Hi all,
Just thought I'd post a little picture from our dinner tonight, we did homemade Peking Duck Pancakes, and it was YUM :-)
It seems it has finally become spring with better weather and temperatures above 20, so we are now starting to enjoy the new garden, which by the way is looking great as well :-)
Yesterday, we had our first BBQ session of the season with some yummy lamb chops served with Greek potatoes and Greek salad - does not get much better than that! There is something about the taste of BBQ meat, just really delicious so, it is great that the weather is finally good enough for it!
Sales seems to have picked up as well (for me Yasmin). After having a month or so without selling anything, I have sold one per week for the last 5 weeks, which is not too bad at all :-)
Kasper had a few days off this week because it was public holiday in Sydney, so he's been relaxing in Melbourne Monday to Wednesday, but working Thursday and Friday. However, I think we was very happy with the few days off - he has spent the time well and have managed to set up our new office (we went power shopping in Ikea Tuesday morning) with 2 new desks. The old desk has become my sewing table and is now in the guest room, which has also gone through a clean up so that we are now ready for our overseas guests arriving in December :-)
He somehow also managed to test the new patio enjoying some tanning on one of our recliners (all this while wifey was at work...) so looking nice and tanned now!
We have also been busy planning some day trips for our visitors, so we are really looking forward to their arrival now. You will have to check back to see what we get up to then....
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....
Yesterday, we had our first BBQ session of the season with some yummy lamb chops served with Greek potatoes and Greek salad - does not get much better than that! There is something about the taste of BBQ meat, just really delicious so, it is great that the weather is finally good enough for it!
