Hopefully any day now we could be getting our plans for the house back from the council, although it’s probably more likely to be next year. We were lucky to have Paul’s sister Amy come and stay with us for a week to draw up the plans which was pretty exciting. For now we are hanging out in the rain, pulling endless nails out of the floor and checking for leaks.

So here we are camped out in three rooms of our new house, trying to work out exactly what we are going to do here. We left Melbourne – which we mostly loved, because we wanted more fresh air, more green space and the creative and logistical craziness of remodeling a house and garden to fit our own particular needs and fancies. So armed with not much more than a vague sense that this is something we might be good at and months of watching Grand Designs with Kevin’s eternal advise that it will cost heaps, take ages and put tremendous stress on our relationships, we have moved to the Blue Mountains and are making a new home.

So in this mysterious misty wonderland the first couple of weeks have been all about getting rid of the past tenants junk, completely changing the plans for the layout that we made in Melbourne, eating gallons of dumpling soup from up the road because we don’t really have a kitchen, playing in the mud out the back and pulling up the awful mite ridden carpet to see what lies below.

Paul’s sister Amy is a drafts person and she is coming to visit in the next couple of days to help us draw up some plans to send to council which will be exciting as it will really feel we have started.