More resourcefulness and stuff

It has been a mixed week, good and bad, a bit of worry thrown in and a bit of illness. But that's all over now.

On Tuesday my sister and I visited the nearby town of Denmark.It is such a pretty little place and it was fun to stroll around the shops and buy different things.I especially love their specialty food store "The Source" which sells little luxury items and organic food. I bought vanilla pods, 3 in a pack for $3.95. So cheap!!So I got 2 packs.We also took a little walk at William Bay(picture left).However it was a bit greyer and wetter than in this photo!

I also bought, with a lot of encouragement from my sister, an antique coffee grinder.Mike has wanted one for ages, so I got it for him and it seems to work very well.The real treat is that it is a "Puegeot", just like our car!

Charlie was a delight, so well behaved, slept all the way there and all the way home.What an angel.

Unfortunately I had a virus (pretty sure that is what it was) the following day. Luckily Guthrie was at home (he'd sprained his ankle the day before) to give me a hand with Charlie. Michael came home at lunch time, so I was able to go back to bed.Thank goodness for family carer's leave!

Lily stayed home the following day to give me a hand, then I had Freya home with me yesterday. I felt much better so we were able to go to town and have a bit of fun.We did a couple of "Op-shops"(thrift,2nd-hand stores), and for a total of $25 we got about 25 items! Some of them are very nice, and a couple I will resell on Ebay and hopefully make a little extra. Freya really enjoyed the shopping and I think it helps her appreciate the expense of buying things brand new, particularly clothing, which is so much cheaper at the "Oppy", and the condition can be almost new.The picture shows a few of the bits I got for Charlie.

Some of the bad news is that the Albany council turned down our application to change the boundary of our block, so that we can make the one we are selling a bit smaller and cheaper, hoping we could sell more quickly and keep the integrity of the bush by keeping the back part of the block, nearest our house.

Luckily that does not mean we cannot do what we want to do, the DPI has the last say, and Mike and Graig (our guy writing the submission) met with the planning people at DPI who have said there's still a chance if we get a study of the soil done, in terms of supporting the effluent waste. Honestly, it makes absolutely no difference if the block is smaller, but the council planted that seed of doubt which means we have to have an official study done, which will cost us another $1500-$2000! Crikey! We have already spent $4000 on this application! But we are not giving up, it will be worth the expense. Which leads to the next bit of negative news this week....

The bank...not so keen to help us out until we sell the block. We have equity, but without my income, we don't have a great capacity to make repayments. Of course that all changes once the block is sold...Alas, no nibbles there.

I'm glad we finished the week off with our little shopping spree(ironic after my conversation with the bank!) at the Op Shops, it felt good to buy a whole lot of stuff that we didn't really need, for not very much! Maybe that isn't really resourceful! But we did get clothes for Charlie, and it seems we never have enough of those.