My pics from Sherbrook Forest etc

I've started a photoblog, currently I'm posting a photo a day, this series of Sherwood Forest.

craig.jpg

craig.jpg
Originally uploaded by Tracey & Craig Ambrose.

We went to visit Sherwood Forest in the Dandenongs yesturday and I snapped this quick shot of Craig and then had a little fiddle with it in Photoshop CS (tm)

Roof!

We have just been informed that the last roof has gone up in Earthsong. This is actually the roof that covers our apartment block which means our apartment has a roof! It's very exciting for us and hopefully we will have some photos soon!

Yay, new pics!

*bubbling excitment* we finally have some wonderful new pics of the construction of our Earthsong home. Patrick climbed the talest tree he could find to snap these.






















So ours is the second floor apartment on the right











These are apartments 27-31 being built (ours is 28)

All done

Well, we have paid the final part of our deposit. We have heard from our brocker that we have green light on the loan approval so now all we have left to do is wait until the apartment is finished...

(have I mentioned how much I hate waiting for things?)

Settled at last!

Well its official - Craig and I are now compleatly homeless. Our house settled yesturday morning (Monday) at 11.30am, there are still nigly things to sort out monies wise.

We ended up settling the road issue with a 50/50 split, not ideal but better then what they were trying to get *grrr*

In brighter news, Lippy has some more photos for us of the construction so as soon as she is able to scan them I will upload them to the flickr site :)

So why is it things have to go sour?

Things were going so well, you will note the excitement and happyness in my last post and now the frustration and saddness!

Remember how I said "our settlement WILL got through on Friday" well it's Friday, its 30mins after settlement was due to happen and it ain't happanin, in fact the whole entire sale might go compleatly bust and its all crap! :(

Why you ask? Well the purchasers have tried to wriggle out of the deal in regards to payment of a cuncil road scheme, because it wasn't put in the contract, it was just a verbal understanding between all parties, they have been listening to a stupid lawyer wo has said something like "hay you know you don't actually have to pay this, verbal deal or not" and so they have decdided now that they are not going to honour the verbal deal and are trying to make us pay for the $10k+ and its NOT RIGHT! they agreed, we set the price on that agreement and now its going to cost us a fucking fortune because we either have to pay the money or take them to court and end up paying more! We were nice to them, we bloody well gave them the time they needed to get their finances in order, we could have sold the house a dozen times over in the last month but we believed everyone was happy and all was good, we were all dealing wit each other in a nice happy way and then sddenly they do this! Everyone is telling me it's ok, don't worry about, I'm sure things will work out just fine, see we got them to admit they are pulling a dodgy, but did anyone get it in writting again? NO and so we are screwed and maybe things will work out - fine, great, grand but what if it doesn't? I want to sell my bloody house! I don't want to go through all of this again, I want it over and done with, I want to be settled and done.

But that's not all folks - our brocker in NZ is crap and only sent us the happy page 1 of a fax from the mortgage lenders, he forgot somehow to include page 2 that listed 12 conditions that had to be met before the loan will be okayed, many of which they should have had from him already but when I contact them, I discovered they had basicaly nothing, our brocker pissed off on holidas for a week (which I discovered after ringing his mobile and being told NOT to leave a message). So I ran around collecting documents again, signing documents I had never even seen before and getting really cross with incompitant people who are supposed to be there to make my life easier! grrr (can you tell I'm not a happy girl today?)

Well I shall go before I say something I'll regret! :(

And we're off...sort of

SO! We have now signed our contract with Earthsong for our appartment, had it witnessed by a JP and first thing Monday morning it goes into an express post envelope to New Zealand. We have approval in principle for our loan, settlement for the sale of our hurstbridge house WILL be going through this Friday (19th May) and all we need to do now is get a cheque for NZ$60,000 for our deposit. Yay! things are actually really really happening. Craig will be able to give notice soon and start working for himself again (which is really really great), and within about 2 months from now we will be compleatly ready to leave at the drop of a hat (our appartment will be ready in 7 months).

Quick update

Craig and I had fun on Saturday, we went down to the park armed with red wool, a tap measure, tent pegs and house plans and created a scale version of our apartment (sorry I forgot to take the camera so no pics). It was a really fun experiement and really helped to give us a true idea of the size of our apartment which was fantastic. We now have a better idea of how much space we really have to play with, some further realisitc storage ideas and wonderful 3D visuals of how to play with the spaces - so again our excitment is mounting and Decemeber seems a lifetime away (but it's May now so I can start saying it's only 7 months away!)

There has been a short delay with true finality (not including settlement) on our Hurstbridge house, the people have had to delay things until the 5th as they haven't recieved unconditional approval for their loan yet. Which really sucks for us because if they pull out now then we get didly! *grrr*

We had our forms all ready to send off to Earthsong and then realised that they had to be witnessed by a JP - oops, we were going to do it yesturday but forgot and now Craig is in Perth for the week (stupid work) so it will have to be delayed until next week *sigh* oh well if we get delayed any further we will be able to pay the full 20% in one go (providing our house settles on the 19th May as planed).

We have all the necissary paperwork to hand over to our NZ brocker, why he couldn't give us the paperwork to fill in and arrange at the start is beyond me, would have made the entire thing go much faster but instead the banks have looked at Earthsong, while we twidled our thumbs, they like it, now the brocker sends us the paper work (not specific to one bank thier own companies standard forms for all the banks use) and so while we gather the required info the banks twidle their thumbs *sigh*

What other news??? I've taken a casual job at Pumpkin Patch, probably not the smartest thing to do as it is taxing my energy more then I thought it would but I needed something to do that was useful, and I'm enjoying it so far.

Ok this is getting far to grumpy a post for my liking - you'll have to forgive me but Craig left at 6am and it's now 7.30am and he's gone most likely for the week and I'm sad :(

Take a deep breath and relax

sooooooooooooooo, over the last couple of months we have been busily doing a great many things, experienced a huge amount of emotional rollercoastering, stressed, jumped for joy and generally been run off our feet. Now we get to relax a little, why?

1. Rowany Festival is now over!
We now have our very own "on my way to festival" story, ours involves blowing a head gasket, a dear friend driving for 5 hours just to pick us up (from Yass to Holbrook and back again). Our car is still in Holbrook and will be undergoing repairs and will stay there until my dad gets around to picking it up - I am now officially and completely over the idea of owning my own car!
But... Festival was great fun, I didn't have time to do half the things I wanted to do but that's a good thing, I slept a lot, and Craig shot people a lot, so much fun was had by all :-)
Craig received his Award of Arms (AOA) so he is now officially 'Not Lord Emlyn ap Rhyss' (very funny in-joke that I will not bother to explain). All the pics I took from the event are on my flickr site (see link into title)

2. We have sold our house!
A got a call from the realestate agent on Good Friday with confirmation of an offer, we signed all the paper work yesterday, the deposit will be paid on this coming Monday and settle on 17th May. It is contingent on a building inspection to be done today - only way it will fall through is if the house is structurally unsound or it has termites, and as far as we know non of this is the case, thus we have sold our house :-)

Now all we need is the NZ banks to move faster, approve our loan so that we can complete our transactions, Craig can start working for himself and we can sit back and relax a little.

Other very cool thing for us at the moment is that while we have been waiting for our investment money to get transferred into our account so we can pay Earthsong our deposit (honestly, in this day and age of computer transactions why does it take them weeks to transfer the money!) but I was say.... good thing is that the NZ dollar is weakening which has cut another $10k off our mortgage - not good for New Zealand but good for us right now, keep dropping you'll recover later :-)

So for the most part things are really moving at the moment. I have my usual stress attacks - like will I have enough space in my new kitchen, are we going to have enough space in general, how am I going to deal with the total lack of space I have here with my inlaws (who are amazing and wonderful people and I only get stressed and upset when I'm grumpy with Craig and the world and want to be on my own but can't because we only have 1 room).

Our original plan was to live here for only about 3 or 4 (at the most) months while we finalised bank loan stuff and Craig got set up, then we were going to fly off into the sunset and set up a temporary home in an Earthsong rental, but now, we are set to be here until our apartment is completed in December. Reasoning being that Carol and Ian are going for a holiday to the Greek Isles in September and thus we are looking after their house and Craig's brother and so there is no point in moving into a rental (that may or may not be available then) for only 3 months *sigh, stress, cry, moan, grumble, stress some more, cry some more, sigh again and try to deal*

And that is about all I have for you all right now

Please Sign

A friend Roie pointed me at this please read and sign the petition

17-year old Nazanin killed a man, one of three who was trying to rape her and her neice. Apparently, Iran has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in which it agreed not to execute anyone under the age of 18 (I haven't checked this) but that didn't stop her being sentenced to death by hanging for defending herself - Nazanin was 18 by the time she reached the trial.

Ohh so exciting

Not only is it official that our house is on the market, but we already have some very keen buyers interested. Unfortuatly I wasn't quite quick enough and hadn't arranged the section 32 just yet so there will now be a short delay.

I really hadn't expected things to be happening so fast - we spoke with the agent on Saturday, it went onto the websites on Monday and the paper yesturday (Wednesday), we had only just popped over late last night to do some final cleaning and put some things that we had just dumped in the lounge away, the wardrobe door had only be reinstalled yesturday - and I simply had not realised anyone would have been through the yet!

I don't think anyone has actually put in an offer, the are waiting to see the section 32 first, but if there are interested buyers then that's really good news for us (bidding war anyone??).

I'd like to not have to think about any of this realy until after Easter, but it would be a great buzz non-the-less if we could go away for Easter knowing that we had a buyer :-)

The funds from our investment have transferred out and we are just waiting for them to clear in our access account, then we can arrange the initial deposit to Earthsong and send back all the forms to fully and compleatly secure our new home.

We have had some positive mumblings from our new brocker so here's hopeing we have more success with the banks then we did with Prometheus - oh and apparently the NZ$ has fallen again making the AU$ stronger which is great news for us right now.

It's Official

Our house is now officially on sale:
Domain
Realestate.com

Phone call

I just got off the phone to Lippy in Earthsong and now I'm a little sad. Talking to her and hearing all about some of the wonderful community things that are happening in Earthsong, hearing about what happens in meetings (the little details that don't make it into the minutes), coupled with my own daydreams just makes me want to be there all the more. There are all these things happening without me, decisions are being made, fun is being had and friendships being made that I have to wait for an unspecified amount of time to be a part of *sigh* I know I know, good things come to those who wait, patience is a virtue, focus on the good things you have right now, blady baldy blah blah *grin*

Ok focus on the good things - focus on my pottery classes! 1 class down and I'm hooked. If I actually create anything interesting I'll take a pic otherwise I'll just hide them in a box in a dark place :-)

Loan application dramas

Unfortunatly Prometheus, the ethical investment company recomended to us, have declined our application, simply because they have had an influx of applications from Earthsong purchasers and believe that they are over comitting themselves to the project especially since the interests rates in NZ are set to come down - which is great for us.

We have made contact with a brocker in Auckland who seems very keen and believes he will have no problem getting us the funding we would like. We contacted him on Friday afternoon, emailed him some further info and he will be getting back to us either today or Monday to let us know what he had found out and so forth. I have confidence in this guy and believe that we will actually get a better deal and a better interest rate doing things through the banks rather then using Prometheus.

Earthsong have sent us our legal/financial contract type stuff, it will hopefully arrive in the next few days so things have really heated up here. A property has become available for rent but unfortunatly it is much too soon for us to take advantage of at the moment, a pity but ahh well these things happen. There may also be a short delay in the completion of our appartment, my parents have now built three houses and none of them ran right to schedule so I had been expecting some delays - isn't life much more pleasent when you expect these things :-)

House For Sale

We have met with the Real Estate agent in Hurstbridge and our house will be listed for sale this week.

The decision has been made not to paint or do anything to the house as the agent does not believe it will raise the properties value enough to even recoup the costs. Although I was orginally very keen on the idea of painting the place and doing some gardening there, I am now very pleased that I will not have to do anything. The house can stay just as it is and still get us the same return.

Apparently houses are selling like hotcakes in Hurstbridge at the moment and the agent believes our place will sell very quickly - I hope he's right!

Our life in a box

So our life (or at least the material possesion part of it as my Shazza keeps reminding me), so far fits into half a container and involves exactly 60 parcels and I have the photos to prove it!

Yes we have moved out of our appartment and into Craig's mums. The shipping company came on Saturday morning and collected everything that wasn't coming to Craig's mums with us. It will be stored until we have everything sorted out and a place to live in Earthsong. Wow!

My Book Collection

Here is a link to my online book catalog

A random selection also now appears down the side of this screen :-)

Bootlace

I have just recieved 2 quotes for us to ship Bootlace to New Zealand, $700 and $1225! Considering our tickets will only cost about $220 each I'm in total shock. I'm glad I don't have to go through the crap that he will have to undergo, we will be seperated for 3 days before the flight and we want even be able to see him again until we arrive in Auckland :(

Well, at least he can come :-)

There was movement in the station

So things seem to actually be happening!

Craig and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary yesterday. We had originally planned on going out to the Dandenongs to have dinner at the restaurant we had dinner on our wedding night, it all sounded very romantic, but then after a little discussion we decided that all we really wanted to do was get stuck into packing. So I cooked us a yummy redwine casserole, he gave me a bunch of roses *grin* and we had a lovely night teasing each other, sorting through our life and putting it into boxes.

So what is happening, why the packing?
The shipping company that will be sending our things to Auckland is going to store all of our stuff between now and that faithful day. They will arrive on Saturday to collect our well packed life and taking it away for up to 9 months (hopefully less then that). In the mean time we will be moving in with Craig's mum in Balwyn.

Yes, yes, we did originally say that we would move back into Hurstbridge but when you have downsized to a 2 bedroom 1 study apartment and then downsized again ready for a studio apartment in another country, you kind of end up with very little stuff, and serioulsy little when it comes to trying to furnish a 3 bedroom house. So we have decided that our life would be much easier if we stored our stuff and just took the basics that we need to Balwyn. This way our Hurstbridge house can be painted and look fresh and clean for prospective buyers.

The only problem with this plan is there is lots to do, I'm still not quite as fit and healthy as I like to pretend (and aside from finding packing to be very daunting on my own), and I simply get overwhelmed with the actual physical stuff. But on the plus side, I have organised all the power, telephone, internet, water, mail redirection etc etc etc that all needs to be done (and burned mp3's of a bunch of music, just in case the shipping container sinks), so things are getting done, you just can't see them like you can piles of boxes :-)