arrived!

[artparent]

well - nearly! we have been traveling around europe following my partner's work, and spent some of this week in london finding a flat - successfully! :joy: we'll be living in muswell hill. very exciting! i love the place and cannot wait to move in later this month. meanwhile we're floating around for a bit.

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[flapjack]

:jumpers:

Don't get too optimistic about the weather- it's not always like this. Normally, it rains ;)

[NW6Londonmum]

LOL at weather comment. VERY true!

I returned your PM. We are neighbours. Maybe a 15 minute walk between our homes. I hope to see you soon in real life.:D

[orangefoot]

Congrats on finding a nice place to live! What you have just experienced is our 'Indian Summer' It will be a bit grey and chilly from here on in I'm afraid and dark early when the clocks go back.

Anyhoo - spring is not far away!

[artparent]

that is so lovely, nw6!
thanks for the welcome. i fear vancouver weather and london are nearly identical. very used to it, sadly

is there a farmer's market around muswell? or must i go all the way to islington?

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[NW6Londonmum]

The local one is here on Sunday:

http://www.alexandrapalace.com/whatson_farmersmarket2005.html

Not far from you at all.

Not LOADS of organic produce but still definitely worth a trip.

[artparent]

lovely. thank you! i think we will use abel&cole for most organic anyway, but we love a good market.

i am amazed at what great things are all around us, parks, recreation, library in walking distance..however i haven't yet been able to find soccer (football!) for my girls or a place to do pottery! i'm also not sure about yoga...:D

the recycling in haringey is exceptional, better than vancouver in some ways! trying to persuade landlord to get rainbarrel and compost :wink

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[NW6Londonmum]

Lots of yoga around. Have you tried just googling yoga and muswell hill. I'm sure a ton of stuff will come up. I'm always seeing flyers around.

Pottery. Do you mean adult classes? Try Floodlight. That would at least give you an idea of where studios/kilns are.
http://www.floodlight.co.uk/pls/courses/fl_home.pg_home

Soccer.
Try ministry of football but 5yrs + only.
http://www.ministry-of-football.com/

[orangefoot]

For composting most councils offer discounted compost bins - Haringey does too http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index/environment_and_transport/refuseandrecycling/recycling/recycle_in_the_garden/home_composting.htm I'm not sure how many landlords care about it but £17 is not too much to pay yourself compared to shop prices.

[artparent]

thank you! yes, discounted bin looks good. i've signed my tall girl up for ministry of football :joy:
i've googled yoga a lot, and can't seem to figure out what would be good..i guess i will just go and see :wink

my partner has a week of work in london next week, before our place is ready, and we're having a tricky time finding a place to stay! i prefer holiday apartments or b&b's with kitchenettes, so we can cook, but it is getting late to find things. hopefully something will come through..let me know if you just happen to know someone with a suite for a week!

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[minimunklemama]

Not in the UK anymore:( but I lived in Hampstead for years and I wanted to tell you that Muswell hill is a fantastic place to live.I would go there for the parks and to walk around.Also the Mark and spencers of course.

They have an amazing firework display at Ally pally (Alexandra palace) for bonfire night (NOV 5th) well,they did when I was there.If they still do,be sure to go,you won't be disappointed:0)

Enjoy your stay there

[artparent]

thanks mini! that should take the edge of missing hallowe'en :wink

found a place for the week phew!

i'm really looking forward to living in muswell.

does anyone have suggestions for how to find a violin instructor for my 8 year old?

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[NW6Londonmum]

Sorry I can't help with violins.

The recyling scheme is sadly not what it first appears. The green kerbside boxes don't get properly separated. It is all crushed together - plastic, glass, paper - and then is good for little else than road building 'fill'. There are bottle banks around though (some just near Planet Organic).

[amitymama]

Welcome to London! :)

[artparent]

oh, that's sad news! :( time to write some letters!!

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[artparent]

does this (http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index/environment_and_transport/refuseandrecycling/recycling/recycling_process/mixed_material_collections.htm#where) sound like the end-result of recycling that you were talking about, or have they changed anything?

and yes i *am* up in the middle of the night stewing about environmental issues :p:treehugger::o

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[artparent]

aha! yes, you were right about the road building - with glass! probably not a bad idea, glass, sand, earth...it seems much better than i thought so i can go to sleep now. here's the link (http://www.greenwich.gov.uk/Greenwich/YourEnvironment/RubbishRecycling/RecyclingInGreenwich/SortingYourMixedDryRecycling/MRF.htm) with an amazing explanation of how it is all separated.

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[artparent]

thanks, amity!! i'm really happy to be here and cannot wait to move in. :joy:

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[artparent]

nw6, thanks for suggesting the ministry of football, my tall girl loves it! we'll move in in a few days now.

any suggestions for knitting groups?

i'm looking for pottery for all of us to do, if possible...in vancouver, community centers will let you pay to drop in. we'd love to get back into clay.

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[Vinigirl]

I'm glad to read that you're getting settled in and love it!

We fly out on Nov 1 and are all getting very excited ( and a little nervous!)

We land in London on Nov 8th and go to our temp. accommodations in Westminster. From there we'll have to get busy finding a place to live!

Any helpful househunting tips for a fellow Canadian and West Coaster? I've been doing some online hunting about but nothing too serious until we get there.

I'm with you on the weather...if I can handle Seattle, I can handle anything :twothumbs

[artparent]

oh, exciting for you! i liked rightmove.co.uk, that's where i found my place. i highly recommend looking within your price range, and then up another level, to see what's available beforehand, so you can have a good sense of whether the place is priced right, and how much you can bargain. i've never negotiated lower rent before!! i would also bracket the areas you are interested in. with the places i've bought and rented the last few years, they were always out of my budget originally, but we negotiated down. when the folks who bought our old flat first looked at it, they walked around with a list of things they wanted, and made notes. very impressive. it is definitely worth writing down what you want. we had a clear sense of how we wanted it to feel, and look, and we made some wishes for a garden which have happily come true. also keep in mind that furnished is generally the same price as unfurnished - it will save you a lot, unless you have someone moving your stuff? someday i want to be the person who just writes down what they want moved, and watches it arrive :thumb

references, banking, etc can be tricky, but if your partner is walking right into a job perhaps it isn't an issue.

i would also ask people about neighbourhoods. we didn't know muswell hill ourselves, but liked the feel of it when we walked in, read a lot about it, asked a lot of questions (thank you nw6!) and we were ready to put in an offer before we even saw the rest of the community because of that! it was the first place we saw, and i think that we were ready because we knew what we were looking at, from a lot of online research. and pure luck!

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[orangefoot]

You can look at upmystreet (http://www.upmystreet.com/) to find out about the local neighbourhood profile. The one for our area is quite accurate. That site also has a 'where's my nearest ___' which has good info too. On rightmove you can view the map location and then switch to aerial to see how close the houses are together and whether there are many trees or green spaces around.

[Vinigirl]

I have been checking rightmove and found a few good looking places there. I was checking gumtree as well. I'm not doing much serious looking until we land. Thanks for the tip on negotiating lower rent, I never would have thought of that! I've been making my 'wish list' and trying to really solidify in my mind what it is we want in a home so that we can work towards manifesting it!

We are moving because my husband is being transferred. He works for Expedia and is being moved to the the UK office which is in Camden. :D We were already moved from Toronto to Seattle so we know the drill pretty well.

We are fortunate that his company moves us and does pretty much everything for us including helping set up bank accounts and house hunting. The movers come on Tuesday to start packing and will be done by Thursday. We leave our home and go to a hotel on Wednesday! ( which the company takes care of for us woohoo!!)

His company also arranged temporary housing for us when we land. They've rented us 2 two bedroom flats in one of their corporate housing locations in Westminster for 6 weeks so we are really set up and have some time to get our feet under us and find a place with no worries. They didn't have a place big enough for our large family of 7 so they gave us two flats...my big kids are excited to have their own place. I told them that I expect them to invite the rest of us over for dinner at least once per week!! :eat:

They are shipping 500lbs of stuff right away by air to our temp housing and the rest comes by ship and should arrive just about the time we move into our new home.

We are out of temp housing on Dec 21 or therabouts so we're thinking of a Christmas holiday in Germany and then take delivery of our stuff and move into a new house at the beginning of the new year. Very exciting!!

I am sooooooo grateful for all the company does to make the move go smoothly. I don't know if I'd have it in my to try to arrange ( and pay for!) it all myself. This way we mostly just have to pack our suitcases and hop on a plane!

I'm looking forward to getting there and exploring and finding our new home. It is all starting to feel so real as our suitcases are filling up!

I looked at your neighbourhood after you posted where you are and it does look lovely! I'm hoping to find something similar. I want a really nice community feel, walking distance to everything we need, good transport links for my husband to get to the office, a garden, a great kitchen and a groovy, groovy space for us to hang out in.

Just basking in the JOY of this amazing life today!!

Thanks for letting me share

:joy:

[artparent]

you are very blessed! lots of luck in finding the perfect home :thumb

we've just moved in, threw a birthday party, and have a nutty week going on before another business trip. i'm staying home this time! when we've settled in we'd love to meet up with some folks!

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