Firstly, I’m working on packaging my handbag and purse patterns for selling wholesale to craft stores around this area. That needs for all the patterns to be folded, the pattern pieces to be printed and then folded and inserted into the pattern. Then they need to go into plastic zip lock bags and then the supplies that go with the pattern need to be inserted into the bag. I haven’t even printed out the pattern pieces yet. Hopefully I can get this project finished by Sunday.

Then the next project is reviewing my pricing. This project involves going through the listing of my products and, well, raising the price. But part of this project is figuring out what percentage to raise the prices by, whether to do a blanket price rise, or just certain products, or whether to raise some products more than others. You see these things that I have to contend with?! Then, coinciding with the raising of the prices, I want to set up a discount structure for certain products so that my lovely customers don’t feel too badly that I’ve raised my prices. I hate raising my prices. I hardly do it. One year I didn’t raise any prices at all because I was afraid there’d be a backlash (but there wasn’t). Thinking about the structure of how I will set up the discounts is making my head hurt. I just need to focus on raising the prices first and then think about the discount structure.

Then the next big project is getting our flat set up for my sewing machine. I’ve had 4 months without it and I’ve been surfing etsy and seeing all the wonderful things that people are making (some of which are making some lovely things with my patterns and supplies!) and I’m starting to get a little anxious about not being able to sew. So the long term project is getting the sewing machine all set up and being able to make a handful of bags. I figure, why not, if everyone else is making money out of the patterns and supplies they have purchased from me, why aren’t I doing the same?! And then along the way I want to start making some new tutorials for my website. This is one thing that has been lacking in my business and in 2009 my plan is to completely turn this around. I want to be adding tutorials, tips and ideas like a crazy person! (But of course the other two projects need to be done before I can start on the tutorials – let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Sarah).

I have been thinking a little bit about what renovations I’d like to do on our house in Tasmania. I’m not going to go overboard as I only have a limited amount of money to spend on the whole renovation (see wish list here) and plus I don’t want to do any renovations that aren’t completely necessary first-off. One of the things that isn’t completely necessary but something that I’d really like to do is to erect a sunroom off the back of the house. This area gets a lot of lovely sunlight during the day and it is so nice to sit in this space right here and get the warmth of the sun during the day. At the moment its just a covered over patio with old steel posts and laserlight sheeting but I want to replace the entire structure and put up glass screens so that the fresh breeze is blocked out. I am thinking of something like this:

Or something like this:

Keeping in mind that there will be a big 10m x 9m shed running parallel behind it, I will have to put up some kind of timber screening or something similar. Also, I’m not really sure how the sunroom will be laid out in relation to the bedroom window, bathroom window and the back door. The back door will probably lead straight out into the sunroom and there might have to be another glass door that leads from the sunroom to the back yard area. I don’t really want the windows to look straight out into the sunroom.

I found it very difficult to get a word in edgeways but I felt it necessary to defend myself. Yes the curtain rod did fall down while we were there and it was too high for us to put back up without a ladder. Yes we did put empty toilet rolls into the bin and yes there were bags of garden rubbish in the shed because that’s the ivy that we took down while we were there. She didn’t believe me that the carpets had been steam cleaned before we took possession and she seemed generally very adamant that the place was in quite a state. I had the phone on speaker phone and when I hung up from the call I looked at Tim and said “What is this woman on about?!”. We were both really confused, especially seeing as though the house wasn’t untidy. I thought that she was supposed to be on our side! Geez!! Not at all what we were expecting.

Then half an hour later she rang back and said that with the house in the state it is in she is thinking of offering the tenant 2 days rent-free as compensation for the tenant having to clean the place! We couldn’t believe it. Tim and I looked at each other like “umm no!!”. I cross my heart that there’s nothing wrong with the way the house has been presented – its tidy, left the way that we found it (which by the way was completely to our satisfaction, although there were little things hanging around – like the hairbrush and the toothpaste the woman mentioned). The house is completely inhabitable, its not a filfh pit and I guarantee you it is neater and tidier than previous rental houses that we’ve had to move into! As far as I’m concerned that place is ready to be moved into – even my sister (who is a princess) would move into that house. But anyway, being long-term renters ourselves, any renter knows that you always need to spend a day cleaning it before you move your stuff in! Or at least I do because I’m anal that way J Anyway, I called the woman back and told her not to offer any rent-free period to the tenant (especially seeing as though they hadn’t complained about anything and they hadn’t requested a rent-free period!) and told her that as a renter myself, I have never ever been handed a rent-free period on a platter by an agent – we have ALWAYS had to approach the agnet and ask for it! Throughout the conversation I had to raise my voice in order to be completely understood but I think by the time the conversation was over we were on the same page – but what an unexpected shit fight to get there!

Anyway, after bagging out the house, the upshot of it all is that she has found a tenant for us. He’s a 37 year old man with a 7 year old son and his sister is coming to live with them in the house. He’s a gardener and comes with good referenes. He pays his rent on time and looks after the houses that he’s lived in. He’ll move into the house in two days time.

Our house

When we eventually move into our Tasmanian house, we want to have several things done to make the house liveable and nice. These are the immediate renovations that need to be done to the house.

Necessities (things that need doing immediately):

1. Re-wire the entire house.
2. Knock down old barn style shed and attached room and patio and build a new colourbond shed. Perhaps also a little closed in conservatory in place of the current patio J Council approval needs to be sought before the new colourbond shed is built.
3. Fix the ceiling in the study.
4. Knock down the south facing deck and build a new shed with steel posts and treated wood.
5. Put in a laundry. There’s nothing in the laundry except for that horrible wooden tub. I’d like to see cupboards and benchtops with a new tub.
6. Knock out the bathroom and do an entire re-fit. Fill in the bathroom door and relocate the bathroom door so that it comes off the main hallway.
7. New front door/front entrance area.
8. Remove wallpaper from all walls and paint.
9. Check guttering and install new down pipes and storm water pipes.

Nicesities (things that would be nice but that really can wait for a little while):

1. New white kitchen with new appliances.
2. New built-ins in bedrooms, built-ins along hallway.
3. New off-peak heaters, wood heater in the lounge/dining.
4. Erect a sunroom off the back of the house to take advantage of the warm winter sun.

• Pruners/Snippers/Secatures – whatever you want to call them
• A small hand axe (if the base of the ivy is trunk-like)
• A small claw hammer
• Kerosene (2 litres)
• Glysophate (250ml)
• 5 litre spray bottle
• Gloves
• Mask
• Goggles

1. Pull down as much ivy as possible with your bare hands (put the gloves on first though!). Be careful because bits of the house will come off with the ivy, and there is a lot of dust that collects in that ivy, particularly if your ivy is dense (like ours, 12 inches deep in some areas!). Goggles or sunglasses is an absolute must for this job.
2. Take the secatures and starting at the base snip the smaller ‘tentacles’ off from the main trunk of the ivy. Continue doing this until you have snipped off all the shoots. Be careful of wires. We had an earth wire coming from the house down into the ground that we made sure to avoid cutting!
3. Make the poison concoction by mixing the Kerosene with the glysophate. Be sure to follow the instructions on the glysophate pack carefully.

4. 

   Mixing the poison

5. Take the axe and hack into the trunks. You want to make brand new cuts into the big trunks that are supplying the smaller tentacles.
6. As soon as you have hacked into the trunk spray some of the poison mixture onto the new cut. Soak it well. The reason for spraying it straight away after you have hacked into the trunk is because when the trunk knows that it has been cut, it will go into ‘survival’ mode by sucking its juices back into itself. By spraying the poison onto the cut immediately, the plant will suck the poison down with it. Good thinking huh?
7. Do a general spray of the ground around the base of the ivy just to make sure that any little shoots coming off are pretty much dead.
8. Before you start taking down the ivy, check the weather forecast to make sure that it won’t rain within 4 to 6 hours of spraying the poison onto the ivy. If it rains, its likely that the poison will be washed off. You need the poison to dry on the plant for it to be effective.
9. If the trunk starts shooting up new sprouts, spray more poison in it immediately. Each time new sprouts come up, spray it. If you keep doing this each time, to should die completely eventually!
10. Don’t clean out the spray bottle in the kitchen sink. It’ll stink the house out for days (yes one of us did this and it wasn’t me – all that space in the backyard and he chose to wash the poison bottle out in the kitchen sink … J )

So we got the hammer and started knocking out the small cupboard at the bottom. Then we found that it was basically impossible to remove the tub without damaging the wall and the pipes that are connected to the tub. Oh well. We’ll just get a tradesman in to knock it out and install a new tub for us. But apparently we need to keep the valuable rotten tub and have it sanded back and polished up and flog it for $400. I’ll keep you posted on how that one goes …

After we tried to remove the tub we had a shower and went to see the real estate agent about renting the house out. Apparently we’ll be given a list of the people that have made an application to rent the house and we can pick which one we want to live in the house. I’m hoping that a young couple with no pets and no children will want to rent the house – someone like … US!!!

It was weird to sleep in the house those two nights. Knowing that it is our house but then at the same time not really knowing the house and the different house noises it makes. I was a bit scared but slept reasonably well. The first night we slept on the floor. Not the most comfortable night’s sleep we’ve both had. The next night we slept on the little fold out day bed in the sunroom so we slept on that instead.

The main reason that we stayed down there for Monday and Tuesday was that there is a bunch of ivy on the side of the house (the south facing side) that has become way too dense that I wanted to get down asap. I have a gut feeling that it started to creep its way into the roof space. I hate ivy. So it was a good excuse to sleep in the house for a couple of nights and to take down the ivy as well.

We bought all the right tools from Mitre 10 (2 minutes drive down the road) and we set to work taking down the ivy from the side of the house. As you can see we had a bit of fun while doing it.

We poisoned that thing to within an inch of its life (I hope!). Hopefully it will stop growing and start dying now. Apparently we’ll have to constantly monitor the base of the ivy and put weed killer on it each time it shoots new sprouts. I’ll make another post shortly on how to remove ivy from the external walls of a house. If you have ivy, don’t let it grow, get rid of it asap, it will take over your wall and then start growing under the house and then it will start growing into the roof cavity of your house. As we were clipping away at the ivy on the wall we noticed that the ivy had grown around a pipe and that the pipe had a slight leak in it. The leak in the pipe combined with the denseness of the ivy in that particular area had caused the board to become rotted so it will have to be replaced.

Horses belong to next door neighbour

Our beautiful garden

We had been looking at buying a house in Sydney (in the Sutherland shire, 40 minutes south of Sydney), but even out that far we would still be paying $600,000 for a decent-sized house. Plus, the travel to and from the city I thought would really irk me, seeing as though I work in the city.

How did we come to the conclusion of purchasing a house in Tasmania? Well to be honest it was all my idea *folds arms proudly* – but it took my boyfriend of 8 years, Tim, some months to come around to the idea. When I mentioned it to him back in February 08 he was not impressed with the idea at all. Although he agreed that Tasmania was a nice place, he didn’t see it as a place to actually live in and an ultimatum was given that if I want to move to Tasmania then I’d be moving by myself. I spent a lot of weeks thinking about what I would do – it wasn’t worth the break up of our relationship, so I agreed with him that we should just look for houses in Sydney.

So we started looking. Each weekend going round to open homes, checking things out, what we can get for our money etc. After 3 weeks of open houses it occurred to us that we couldn’t get that much for our money’s worth. At that time Tim’s mother and father had just come back from a 3 week trip to Tasmania. They brought back real estate magazines which showed lovely old (and very new) houses, 3 and 4 bedrooms plus for the same price that you’d pay for a 2 bedroom fibro shack in Sydney. I had a flick through one of the magazines and said to Tim “Maybe we’re doing the wrong thing.” It was basically at that point that we decided to start looking at houses in Tasmania.

Over the course of the following few weekends, we’d take a flight from Sydney down to Tasmania. We started in areas near Launceston. Lovely areas such as Deloraine, Railton, Devenport and Elizabethtown. Then the next weekend we’d fly down again, checking out houses closer to Hobart such as Primrose Sands, Opossum Bay (40 minutes drive south east of Hobart) and then onto Cygnet and Huonville (25 minutes south west of Hobart in the Huon Valley).

One particular house in Huonville that we looked at caught our attention, it was quite drab inside but the outside was just so sweet, the gardens were amazing and the location was hard to beat (just a minute’s walk to the main street in Huonville). We went back to look at the house a second time the following weekend. We got a builder to go through the house with us and provide us with a quote for how much it would cost to get the inside looking sweet. A week and a half later we made an offer on the house. Negotiations went on for about a week and then we settled on a final price. That was about 28 days ago and the house settled just this past Monday 30 June 08. Yay!

We won’t be moving into the house just yet. The company that I run has a major show coming up that I need to organise and also we have some furniture and other posessions that we need to get rid of. But we’ll rent it out to help us pay the mortgage for a while. And then when we’re ready to move down, away we’ll go!