My New House - Finished!

Well - I have arrived in Blenheim - been here for one week now, and G J Gardner Homes have completed my home in record time. One month early. I waited until today to take the photos as I knew it would look much better once the kitchen was complete and the tiling and carpet was down. I was right.

Today G J's handed over my house and gave me the keys to the front door. They came in a black velvet case like a jewellery box, and they were gold!! They also gave me a pink remote and a black remote for the garage door, and showed me how to use the remote control for the heatpump/aircon!

I guess if I were married, the 'wife' would get the pink remote, and the hubby the black!! I'm trying to work out which one I should use!

So onto the photos for a tour around my new house...

First up is the dining/lounge area which overlooks the vineyard. For those wanting to know which vineyard it is - it's Wild South. Go buy a bottle in the supermarket - you will not regret it..



The next is the kitchen...



And another one...


For those who knew me in my old house, yes, the kitchen is practically the same, except I designed it slightly better this time round so it's a bit more practical. Still, I'm going to have too much kitchen stuff for the kitchen, so I'm going to have to get rid of lots I don't use.

Here's another pic of the dining/lounge area overlooking the vineyard, but you can also see the second lounge on the left. I'll be using this room as a den/library/tv room as it will be easy to heat in the winter.



This is the second lounge, or rather, the room I will use as my den/library as above. You can see the views over the vineyard and the mountains to the south. Molesworth Station is somewhere there in that direction!



The front door, and flow into the living areas, and the door to the libray/den/second lounge.



This is the hall cupboards - the small hallway leading to the other end of the house where the bedrooms/bathrooms are. It's just out by the kitchen. It's a huge cupoard with great shelving and also the hot water cupboard. I may use one of the shelves for crocker from the kitchen seeing it's so close - not sure yet.



The small hallway leading to the rest of the house...



My bedroom - looking out over the vineyard and the Richmond Ranges. I can see Mt Riley and Mt Fishtail from the bedroom and lounges. Eventually there will be a deck out there but patience, patience!



The ensuite off my main bedroom...



The wardrobe off the main bedroom - Im quite pleased with this as it's very funtional. Just as well I don't have to share it with anyone as it's only big enough for my clothes! I have put my sports gear in there already simply because I'm not using them at present due to my sprained ankle!



The insanely big main bathroom. The reason this happened, is that originally the toilet was going to be in a separate room. However, to save costs we just took the wall out and made a bathroom with the toilet in there, seeing I already had another toilet in the ensuite. However, neither I never really thought about it, and we could have moved the wall up a bit to make bedroom 2 bigger. The only thing I wish was he vanity was bigger - a double vanity instead of a single. However, it's a minor detail and something can be changed later if I wish.



Another view of the insanely big bathroom! Anyone coming to stay will be the ones using this bathroom!



Lastly bedroom 3 which is the guest bedroom, which overlooks the vineyard and south to the mountains. No curtains there yet but will get onto it pronto.



I did take a photo of bedroom 2 but it didn't turn out - wasn't watching what I was doing closely enough - but it's about the same size as bedroom 3 just on the other side of the house.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!!

Another Blonde Moment

Yep - even though I dye my hair brunette, I'm still having blonde moments. It's a worry. My latest one involves food.

I'm on a diet at the moment - trying to shift the Christmas and pre Christmas tyre that one manages to put on every year. I've decided that there will be no Christmas food or drink in 2010. Lettuce and water only.

Anyway - I'm doing the Optifast diet plan. It's a replacement meal plan, but I am only replacing two meals a day (Breakfast and lunch). Meals come in 3 different forms, a shake, a bar, or some soup. I have all three to divvy it up a bit so I don't get bored, however, being summer I'm finding the soup a bit 'hot' to have.

As I'm sort of travelling also, I take all the sachets/bars out of the boxes and put them in one bag as room is at a premium.



I like the vanilla shakes at breakfast. To make them up, I add two teaspoons of instant coffee to the water (iced), then add the sachet powder. Shake it all up and I get a nice vanilla coffee for breakfast. It's quite a nice start to the day and you don't get hungry on it, providing you keep drinking water, or tea throughout the morning. You can buy coffee flavoured shakes, but they only come in packs of eight, and when you buy in packs of 21, it's much much cheaper. So this is why I do it this way.



Above is what the sachet looks like - quite plain.

Anyway - the other morning, I got up half asleep, grabbed the pack of vanilla shake. Went out to the kitchen. Added iced water to the shaker, added two tsps of coffee to the water, then added the vanilla sachet. Shook it alllllllll up. Poured it out. It looked fine.

Sip

Hmmmmmm it really doesn't taste right today but my brain couldn't register what was wrong. Perhaps it's different because I went out for dinner the night before and had pavlova, and now my taste buds are all up the wonk? So I tried it again

A Big mouthful that time! Ewwwwww, this really wasn't good, but finally my brain registered what it was...

It was this...



In my half awake state, I had grabbed the packet without looking at what I had grabbed!

Iced chicken soup with coffee? I wouldn't recommend it - ever!

But if it's any consolation - the packets do look similar.. Here they are side by side...



Oh, and I tipped it out and started again!!!