More boring housework

This week Debbie and I went up to Fremantle for the day whilst the kids were at school. We wandered around the shops and finally found Myer quite by accident (we've looked for it every time we've been there before but never found it). They had a sale on so Nakita gained some new clothes (Tallulah is still too picky) and then we had a nose around the perfumes before getting told off by a hoity toity sales assistant. We then had dinner at the Little Creatures Brewery (wierd menu but we found something we liked) and I picked up a crate of stubbies (pils). Good day out.

The socket situation, especially in the kitchen, has really got me down. We only have two useable sockets so, if the breadmaker is on, we're down to one for 4 hours !! For some reason most Ozzie houses only have one double socket in each room and it's awful, extension leads trail everywhere ! The final straw this week was when the slow cooker and breadmaker were both on and Paul had to plug the kettle in on top of the fridge freezer - really dangerous. So today he's having lots more extra sockets put in - about time too.

In the fruit garden the trees are all finally planted. We just need to mulch the soil and put the wires up for the cherry and it's a job that can be ticked off. I'll then take a pic so you can see "before" and "after". Hopefully you'll see a difference. It will take a good few years before we can pick the fruit, but I look forward to it and a reduction in our food bill !

We've been checking out home opens this weekend too, just for ideas about what we can do with our house, today we saw one with a nice fireplace so now I'm undecided about whether to go for a gas fire or woodburner. Paul is still stuck on a woodburner so we'll have to have a nose around the shops and see. The shops are only open Monday to Friday office hours (when Paul's at work) and a Saturday morning so we'll have to get out early on Saturday. The shop hours do annoy me - if you work full time you have no real chance of wandering around the shops in winter, hopefully WA will pull themselves out of the dark ages soon. They're the only state that have these laws.

One thing the homes opens have shown though, is that we are now priced out of the UK housing market. I checked out a real estate website in the UK (for fun) and found a house identical to the one we had up for 286,000 - that's $715k here - I could get an absolutely massive, stunning house for that, could even build our own. If we sold what we have here and returned and had the same mortgage as we had originally in the UK we'd be lucky to get a 2 bed tiny house. Luckily we have no intention of ever returning, it does amaze me how the kids growing up are ever going to afford UK property, it'll probably go back to the dark ages when only the rich people had houses and everyone else rented !

05:31 - Sun 27 May 2007