Our New Home

We are SO excited to be finally moved into our new house. There is SO much space! (Well anything would feel like more space after living in a hotel room for three months). Our house is actually quite a bit smaller than our house in Calgary but we are getting used to it - less to clean, which is always good :) Our furniture doesn't all fit where it's supposed to go, but we haven't had to get rid of anything yet! With just over 150 boxes to unpack, it was a lot of work but fun at the same time. It was exciting to find out what treasures were hidden in every box. I forgot I had some things I unpacked, I haven't seen them in so long! The house is pretty much all unpacked and set-up now and we are quickly adjusting. The backyard is definitely my favourite part of the house. It's really private and has lots of trees and it is just so relaxing to be in. There is also a soccer field behind us so it is nice not to have neighbours directly behind us for a change.

The movers with all of our things!

Our very RED kitchen! It's starting to grow on me :)

The garage / laundry room / storage room / where the freezer is

SO much to unwrap!

Good thing there's recycling here!

Some things that are different about our Kiwi house than back home:

1. This house is FREEZING. Like it is ridiculous how cold it is inside when it's not all that cold outside. It is the very beginning of winter here and it is still around 16 degrees outside and night time gets down to about 5 degrees. But inside the house is also 5 degrees....soooo cold!!! The first few nights in the house it took me forever to fall asleep because I was so cold even though I was wearing pants, a sweater and socks to bed and had two blankets on. Tyler has been wearing turtlenecks and looks ridiculous :) I joked to Tyler that it felt like we were camping! We finally caved and bought an electric mattress pad which was the best investment EVER. We turn it on before we go to bed and even pre-heat our pj's on it before we put them on, haha. There is no central heating, just a heat pump which is basically just a fan that pumps out hot air and as soon as you turn it off the house is cold again (so it is on all evening and morning). The windows are only single pane and there is no insulation. The living room and kitchen is all windows and gets all day sun, so when it's sunny outside the house gets really hot, and when the sun isn't out, not so much :(

2. There is unlimited hot water! No hot water tanks means that we will never run out of hot water, which is awesome since that seemed to happen all the time back home. The water is heated as needed so we will never run out! Unfortunately gas and electricity costs are much higher than back home, but the water is free!

3. Cable sucks and we are having the hardest time trying to access Netflix. So we essentially haven't watched any TV in 3 months which I guess is a good thing! As the nights are getting cooler and dark earlier it would be nice to watch some things on TV though. We are still working on the Netflix and might have to resort to watching things on DVD instead.

4. The appliances are for little people. The built in area in the kitchen for the fridge/freezer was so small we quickly realized there was no way that was going to work. So we bought an all fridge and a separate deep freeze for the garage. Second best investment ever. I would be totally frustrated if we only had a tiny fridge! I have already had to buy a second bench top oven because the oven is so small. I can't even fit my baking sheets in it that I packed from home :( Everything is very European style here and small.

5. Every outlet has a power switch. Which is the single most annoying thing ever. Every time you plug something in you need to ensure the switch it turned on. The first time we used the stove we thought it was broken and were going to call the landlord to fix it until we realized that the stove too had a power switch hat needed to be turned on before it would work! Apparently Kiwi's are paranoid about their power usage here as it is expensive, and it is apparently safer by putting a switch on the outlet?

LOVE our new backyard!

So that is what we have pretty much been doing the past few weeks, just unpacking and getting settled in our new house. I already have a project for Tyler - to build me a garden box so I can start my own vegetable and herb garden. You can grow vegetables all year round here which is awesome and something I am really looking forward to. Hopefully I have a green thumb :)