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!