Life Part 1

So glad you stopped by, there has been much happening around our place since I last blogged. 

Well, we have decided to move to the country next year.  We like the area north of Christchurch in and around north Canterbury and the Waimak. River.  With this decided, we now face the task of tidying up our section and last minute painting jobs inside.  We imagine putting the house on the market end of January/ beginning of February.  So do stop by and read how we undertake this move.  We are all very excited about the chance to move to the country.  I think the day I got chickens was the moment when I really wanted to live on a small farm.  Georgia is very very excited because she will finally get her own horse and be able to ride and look after it in a safe environment, on our property.  We are not in favour of Georgia having grazing in a paddock out of the city, where she would be on her own all day and with no adults around should anything happen.  We worry about stranger danger and her being vunerable on her own.  She said all she wants to do is be able to wake up, look out the window and see her horse.

Winter has well and truly disappeared along with spring.  Our weather has warmed up and we are enjoying lovely warm weather everyday now.  Very hot days are also with us.  In the last week we had a 28.5 degree day and a 28.2 yesterday.  Hot going when you are trying to landscape your grounds in preparation for selling.  Speaking of selling, I thought I would touch on the selling with you, and also bring you up to speed on what we have been doing since June. The preparations involved in making your house presentable for selling are quite time consuming.  And as you can imagine we have a big job ahead with making our yard look "urbanised" and beautifilly landscaped.  But we think it's worth every ounce of effort to get the best price we can, that money will allow us to spend more at the other end where it matters.

The last of the rhodos in bloom

So, what have we been doing lately?  Well in general, parts of Christchurch are very slowly returning to normal.  A new normal though, 9 months after 22 February and 14 months after the initial big quake.  The aftershocks  have disapeared almost completely, and we are just getting the odd one every now and then.  People are now being forced to move out of their homes due to whole suburbs being unrepairable meaning a massive scale of home/land buy up by the government , 6000 homes so far.  Deconstruction work is still going on in the city where still more buildings are coming down.  There are lots of spaces where there once stood buildings.  Small businesses are popping up in these spots, mainly vendors selling coffee and hot food.

Well, the gardens are planted out with less vegetables this season.  Infact the gardens are being removed in a big way to make way for lawn and that landscaped look.  Once the garlic and potatoes are done that garden will go as well.  That will leave the main garden behind the picket fence.  We were just going to leave everything pretty much like it is.  But I read a really good article in Saturday's Press about not underestimating the value of a landscaped section when selling.  People want to see that that all the hard work is done so that they can just move in and enjoy what's there.  People will be unlikely to buy homes with gardens and lawns that need lots of work doing to them.

The garden beds being returned to grass & the new grass we have to grow under the clothes line where the tent sat for 6 weeks.

In September, EQC began repair work on our home.  We were given the option of moving to a motel for the duration of the work, however, with all our pets this made it difficult to do.  We compremised and moved into our tent on the lawn.  For about 6 long weeks we lived in that tent.  Our garden shed became a makeshift kitchen complete with fridge and microwave.  We had the use of our 2nd toilet in the laundry, but no showering/bathroom facilities. MMMmmm, this was hard let me tell you. Our family, neighbours and friends kindly let us use their showers for that time.  But we were all pleased when we got our bathroom back.

 The extra room on the end has been taken down, so the tent originally had 3 rooms

Life in a large tent with 2 teenagers and 2 dogs certainly made life interesting to say the least.  We had to evacuate on 2 occasions due to major storms flooding the ground.  There were times when the tent was lashed all night with gale force winds as well.  But I look back now that we have moved back into our newly decorated home and think how thankful we are that we only had small cracks that needed some plaster and paint.

Thanks for stopping by,

Blessings

Lee-Anne