We are the Proud Owners of THE UGLIEST CARPET EVER!

The carpet to end all carpet, being installed.

The $8 bowls in desperate need of an oily drink.

Carpet from the bedrooms - chook house insulation

The photo really doesn't do the true fugly nature of the carpet any favours, it really tones it down. Somewhere there is an RSL sadly lamenting the carpet someone stole and gave to us. A spent the afternoon putting it down in the strangest rumpus room ever. It makes it look much better, despite the frighteningly ugly overtures. We are planning to accessorise with the ugliest sofa bed ever, bought at Kingston tip shop in perfect condition (it's so ugly no one would go near it) and the worst curtains in this hemisphere (and quite possibly the entire universe). We decided to make the most of these unimaginably hideous furnishings by putting them all together. WAIT TIL YOU SEE IT! In The Castle they had the 'Pool Room', at our place we have THE UGLY ROOM!

On a far less garish note, I found three myrtle, rough edged bowls at vinnies for the grand total of $8. I spent a good half hour wiping them clean because they had something very sticky on them. I suspect the previous owner over oiled them with the wrong oil and then they gathered dust. I used copious amounts of eucalyptus oil to remove the black sticky layer and then equally copious quantities of eco friendly detergent to get the oil off. The grain of the wood is gorgeous, and once they get some more oil on them they're gonna be beautiful!

Moving In

A took to whipper snippering the jungle in the garden and after three days (two of those full work days) he managed to relocate a lawn. Then he tidied it up with our new mower. It looks lovely and tidy and it'd getting greener every day, it was all yellow and dead looking after being covered with layers of dead grass. It took Stylish and I a few hours to rake it all up and A and Spikee were madly making our piles of raked grass into giant piles along the back fence. We were wondering what to do with it all but we decided that it will be perfect for the chooks.

Stylish and A went out in the "to be chook shed" yesterday and insulated it using all the carpet they ripped up from in the bedrooms. Our chooks will be lovely and warm in winter and nice and cool in summer. They're the only family members I want living near that festy carpet though.

We've been slowly unpacking everything and moving is over the last week. We got heaps done yesterday and even set up a dining area and unpacked then put all the clothes away. It's starting to really feel like home!

The plan is to get everything unpacked so the rumpus room can be set up. This is happening at the same time as we get chooks, the cat comes home, and family life continues! We're looking at making a green house too. We thought about buying a kit but that would cost $1000, or there's the poly tunnel option, but they don't look very sturdy and sturdiness is a must when you house share with three wild and unschooled children. Well, two are wild and the third is working on it.

Today I'm going to finish sanding the mantle piece hopefully, then we can varnish it an put some pictures up there, that's one of those finishing touches that really makes a place feel like home. A is planning to make dhal to help ease the pain of leaving Sydney's Indian food. I might look at making some chapati to go with it!

We Made it!

We've now been in Antarctica for thirteen days now and seen several seasons already. From gorgeous summery days to quite chilly days with mist covering the top of the giant hill we look out our window on!. Today when we left home it was a gorgeous sunny day and by this evening when we returned home it was raining and you couldn't see the mountains for mist.

Our house is far better than I remembered and I'm pleased to report that the family are all happy and settling in well. We're still unpacking things and sorting out where everything lives, and the kitchen is proving a challenge because the Black Spot had quite a large kitchen with plenty storage and bench space but there is very little bench space and the cupboards.

When we arrived we ripped up a bit of the manky grey carpet in the bedrooms and were happy to discover good quality floor boards in them all, and the same in the kitchen, hidden underneath revolting lino. Actually, WE didn't rip anything up, A and Stylish did all the ripping, Angus, Spikee and I chased the pink monsters away (to avoid inhaling dust). Stay tuned because I'll put A on here to detail the sanding and varnishing.

We've started collecting power tools and plants. We now own a sander, a drill, a wheel barrow, a ladder, a beer making kit (A's birthday present) a whipper snipper, a fig tree and a blueberry bush!

I've been learning to light fires in the fire place even though we really don't need one lit tonight we have one going just because it's so nice to be able to have one! There's quite an art to it, or so I discovered after a bit of trial and error. I've played with plenty fires, stoked them, added wood, blown air on them etc, but never actually LIT one and started it from scratch.

Speaking of fires ... I'm a little perturbed by the similarities between the selling of firewood and the sale of illegal substances. It seems to me that both drug dealers and fire wood sellers are doing it to earn "a little cash on the side", you never know if you can trust them, you never know if what you're buying is the correct weight, if it's too wet or too dry or if it will burn! You never know if they'll show up on time or three hours late, they get shifty eyes when they're telling you about their wares, mates give you the number of their dealer and say "tell them I sent you" . And when one says that their stock comes from an eco friendly source??? Uh ha. And the last ounce of dope I bought was legally grown in the Himalayas and fertilised with the business of grain fed pink yaks.

The Evidence and a link

A LINK TO THE TALE OF OUR ROAD TRIP SOUTH

Welcome to The Black Spot. Would YOU rent this property? Probably not, unless the mould had been concealed underneath cheap paint.

We're On Our Way to Antarctica!

We're currently in a motel in Melbourne enjoying cable tv and internet. Tomorrow we leave the mainland and head straight for Tassie on The Spirit Of Tasmania. Since leaving Mould Hold, or The Black Spot as Stylish named it, we've spent a week in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney being tourists in our home town, and a night in Canberra, a night in Albury, tonight we're in Melbourne and tomorrow on the boat. Then a night at A's parent's house before we finally go to OUR HOUSE!!!

The placenta is traveling well, it's far less argumentative than the children, and experiences far less reflux than the baby. I can't believe we've come 1000 km in three days and by the time we get to Tassie we'll have seen four states in a week. I'm pretty desperate to get "home" and eat something cooked by us, not that I'm complaining about the lack of washing up or anything, but home cooked food is so much nicer, not to mention healthier.

We're pretty sure the power, water, phone and net are organised, but we're still unsure what sort of net we'll be able to get. A's family have been over to our house and mown the lawns, cleaned the fireplace, organised the electricity (which we needed an electrician for) and left us a couch. We're very glad about the couch because we actually don't own one. We didn't even have a loungeroom at Mould Hold.

Speaking of Mould Hold, the property manager is trying to get us to pay for the mould damage! I'm very keen for him to take me to court because I'd love to show the rental tribunal all the photos and discuss how he refused to return my calls when I rang to tell him about the problems with the property, from the mould to a broken window, cockroaches, rats, and a blocked drain in the side passage which prevented the bathroom sink from draining and the foul smell coming from the toilet. Not to mention the five days in the middle of winter with a new born baby when we had to stay at my sister's house because there was no electricity. Now, I know I'm not a bottle feeder or anything like that, but I'm a cloth nappy mama and we couldn't wash nappies or heat the house and we had no hot water either. So. Giampaolo, if you read this, we'd love it if you could take us to the tribunal. We'd really love it. Especially since we said you could keep our bond due to some very slight damage to the kitchen bench and the need to steam clean the carpet.

Photos

The Plans

So plans are as follows. Leave the Mould Hold on the 8th, stay in Sydney for another 5 or 6 days (depending on the available accommodation at destination B). Leave early in the morning and travel to Canberra, spend a few hours letting the kids run amok at Questacon, maybe do the National Gallery too. Stay the night in the ACT then make a run for Melbourne the next day.

The placenta will travel with us. We decided it is too much of a risk to trust an airline with it.

We located a cat box in the shed, now I just need to find out whether it's an acceptable one to post the moor unsuspecting cat to Antarctica in.