Preparing for sale

House_for_Sale_sign.jpgWe all swear it won’t happen next time but it always does.

As I previously mentioned, we’re looking at selling our home and so we’re busy repairing and sorting. I reckon by the time we’ve got our house ready to put on the market it’ll look so good that we won’t want to sell it.

We’ve certainly made a number of improvements over the past 15 years that have been just for us and which have improved the home for our own family but there always seems to be certain things that you always mean to get around to that only happen when you’re getting ready to sell.

We’ve wanted to change our driveway ever since we moved in back in September 1993 and we’ll finally get around doing something with it so that it looks OK for the next owners.

The problem for us has mostly been that I’m the world’s worst handyman. I marvel at those people who can spend a couple of afternoons in the yard and totally revolutionise their homes. I’m certainly not the kind of guy who should be left alone with power tools. I have made some advances and can handle certain small tasks but repaving a driveway …. I really wouldn’t know where to start.

I guess that wherever we end up moving we’ll just try to make the improvements for ourselves and not someone we don’t even know.

Have you ever noticed the same kind of thing? Have you ever surprised yourself with just how good your home is once you’ve prepared it for sale? Have you ever decided to stay because you’ve done such a good job of preparing your home to sell?



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Ch – ch – ch – changes

Just a quick note to let you know why posting has been a little light over recent days.

After considerable thought over recent weeks our family is looking to make some significant changes.

With my workplace about to move, Emily getting ready for High School next year, the ever changing needs of a growing family, and a number of other considerations, we’ve decided to test the market and look at the possibility of moving house. We’re currently in the process of trying to get our home ready for sale.

We’re starting to sort through the huge mass of belongings we’ve accumulated over the years to decide what to pack, throw or stow. We’re also looking at carrying out a number of home maintenance jobs, some gardening and repairs to the brick paving on our wonky driveway. (Any offers of help would be cheerfully accepted! 😉 )

We still haven’t settled on the exact area we’ll move to but we have a few ideas and feel confident that we can find something suitable within our price range.

Our current home has served us so very well for the last 15 years but it really feels like it’s time to move on.



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Fathers Day 2008

I guess Fathers Day is always going to be more of a celebration when you have two exceptional children like Emily and James.

We had a wonderful time yesterday. The day started with some hugs and just the right balance of cute, yummy and practical gifts.

Church was great with Youth Pastor and good friend Andrew Binns preaching a wonderful Fathers Day sermon, his first as a dad. It was a wonderful reminder of the absolute privilege and the very serious responsibility of being a dad.

After that we headed off to Subiaco for a picnic and one of the free Sunday at Subi performances. Improvilicious is a magnificent family show based on clever and funny improvised theatre. We saw a snippet of the show about a year ago and some weeks back we went to see the show in full. Yesterday was our opportunity to share it with extended family. While the basic structure remains the same, the very nature of improv ensures that it’s never the same twice so there were plenty of new laughs.

I’m hoping that we’ll head back to Subi in a couple of weeks to see my favourite local band, Adam Hall and the Velvet Playboys for their Sunday at Subi performance.

Fathers Day is celebrated at different times depending on where in the world you live but for those who celebrated yesterday I hope it was a good day for you.



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Vanessa Amorosi

Vanessa_Amorosi.jpgBack in 2000, at the age of 18, Vanessa Amorosi became the first Australian female to reach the number 1 spot on the National ARIA chart with a debut album. Back then, absolutely everybody was listening to The Power.

With such an amazing start to her recording career you’d think that we would have seen several follow up albums over the past few years but it wasn’t until May of this year that Vanessa, now 27, released her second album, Somewhere in the Real World.

It certainly hasn’t disappointed. The music showcases her incredible talents and has given us such great songs as Perfect and The Simple Things.

On her website she wrote about the delay between albums.

Through the quiet time – when people must have thought I’d run away and joined the circus – I was doing a lot of production. I love walking into studios. I’ve always been fascinated by the sound and the feel that comes from different technologies. I was fixated on creating the feel records used to have, creating an energy in recording with modern technology, as well as being a singer and songwriter. I was so into it I actually went around every studio in Melbourne and said “Can I just sit here and watch you do your job?”

I spent a good four years doing that and then I started writing for other people. I’m constantly writing songs. I have a catalogue of thousands of songs sitting on my hard-drive. People were asking if I would like to write for other artists, so I started doing writing sessions.

I got to a point, after all that, after doing all that work and doing a lot of studio stuff, where I realised I really missed singing on a stage.

I was singing for hours in the studio, but that’s nothing compared to singing live in front of people. That thirst, that hunger for wanting a crowd and winning them over started to come back. I decided I wasn’t ready yet to put the microphone down.

I started seeking out people who could inspire me, people who could push me to a level that I hadn’t previously been pushed, to give me something to fight for. That’s when I met my manager Ralph Carr, who’s just as feisty and passionate about it as I am. I don’t want a manager who agrees with me. I want someone who challenges me and has different opinions. I said to him,I want to write this new album and I want to be frightened about doing it.

We’ve got great songwriters in Australia and great studios and people I love working with but I’d been working in those studios for the last four years so we decided to work on the new album in America.

I wanted to work with people who didn’t know me, who had no previous expectations, who wouldn’t look at me twice. I was more interested in them, to work with them, to make them want me, and I would do the rest.

I spoke to Vanessa during my morning radio programme on 98.5 Sonshine FM today. You can hear what she had to say by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.



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Abuse, adultery and desertion

NotUnderBondage.jpgWhat kind of God would insist on a woman staying in a relationship with an abusive husband? Some Christians believe that divorce is totally unacceptable under any circumstance but is that really the case?

There are very few people who enter marriage with anything but the best of intentions and a strong desire to make a life long committment, but for those wanting to stay within God’s plan, what happens when people find themselves in a destructive relationship?

Under what circumstances does the Bible permit divorce?

Does the Bible allow for a divorced Christian to remarry?

Divorce and remarriage remains a hot topic in Christian circles with a wide variety of opinions on the subject.

Barbara Roberts has written a book titled Not Under Bondage – Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion. I recently spoke to her about her book and her journey to recovery.

You can hear what she has to say by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.

[audio:http://mpegmedia.sonshinefm.ws/feeds/SUN090308_1450.mp3]

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