Offer: Accepted

And so begins The Week of The Bond. Eep. *cartwheels*

Righto, so here's how this little surprise turn of events goes: As you read on Thursday, our offer on what felt like the perfect place was declined. So, on Thursday, The Trucker phoned the Estate Agent to ask for her to email thru proof that it had been declined. He fudged the truth a little by saying we were going to be putting in an offer on another place that evening and didn't want to end up in a situation with two offers on the table.

So while that wasn't entirely true, we were already looking at other places and were very serious about buying. Not 10 minutes after that call, she phoned him back to say that if we went up 20k on our original offer, the owners would sign.

Whoop whoop. It worked. Told you they were just playing Guess The Magic Number games! We went and signed the new offer that evening and heard last night that it's been accepted and signed by the owners.

On Friday evening, after waiting the whole day to hear if the offer had been signed (it only came thru via sms last night ... although I was pretty sure since they'd set the price it wouldn't fall thru again, but I was still nervous till we got that confirmation!) we had home-made pizzas (yum!) and watched Kick Ass 2. The Trucker has now had his movie picking turns revoked o_0

I don't remember being especially impressed by the first one, in fact I think I was left quite disappointed ... And this one was such a yawn-fest. Urgh. Seriously, don't bother watching this.

On Saturday I was up at 7:30 and enjoyed the beautiful morning sunshine reading outside with Lily & Gypsy while The Trucker dozed. When he got up, we headed to Wimpy for a quick breakfast and then to Builder's!

Yip, carpet swatches and paint colour swatches and tiles ... So exciting. We've definitely picked out the carpet (cant' find it on their website) and the paint colours! Still iffy on the tiles for the 2 bathrooms. Trying to keep everything neutral and light. The kitchen is also still up for discussion! Haha. Wow.

After that we went to test drive a Honda Jazz. Hmmm. I don't especially like my grandmother's (that I drive in Cape Town), but her's is an older model so thought I'd give it another try. Not completely sold, although it's nice I dunno who was designing their dash o_0

And then we popped thru to DJMike & Power's new smallholding. Shew, they have a lot of work ahead of them! But I guess when you are looking toward a 30year plan and can picture it's potential in your head, it's an amazing feeling. I think it's gonna be pretty amazing. My only concern would be traffic. But that's an individual perspective ... there are people (who I think are crazy) who live in Pretoria and commute every day to Joburg. Lifestyle and living space win out over traffic. I think I am coping with the absolutely maximum amount of traffic that I can, so no smallholding on the outskirts of town for me ... yet! You know, one day, when they invent teleportation. Get working on that, people!

Anyway, very exciting to see how their place grows and changes :) I prefer smaller more immediate solutions, like we'll have with our new house (eep, I just said Our New House!).

Then we got our grocery shopping done. Am so completely over the Northgate Pick n Pay and it's queues and empty tills. They built so freaking many of them, why can't they staff them?!

And then home for a quick relax (you know, unpack the groceries, hang washing, put your feet up for 10 minutes) before heading to the Rand Park Golf Club for one of the SCMer's birthday drinks. I'd never been there before, but it's quite a nice spot for afternoon drinks and a bite to eat feeling completely like you're not in the middle of Joburg. Looking out surrounded by green, my kinda way to spend a beautiful summer afternoon!

We didn't really do anything for the rest of Saturday.

On Sunday we headed to Diepsloot to visit The Trucker's old domestic. She has just bought a piece of land there and wanted some building advice. Shew, this is one impressive lady! She is gonna do amazing things and I hope inspire people around her and show them if you have a dream, you can make it happen! It was a lovely feel-good start to the day.

After that we headed home and then spent the rest of the day having a wonderful long lazy lunch at the Black Horse Brewery with The High Life's folks. Shew it is the most special venue. Sitting there in the shade under their beautiful green trees. They do taster trays of their beers now, so we tried one of those so we could all have a taste. I stuck with their Red Ale and their awesome Ginger Beer!

For mains I had their Spanish Prawns which were superb. That chorizo sauce they came in was delish! And then for dessert we shared a cheesecake, which for the price (a whopping R58 for a small circle, not even a slice!) was not what I was expecting. The cheesecake itself still tasted very nice, but was quite over powered by all the berry compote. Meh, I wouldn't order it again.

And that was our weekend. Keep those fingers crossed for us this week as we do our bond applications!