buy balanced feed for the trout.
The Los Alegres De Anyaypampa Group
If you want to help entrepreneurs through Kiva, go to their website: http://www.kiva.org/lend/198692
This year we had arranged a wine tour in the Yarra Valley for the Anzac Day public holiday Monday with Claus and Ane; the reason being that they are going back to Denmark in a few weeks, and they had yet to experience a wine tour even though they've been in Melbourne for almost 3 years! So we convinced them that they couldn't go back to Denmark without a wine tasting day in Yarra Valley.
Yarra Valley in Autumn colours
Bimse Tours had as per usual planned an itinerary (and checked that participating wineries were open for the day) of 6 wineries we were visiting. As we (Kasper & Yasmin) have been to Yarra Valley quite a few times, we tried to include a few wineries we had not visited before to make it a little interesting for us as well.
1st stop of the day was at Five Oaks Winery, which is a little family owned place close to Seville. It was one of the new wineries we had picked out for the day. 
They specialise in red Cab Sav wines (aussie slang for Cabernet Sauvignon), but I really liked their white Riesling, which was very fresh and lemony.
2nd stop for the day was Elmswood Estate, which we have visited many times before, just 5 minutes up the road. There is a fantastic view over the wines, and their wines are pretty amazing, especially their Pinot Noir and their sparkling Pinot Noir (sorry couldn't find link).
Enjoying the views at Elmswood Estate
The sparkling tasted so good that I momentarily forgot all about being the chauffeur for the day and swallowed the juice instead of spitting out!! ;-) Ups.
Wines at Elmswood
After Elmswood, we had a good 1/2 hour drive to our next stop, Rochford Winery - the 2nd new winery we were testing out for the day, which was also our lunch stop for the day. Rochford is one of the bigger wineries with both a cafe, a restaurant and a cellar door. As it is one of the bigger wineries, this is where a lot of groups come through as well, so the winery was very busy!
Their wines were generally disappointing, but their Rochford Latitude Chardonnay was pretty good with a smooth stone fruit and fig flavour to it. Mmmmm, love figs!
For lunch we shared two of their tasting platters, the cheese and antipasto, and they were both very nice with some good produce. However, their main meals were quite boring, and waiting time ended up being an hour before our mains arrived. Not happy. So we decided not to visit here again...
Next stop was just 5 minutes away, Domaine Chandon, which is also one of the bigger wineries in the Yarra Valley. Domaine Chandon specialise in sparkling Shiraz, which was the main wine we wanted to taste, however when we arrived the tasting bar was swamped with people, and we would have had to queue up for at least 1/2 hour to taste anything, so we decided to leave again without doing any tasting
:-(
Views at Domaine Chandon
Our 5th stop of the day was Balgownie Estate. We were really looking forward to this winery, as they had they best wines back when we visited in September 2008. However, we were quite disappointed this time around, as all their wines seemed to lack any real oumph!
Wine tasting at Balgownie Estate
The best of their wines was the Bendigo Shiraz. We also tried to get a coffee in their restaurant, but because they had just had an order of 20 coffees, we were told it would be a 15 minute wait... WHAT? The restaurant was not even 1/10 full -- imagine if it was full :-o Needless to say, we moved on without the afternoon coffee.
Our last stop of the day was De Bortoli Winery. It is always a pleasure to visit here. They have magnificent wines and the winery and view around are beautiful. As it was our last visit of the day, and the taste buds had already been through quite a workout, we only tasted a few of their wines. Claus decided to try all their dessert wines, and could not stop raving about Noble One, which is pretty amazing. As usual, I stocked up on my favourite sparkling -- the Emery Pink Moscato, yum.
After a successful last stop, we decided to have our afternoon coffee break in Yarra Glen at a small cafe before heading back to Melbourne. All in all a great day in the Yarra Valley, and I am sure Claus and Ane are happy they got to experience a wine tasting tour before they head back to Denmark. I certainly think they were inspired to do something similar in France or Italy when they are back in Europe...
