An Amazing Week!

Shew! What a rest of the week it has been. And it is certainly not over yet!

So the renovation are moving full steam ahead. Yesterday afternoon I got those little butterflies of excitement in my tummy about our impending move. We are both so looking forward to our new home and are *loving* how it's turning out!



For me, it's been quite an incredible experience to see how it's come together. It was difficult before yesterday, all very structural. But yesterday the Laminate Flooring and the Granite Kitchen Counters went in. Now it is really looking like a home!

I am so thrilled with how it's looking. I will admit I was nervous. You pick things from these tiny little swatches, all next to other little swatches of the same product. This is true for absolutely everything you pick!

The closest I got to getting a sort of idea of how a few of the colours would combine was when I took along one of the tiles we'd chosen to Timbercity, where we could use a little swatch of melamine along with a little swatch of Rustenburg Granite ... and hope for the best.

There is no way to see how it is all gonna combine, en masse in your room till it's already been done and paid for. Basically, until it is too late - haha.

But. I am continuously tickled by all of our choices as I see them really coming together. I am quite sure I was positively glowing yesterday afternoon as I wandered the house taking it all in! Even more so since we changed our Laminate Floor colour quite recently at one of our (many) Builders Warehouse visits ... and it was definitely a good move! Shew. Haha.

The tiling is finished now too. Our shower floor is in and the mosaic dado rail. Love ALL of it!

Today is gonna be pretty damn insane tho. The Granite guys chipped out even more of the new kitchen wall and plastering. Huge giant chunks to get the granite to sit correctly. So The Trucker will be fixing that up today. There needs to be a fair amount of touch-up painting. Most of the new lights are in (and they are awesome!) and the ceilings got repainted yesterday too.

The Bedroom cupboards are done, but we still need one or two extra shelves. The kitchen cupboard doors are on and the handles were being put on when I left yesterday :)

I bought our oven on Monday. Managed to get quite the deal! Makro had the oven-hob-extractor combo for R3897. Apparently their National Call Center can't see stock for their combo items (and not a single call center person told me that, they all happily told me that there was NO stock, anywhere in the country!). Luckily I called the store directly to make sure. There was plenty of stock!

Anyhoo, I found the oven-hob combo on the website, on promotion, for only R2699 (which seems to have gone now. Shew what lucky timing for us!). And considering the extractor on it's own is only R599, buying like that made so much more sense! And then I got to the store (Woodmead). Sheesh with that many people wearing yellow in-store shirts, you wouldn't think you would hang around waiting for assistance for nearly as long as I did o_0

Their listed prices were also completely different (oven: R2299, hob R999, extractor R599 ... which adds up to the same price as their all-three combo). So I loaded up the website on my phone and gave them the article code and walked out of there with all three for only R3298. Winning.

On Tuesday evening, I went to @clairam's Birthday SCM. And then yesterday was The Trucker's birthday!

He had to be up early to collect the guys to paint the ceiling. Luckily his mom phoned at 6:30am since he snoozed his alarm! Haha. He headed off and I got up and showered.

I'd arranged to work from home yesterday so that we could have breakfast together and do pressies at a reasonable hour ;) He opened his gifts when he got home. I'd got him a "billfold" from Mat Blac that he'd wanted since he saw it at the Sanlam Food Wine Design Fair. Unfortunately I hadn't been paying attention at the Fair, so had to follow up on exactly which one it was. So I think he suspected this gift, although I had led him astray by telling him they didn't have stock of the thing I wanted to buy him (not a complete lie as the "extra" I'd had my eye on from Yuppie Chef was, and still is, out of stock ;) ).

I must also say, Mat Blac's service was superb and their product came packed nicely. I almost didn't wrap it ;) Haha. The Trucker is thrilled!

And then, I got a little crazy and ordered him something he hadn't even asked for. This is very unusual because I struggle to guess at what he might like! But after my initial Yuppie Chef idea was thwarted, I continued to browse and saw the Pizza Stone and bought it! He adores crispy pizza bases and has taken to pre-frying the base when we make pizza at home. So this seemed like a perfect choice. And we're both pretty excited to give it it's first spin in our brand new oven this weekend!

Haha, oh, and The Gypsy Cat was absolutely hysterical! I moved the gifts to next to the bed the night before, in case we were going to do pressies in bed (which obvs didn't happen). And the Pizza Stone was a fairly large wrapped box. And she would NOT leave it alone. She wanted to sit on it and scratch at it, before we went to bed and I woke up to her sitting on it still! It was like she was saying "But moooom, I know there's a box in here for me!" (Pity about having to use the flash tho!) Strangely tho, once the box had been opened, she lost total interest in it o_0 Such a funny little girl.

We had a quick breakfast at our nearby Doppio and then both got down to work. At about lunch time, we got the fantastic news that the house was finally registered in our names. We officially own it :)

In the evening I'd booked dinner at one of our absolute favourites, Licorish :) It was superb, as always! Even tho I was feeling a little ill ... I wish I could've eaten more, but The Trucker enjoyed finishing it for me ;)

We started with the Goats Cheese Tempura (amazing, but no idea how one person could eat both, so rich!) and the Butter Chicken Salad (amazing flavours!).

He had the Beef Taster plate for mains and I had the Game one. Love their taster plates! But there was definitely no room for dessert :( It was even more of a treat since we could use one of our The Entertainer vouchers! Can't wait to go back again (there are still 2 more vouchers to use there this year!)



Shew. What a week. Today our carpets go into the bedrooms and tonight we start moving ... it'll be our last sleep in our current spot tonight. It's filled the gap well, but I doubt I will miss it! I can't wait to be in our brand new home. But make no mistake, there is still A LOT to be done! Onwards and upwards.