It's been a bit of a wet and cold winter in Melbourne this year, so we are starting to look forward to better weather and warmer temperatures. According to the papers, it's been Melbourne's wettest winter in a decade, which also means it is great for our newly planted lawn (out front) which is looking lush and green.
The winter has given us a chance to update the garden a bit with an outdoor sitting area, which is now looking great! Now we only need to plant a bit of lawn around it, and in another 3-4 weeks, we will have a great back garden, just in time for better weather so we can sit outside and enjoy :-)
Kasper has caught a bit of the travel bug at the moment, as he is working in Sydney every week from Monday to Wednesday, and in Melbourne Thursday and Friday. On one of his many trips, he realised that he could not read the departure boards without walking really close, so as a result now has new glasses!! Very classy :-)
It has been a bit quiet at my work with not many houses being sold across Melbourne, but according to my colleagues it is normal for this time of the year. Apparently sales should pick up when the weather gets a bit better again. So I've had no sales for the past month, which is a bit annoying, but as a good friend of mine says: "It's a numbers game". So hopefully a couple of my good leads will eventuate in a sale soon :-)
On Friday, after 5 weeks of anticipation, I finally h
ad my BRAND NEW car delivered :-) :-) It's a Mazda 3 hatchback, and it's a fantastic little car... Pretty cool colour too - it's called gunmetal blue. Kasper is also excited to have his 4WD back for himself, and even better we each save around 4-5 hrs a week playing chauffeur for each other - oh, they joys of having 2 cars!
Apart from that, we have gone into planning Christmas and New Years, as we are expecting 1st time visitors from Denmark, so Bimse Tours is busy planning a schedule including the most important attractions, which would of course include the Opera House in Sydney, the great ocean road, Yarra Valley and an area called the Pyrenees, which is also a wine producing area in northern Victoria known for especially their Shiraz wines :-)
Winter has come to Melbourne... the last few weeks we have had 12-15 degrees during the day, and between 2-5 at night, so quite cold! And in June we got more rain than in the same period the previous 3 years, so good news for our lawn and water storages.
Our garden make-over is slowly taking shape. Even though it looks like it's Kasper doing all the work in the pictures, I actually moved 1 ton of pavers from the nature strip out front to the back yard on Thursday afternoon!!!! And I've been sore in my back and hamstrings up until today...
As you can see in the pictures, it is looking good, and we are looking forward to the weather getting a bit warmer so we can get into the garden and enjoy the fruits of our hard labour!
I'd thought that you might want to see a few images of my "new office", so here you are. I sold my first house last weekend - wuuuhuuu, and have a couple of other good leads, so hopefully I can make it two in my first month! :-)
The scissors came out the other day at the hairdressers.... my hair was looking like something belonging to a person stranded on a deserted island for 6 months, so a good 30 cm was chopped off!!! What a great feeling - I had been sick of the long hair for a good 4-5 months, so it was about time too... Here's the result :-)
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 :-)
The You Yangs rise about 350 meters, and offers good views towards Geelong and the Bay. We drove up to the Turntable, and mounted the dogs for a brisk walk in the picturesque surroundings.
