Shopping in November

OK! OK! We take the, not so subtle, hints from several of you in your Christmas messages that we’ve been a bit slack at keeping our journal/blog updated throughout November and December. It’s a fair cop, society’s to blame!

The house planning continues and the frame is now scheduled to go into production at the end of January 2012, subject to Council approval. We’re just awaiting a final cost and contract from our builder, Doug Cubis, before it gets submitted. Doug also has the shed on order with Titan. The shed has already been approved by the local Council, so hopefully we will see some action on that front when he gets back from his Christmas break. Fingers crossed!!

On Saturday 5th, there was a presentation/demonstration entitled “Garden2Kitchen” held in the local hall, hosted by Phil and Julie, gardening and food presenters respectively with the ABC, showing how to produce simple and nutritious meals from what you can produce in your own small garden. Really interesting, and in later conversation, Phil seemed particularly interested in Sheila’s plans for the block. Always good to get good feedback!

We both attended the local Remembrance Day service at the War Memorial on Friday 11th November with Sandy’s boss Graham, who is president of the local RSL Sub Branch. Of note this year was that it was at the 11 hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, of the 11th year of the century.  Sheila took plenty photographs on the day, three of which were used in the local rag the next day.

The 19th saw us take delivery of our latest toy for the block, in the form of a John Deere Lawn Tractor and Trailer. You didn’t think we were going to mow 6.5 acres with a push mower did you? At present it lives in our neighbours, Dave and Maryanne, shed under the very protective eyes of Dozer the Dog.

We headed off for a long weekend to Toowoomba at the end of November, mainly to source exciting things like tiles and lights as the choice in St George is limited to say the least. We left the van at the Pelican Rest and just headed across with the Land Cruiser having booked ourselves into the Ambassador on Ruthven Motel in Toowoomba. It was a bit strange have all that space again after so long in the caravan. We did the 400km drive on Saturday 26th November. It had been raining a bit around St George but we only encountered water over the road in a couple of spots, and not too deep at that, so we arrived at the motel in time for a nano nap before beer o’clock followed by a really nice meal in the motel restaurant. Sunday was spent getting our bearings around Toowoomba, finding all the stores we wanted to visit on Monday. Graham and Elaine Nosse had given us a few tips of where to look as they had not long done the same exercise for their new house, currently being built by Doug. Spooky that!! Sheila’s navigation came to the fore again and she soon had all the shops pinpointed and marked on a local town map. Monday saw us hit the streets just after rush hour, heading initially for a bit of work cloth shopping before making for “Concept Tiles” to look at floor tiles. We had a rough idea as to the sort of colour and design we were looking for and would you believe there were two tiles fitting our criteria staring us in the face as we walked into the store. Soo, the salesperson, was very attentive and showed us lots of other alternatives but in the end we decided on one of the initial two tiles we had seen as we entered. This choice was made even better when she subsequently informed us that the ones we had chosen were on a special introductory price of $10/sqmtr less than the marked price!

That decision made, the wall tiles for the shower areas fell into place easily, as did the grout colourings. It all seemed too easy. Maybe Sheila and I just like the same things and don’t dither over the decision. Who knows?

Tiles sorted it was into “Ideal Electrical” to see what they could do for us on the lighting front. Armed with our floor plan and initial thoughts, we were taken under Peter’s wing and he very quickly had a lighting plan worked out, promising to e-mail us a quote by the time we got back to St George. How easy is this shopping game? After patting ourselves on the back for such a successful outing it was back to the motel, park the car and take a walk back in towards the CBD for a beer and a feed.

Tuesday was taken up collecting our quotes from Concept Tiles and researching wood stoves before returning to St George on Wednesday. Sheila wanted to look at a garden nursery in Goondiwindi on the way back so we were able to have a different vista as we made our way west. We encountered water over the road in a couple of spots up to around 300mm, nothing the Land Cruiser couldn’t cope with.

We’ve had a few heavy showers of rain but nothing really major. The same can’t be said for the rest of the area. Several roads have had water over them and all the rivers are running high. They even had to open all the gates on the weir in town to prevent flooding from the Balonne River.