Snoskred – Life in the Country

So we’ve been in the new house for just over a month now. Before we moved we talked about having a house warming – we agreed that we would like to have one. Given my new love of planning and checklists I was excited to find a website that could help me with event planning.

Party planning can be a real headache. I’ve planned a lot of parties in my lifetime without checklists, without any kind of organisation, without much thought. Something always goes wrong. Now if it were just me, I’d be fine with it – but when it is a party I’ve invited people along so when things go wrong I tend to panic. Seriously.

In fact during our last dinner party – the first time we had my parents to the new house to eat, The Other Half said “We’re never doing this again” because he saw me freaking out. I was trying to do about 6 things at once. I think if I had a plan I would have a better chance of getting through it without those moments of panic.

So what kind of party am I going to have? I like something fairly informal, something that involves the barbecue, and we now have this fantastic balcony – check it out!

I think we’ll move all the plants to the further end away from the BBQ just for the night to create more room. The balcony is private and not overlooked at all. We’ve been repotting a lot of the plants over the last couple of weeks so it is a little messy. We still have some work to do out there. Even so the balcony has quickly become one of my favourite spaces and my office window looks out onto it. I can’t wait to have a party out there on a nice warm night.

There’s two weekends we can have the party on before the end of the year but one of them is only 2 weeks away so it might end up being in early December, but then everyone is doing holiday season things. We might leave it till January. I’ll talk it over with the other half.

If we can leave it until then, the site will be out of testing mode but in the meantime there’s plenty of party ideas there already, many of them added to the site by the creator. It looks incredible graphically – very polished. I truly love the design and there’s not too many websites I can say that about.

Developing a website is such an exciting process. I’ve done it myself a few times now. You want to release it to the world but you’re torn because you want everything to be ready. I think the folks at Best Party Ever have got the best of both worlds here by launching it a little early and getting people involved in the process. They are very open to new ideas and that’s how good sites become excellent sites.

As yet many of the features are still to be added but knowing the value of checklists in my life I can only say once the features are available this will be the most powerful party planning tool available on the net. I don’t have kids but if I did, I’d be using this resource constantly – birthday parties, sleepovers, all the things I used to love doing when I was young.

This week has been the hardest week for me. Once we got everything moved in here, I found myself just wanting to space out for a bit, watch a movie, have a rest. I’d been working so hard for so long without one day off. This was made even worse by the fact that two appliances we had ordered – our new Miele dishwasher and condenser dryer – had not arrived.

I had a little benchtop dishwasher which is half the size of a normal one, and I was trying to keep on top of the dishes as well as trying to clean the dishes unpacked from very inky newspaper. Note to ya’all – newspaper is not good for packing these days due to the amount of full color ads. My dishes were utterly filthy when I unpacked them. What was once white was now.. multicolored and ink stained. One advertiser had full page orange ads, which gave me fully orange plates!

I was washing all the clothes – then lugging them all downstairs to be dried in our old 4.5kg sensor dryer – then lugging them back upstairs to hang them up and iron them. The amount of lint that thing creates is incredible. We had to put it in the garage at the old house because there was no vent in the laundry. When we moved here we knew there was no vent so we made the decision to finally buy what we’d wanted for so long – a condenser dryer.

The new condenser dryer does not create anywhere near as much lint, and the even better news? You can reclaim the water from your washed clothes to water the plants. My first load in there which has just finished drying gave me back 2 litres of water, which I put on the lemon tree. That load had been washed at the high spin speed because when I put it on we didn’t know the appliances had arrived. On Saturday I’ll put some pics online of the appliances and reclaiming the water for those interested.

What all this has meant is, I have been so busy doing chores, unpacking, cooking, washing, drying, dishwashing, ironing and spacing out.. the amount of exercise I have been getting each day, even on the two days I took a bit of a break and watched a movie, is a lot more than I am used to. I have been falling into bed by 11:30pm and waking up every morning just before 7am. I am sleeping much better.

This week I saw The Sentinel with Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland – it was wonderful, I really enjoyed it. I bought In The Line Of Fire with Clint Eastwood because it was less than $10 and it was always a great movie – and it has a commentary track, so I was sold. Both of these were movies which involved the Secret Service and the President.

I also saw The Lake House with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock which I spent half the movie trying to work out where it was going and when it finally dawned on me it hit me like a tonne of bricks – warning ladies, have your tissues handy! And Keanu looks HOT. And acts like someone with more than half a brain, which is hugely attractive for a change!

Now that the appliances have arrived, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will be able to finish all the chores over the next 3 days or so, and then I can get started on my daily beach walks. We’re working on a menu plan, and I have cooked dinner every night this week. Plus I made a cake!

I am so ready to fall into bed tonight because I helped the other half carry those two really heavy appliances up the stairs, plus I had a full day of chores and grocery shopping on top of that!

Tomorrow I will be starting a new feature here on the blog, so look forward to that.

Warning, cute kitty photos ahead! After a few days of panic, hiding under the bed anytime they heard a noise, and treading cautiously around the house, the kitties are now happily queens of their domain. No longer scared and hiding, but exploring, napping and relaxing. As you see.

Interestingly there have been some changes with the Big Kitty’s behaviour. She is now growling like a dog. The Little Kitty has done this since she first arrived at our house, and it seems the Big Kitty thought it was a good idea. Also the big kitty is thrilled to have her stairs back!

This is the first time the little kitty has ever had stairs, and she’s not too sure about it. She cautiously walks down one at a time with a scared look on her face. I’m sure she’ll get used to them soon – and they might be good exercise for her seeing as she is getting a little.. rotund. Yes, that is her belly hanging through the hole in the kitty tower!

Just when I thought I could happily settle in to the new place, I remembered I have to go back and clean the old place. I haven’t replied to any comments since I think Friday last week, I’m sorry everyone but it will have to wait till I get home today or maybe even later in the week depending on how tired I am after all that cleaning.

I am hopeful I can complete the cleaning today thus giving me the rest of the week to start on unpacking here. However the Tuesday Think Tank will be posted later today.