A Break-In

I've been looking forward to showing some more photos of our study - last weekend we actually finished painting the whole room, and I'm very happy with it. I love the wall colour and art on the walls, and I've mostly de-cluttered the room. I've been waiting for a good, bright, fine day to photograph the room to show off what we've done ...

But last night while we were out, our house was broken into, and our camera stolen, so you'll have to wait for show and tell.

At first we didn't notice anything amiss when we arrived home at 10.00pm after a family party. Then I looked in our bedroom and saw all my jewellery drawers pulled out and all my costume jewellery strewn around and my underwear tipped out onto the floor. "Has someone been in our house?" Steve didn't believe it at first - he thought that was how I left the bedroom! We looked around a bit further, and yes, someone had been in our house.

Fortunately they only took a guitar, the camera and about $20 in loose coins, strangely they left so much behind that was right next to the things they took. We think they were mostly looking for gold to sell.

We've spent the day today contacting police and the insurance company, and had a fingerprint forensic officer visit twice, once before and once after we discovered the point of entry. At first we couldn't figure out how anyone got in, unless they had a key, but it seems that they got into our shed and took out a crowbar and jemmied their way in through a window. They then somehow climbed over much mess (around the girls' desks) without disturbing it too much, probably spent about 5 minutes inside and then left the same way, shutting the window behind them somehow. While the forensics lady was here I discovered the crowbar thrown under a lavender bush nearby.

Now I have lots of black and white dust to clean up, I've done a quick clean but will clean better tomorrow. It's sticky stuff and hard to clean off the paintwork.

The girls are a bit freaked and it's weird to find your undies thrown on the floor and think that your top drawer has been ransacked. Not fun. But we're doing ok. It's been kind of a bonding experience and today we did a bit of detective work piecing the crime together, which was kind of interesting.

So I guess I'll be posting some old photos I have on file for the next little while, although the girls have cameras I could use if I need one. Looking forward to getting a new camera now ...