Our House - Survey in Days of My Destiny

DO YOU LIVE IN A HOUSE OR AN APARTMENT? An old, large farmhouse on 2 acres, surrounded by 300 acres of plains and bush.

WOULD YOU SAY IT IS BIG OR SMALL? Haha.. BIG!

DO YOU HAVE A WELCOME MAT? No. We used to but we always tripped over it which wasn’t very welcoming ;)

DOES IT SAY SOMETHING? N/A

DO YOU HAVE A DISHWASHER OR DO YOU HAVE TO DO YOUR DISHES BY HAND? We wash our dishes by hand.

HOW MANY PLANTS DO YOU HAVE INSIDE? No plants. This is something I may change in the future.

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL PLACE THAT YOU PUT YOUR KEYS? Yes, there’s a small cupboard in our kitchen where we mostly put all our random tidbits in. I asked L to place two hooks inside that cupboard door that would be specifically for our keys.

IS YOUR REFRIGERATOR STOCKED WITH ANYTHING? Yes, thank God.

WHERE DO YOU KEEP YOUR BREAD? I keep bread in the fridge most of the time. This is due to a) summer days, b) the possibility of it attracting mice if left on the bench and c) to preserve it, as we don’t use a whole lot.

IS YOUR BATHROOM CLEAN? Usually. My shower has water stains on it from the bore water tap dripping over the years. I don’t like that look. The tiles are also brownish due to the same stains. The hand basin is steel so any little marks show up very easily, so I usually wipe it down when I think it needs a wipe down (every four or so days). We throw our dirty clothes into a pile underneath the hand basin, so this piles up sometimes (until there’s enough of a pile to fill the washing machine) and then we throw our clean clothes into another pile, and we clear this pile out every few days. So I suppose our bathroom is clean, it can just get messy.

WHAT IS YOUR BATHROOM’S THEME? Hahaha I like the answer from the person I copied this from so I’ll keep it –> Ancient rental property ‘we are not going to make any improvements to this place’ crap theme. Just random…no theme.

HOW MANY RUGS DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR DWELLING SPACE? There’s one rug in the girls’ bedroom. This rug has changed places over the years, depending on whether we get sick of it in any particular spot or not haha. Right now it’s in there for practical purposes (we have floor boards that get quite cold in winter so I have it in there for the girls so they can play on the floor with their toys).

DO YOU KNOW YOUR NEIGHBOURS? Yes. Our only neighbours right now are 4kms away and they invite us over occasionally for dinner and drinks.

IF SO DO YOU GET ALONG WITH THEM? We get along well enough with them.

ARE THERE ANY STRAY CATS AROUND? Rarely. A few months ago, a wild cat showed up at our place and it had scratches and was starving. I didn’t want to get too close to it in case it attacked me and I didn’t want to feed it in case it kept coming back! (We are not cat people). Later that night while having dinner, we heard it meowing loudly and it sounded like it was inside our actual house… we looked around to try to see where it was, and sure enough, it had somehow climbed into the roof of our house and was making its way down the flue of the woodfired oven, into our kitchen!!! We quickly scared it away, then enticed it into a pet cage with some tinned fish and L relocated it later that night on his way to work.

DO YOU HAVE A DVD PLAYER IN YOUR BEDROOM? No. We’re not TV-in-the-bedroom kind of people.

WHICH ROOM WOULD YOU SAY YOU SPEND THE MOST TIME IN? Lounge room and back verandah.

DO YOU HAVE A POOL OR JACUZZI WHERE YOU LIVE? No

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DVD THAT YOU OWN? Probably the Offspring TV series, seasons 1-4 (still need season 5 on DVD)

HOW ABOUT YOUR FAVOURITE CD THAT YOU OWN? That’s hard.

WHERE IS YOUR STEREO OR RADIO LOCATED IN YOUR HOME? There’s one on our back verandah that is Bluetooth operated but it stopped working a while ago. There’s also one in our kitchen that is also Bluetooth operated. It’s a radio too. And then in the lounge room, we sometimes use the DVD player to play our CDs.

DO YOU HAVE A COFFEE MAKER? Yes, L is a coffee man and he has a cheapie one that he bought from Woolliees. The capsules make some great coffee!

DO YOU HAVE AN AREA DESIGNATED FOR ALCOHOL? Yes. When we first allocated a spot for it all, we felt very “old” hahaha. We used to have it all on display on top of the old, non-usable fireplace in the former “formal” dining room, but then we turned that space into a more kid-friendly one, so the alcohol had to go! I put photos of us on that shelf space and the alcohol went into a small hutch-like cupboard that is right next to our pool table. Way more appropriate ;)

HOW MANY TELEVISIONS DO YOU HAVE? We have one in the lounge room and that’s it. L and I rarely watch TV, we enjoy our quiet time together after the kids go to bed. Since my sister moved in, the TV has been on a whole lot more, which is sometimes a struggle for me.

DO YOU HAVE STAIRS? No.

WHAT KIND OF STUFF DO YOU HAVE ON YOUR WALLS? Framed family photos, a framed photo collage made by me, paintings by L.

WHERE DO YOU KEEP YOUR TOOTHPASTE? In the bathroom…?

DO YOU HAVE A DEN OR AN OFFICE? Nope

DO YOU LIVE CLOSE TO ANY STORES? The centre of town is a 15 minute drive away. There is an IGA there, as well as a couple of pubs, the post office, the church, a small clothing boutique which is also the hairdresser and the beauty parlour, a hardware store, a now-closed-down coffee shop, a bookshop which is also the plumber’s store, a newsagency and a pharmacy. It’s a lot of things for a small town! For anything else, you can go to three different towns, which are in three different directions. One if half an hour away, the other is 45 mins away, the other is an hour away. The furthest one is the biggest one with the mostest. Haha.

DO YOU HAVE A WALK IN CLOSET AND IF NOT WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE ONE? I would LOVVVVVE to have a walk-in closet. Not because I have a thousand garments, but just because it would be so awesome! And easy! hehe

DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING HANGING FROM THE CEILING? No

DOES YOUR KITCHEN HAVE A THEME? Our whole house is an old farmhouse, so the kitchen has that old school feel about it. There’s a woodfired oven which stands out to everyone and kinda sets the whole theme, even if the rest of the kitchen seems to be in disarray. For example the floors are vinyl, the walls are this fake tile-look on the bottom half and brick-patterned vinyl on the top half lol, and the cupboards are in odd spaces and they are tiny. All of this is probably typical of an era gone by.

IS IT A PAIN TO DUST YOUR LIVING SPACE? Pffft. It’s a pain to live here. The house is old and no matter how much I dust, it will still look yuck because the whole house could do with a fresh paint job.

WHAT’S UNDER YOUR BED? Lots of dust.

DO YOU HAVE A GAME SYSTEM? Oh hell no

HOW MANY TELEPHONES ARE IN YOUR HOME? 2 cordless handsets

DO YOU HAVE A FIREPLACE AND IF SO DO YOU USE IT OFTEN? There is a fireplace. It’s in the lounge room and we use it every winter. I’m too lazy to actually light it so it’s mostly L’s role to do this, but I CAN light it and when I do, I feel good hehe. Unfortunately it doesn’t heat up the whole house like most people like to think it does. When I try to explain to locals that it only really heats up about 2 metres in front of it, they don’t believe me, but if they really knew the actual lay out of this house, then they’d realise what I’m talking about.

WHAT KIND OF MICROWAVE DO YOU HAVE? A cheap $30 one that we bought one day after not having one for months. Our original one was a wedding gift and it lasted about 4 years and then it died suddenly. I didn’t actually want another one so we didn’t bother… until I started getting back and shoulder pain and needed a microwave to heat up the wheat bag!!!

DO YOU HAVE ANY FIGURINES OF ANGELS AROUND? I have one that my mother-in-law bought me as a gift a long time ago. It’s an abstract one but not uncommon. Its wings are made of wire and it doesn’t have a face. The angel sits on my bookshelf.

DO YOU LIKE TO OPEN THE BLINDS OR CURTAINS OR KEEP THEM SHUT? We never had curtains in the lounge room because this place is mostly deserted around us and the views are nice. But in recent months, some dodgy guys have shown up and tried to see what they could steal from us, so we now have some blankets pegged onto the curtain rods, which makes for a very hippie-looking lounge room lol. I don’t mind!

HOW MANY COMPUTERS ARE IN YOUR DWELLING SPACE? We have 2 laptops. We only bought the second one recently because I am studying and at the same time L is trying to get a website happening. Both of these are time consuming activities so we went with that.

WHAT COMPANY DO YOU USE FOR INTERNET ACCESS AND HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? We use Telstra and it costs around $50 a month for 8GB. ‘Tis ridiculous, but our best option out here.