An Update

It's been a while since I last posted about doing things around the house so I thought I'd give a quick update.
Solar Power - Everything is currently booked in and it will be about another three weeks until the system gets installed. I then have to wait for an inspector to come and look at the installation and also get my electricity supplier to get everything set up at their end so I can start exporting my excess power to the grid and get paid for it. Winter is really seeing our electricity usage go up, my wife was looking at our usage the other day and the weekends were costing us close to $20 a day in electricity. We cook with gas and also our hot water is gas so the $20 is for lighting (which are all LED), TVs, gaming consoles, computers and the biggest expense will be heating. The heating and cooling costs are what I want to offset the most by getting solar.
Recycling - I've been putting all the bottles and cans that have 10c refund on them into containers and every couple of weeks. The first time I went we gave the vouchers away to a homeless man. The next time I used the app and got the refund transferred to my PayPal account. The third time I forgot to take my phone so I just got vouchers when I then used to buy some lunch stuff with at the supermarket. The last time I went I used the app and got the money transferred to PayPal. I then used the money in my PayPal account to buy a new gasket for my motorcycle (which is still leaking oil by the way). The app keeps track of how many items I've recycled and how much money it's refunded to me. So far I have recycle 116 containers and earned $11.60. It hardly seems worth it from the money point of view but it is good to be returning the items which I know will actually get recycled. In Australia at the moment, we're having trouble recycling a lot of our recyclables and plenty of it is just ending up in landfill. I know that by putting the cans and bottles through the reverse vending machines that they are getting sorted properly and have a greater chance of actually being recycled.
Renovations - I never thought I'd be saying that word just yet, but we're looking at getting some work done in the fourth bedroom/study. We would really love to have a wall bed and a built in desk with some more storage so we can make the most of the room. Currently the room has the desk that I built myself at the last house which was great for there, but we don't need hidden away at the new house. We're looking at getting some quotes in the next couple of weeks to see what we're in for.
Fire Pit - I haven't done anything further about making a more permanent fire pit in the back yard. I still want to do this and I may set up some pavers in the next few weeks so I can have another fire. Where I did the last fire I put some pavers down about half way through the night and there is a dead patch of grass in the lawn which I'm not too impressed about.
Moving House, Healthy Living and Habits -  these all tie into what I was saying the other day about going for walks and it becoming second nature. I got home from work and my daughter is sitting on her bike out the front of the house waiting for me to come home so she can go for a ride when I go for my walk. I think we did make the right decision moving out to Googong, I'm enjoying living here and I feel like we have a better quality of life then we did before. I'm looking forward to Googong growing and more parks and playgrounds being built for us to explore and enjoy.

Bomber
Enjoying life.