We had a major ant infestation down the side of our house and they particularly liked the left-over cat food our cat leaves in the laundry. We called Natural Pest Control (they use all Natural pesticides) and whilst we did get off to a bad start with their guy calling in sick on the first day, they did come the next day and do the job.

Approximate cost: $200

My wife and I had been wanting to go to Fifteen the restaurant owned by Jamie Oliver and Tobie Puttock since watching the TV show. If you didn't see the show basically the restaurant is a training ground for disadvantaged kids.

It was my wifes birthday so I thought we should finally go and check it out. The restaurant itself was very nice and we had a table right in front of the kitchen which is very open so you can see the final stages of food preparation.

We decided not to order an entree so we could keep room for dessert (my wifes favourite part of any meal!). For main I ordered a Zuchinni Risotto with Proscuito which I thought was fantastic. As usual with risotto's at fancy restaurants when it comes out you think it looks small, but because it is so rich you struggle to get through it. Definately one of the best risottos I've had. My wife ordered a Sirloin steak dish that was presented in relatively thin slices on a bed of rocket and parmesan. She found the meat to be quite fatty for a $40 dish and was not overly impressed with it. I thought the $18 risotto was much better value than the sirloin. We also ordered some side dishes of Olive Oil Mashed Potato (yum!) and a wam pinenut and spinach salad (not so yum).

By the time we finished our mains we barely had much room for dessert (don't know how anyone could tackle the degustation menu). We decided to share a Chocolate Mousse. It came in a tall glass and was very rich (I think they used dark chocolate), the crushed pistacchio nuts was a nice touch.

When I booked they asked me what the occasion was and I told them it was my wifes birthday. We were both surprised when the dessert was delivered with a custom-made chocolate "Happy Birthday" sign. It was a nice touch.

Overall it was a nice experience but didn't quite live up to the hype, however the table service was very professional and we didn't have to wait long for the food.

Approximate cost: $35

I've driven past this shop a million times and wondered what was inside. There is always a lot of white furniture etc outside but I was intrigued as to why it was called "Flower" Mee. I saw a rating for the shop on WOMOW so I finally decided to drop in to get something for my wife for Valentines Day.

Kathryn is amazing, she is not only extremely friendly but very creative, in fact she calls herself more of an artist than a florist which is why 80% of the products are not flowers. I bought 10 satin coloured roses that were very nicely wrapped and she assured me they would last a lot longer than your typical flowers. My wife is always annoyed when her flowers die after a couple of days.

Anyway it is now nearly a week later and they are still going strong, not even remotely brown around the edges. In fact every one who has come over has commented on them, even the guys!!

Approximate cost: $65

We ate lunch at the Bakehouse last weekend with some friends. We were in town for the Flinders Market and thought we'd have a quick bite to eat. The place was jam packed when we arrived but we managed to grab a table as another group left.

Put off by the high prices for most lunch items we ordered a few sandwiches. For $8 they were pretty light-on, the bread was not particularly big and there was hardly any chicken in my chicken sandwich. The worst thing though was that we have asked for no butter and there was a thick spreading of butter in addition to the mayonnaise.

Normally I would have taken it back and asked for another one but we have to get our 2 year-old home to sleep.

Approximate cost: $8-$25

I thought I would give this place a go because my car was quite dirty as I'd driven it on a long distance trip. The $24 seemed reasonable for a hand-wash, vacuum, wax and tyre black.

When you walk into the cafe to pay for the wash it says on a big sign "Your car will be ready in 15 mins". I think I waited closer to 30 mins which is not too bad for these hand wash places but it's a bit misleading having a static sign saying 15 mins.

I never buy anything in the cafes at these places because it's always really overpriced so I just sat down and read the paper. You can also look through a window at your car going through the washing process, and I was suprised to see that most of the washing is down by water jets not be humans. When they called me to say my car was ready, I was very surprised to say the least that one side of the car had heaps of really obvious dirt still on it. This obviously because the car is not really hand "washed". It is machine washed and then hand-dried. I questioned them on it and a guy came running over with a bottle of spray and a towel. He did a few quick rubs and ran off. There was still heaps of very visible dirt so I said "what about the rest of it?". Anyway I had to literally stand there for 5 mins and point out every last bit of dirt. By this time the manager had realised what was happening and came over to see if I wanted it to be put through the washing process again. I said don't worry, because I didn't want to wait another 30 mins.

Approximate cost: $25

I signed up for the free trial of Quickflix about 6 months ago. The trial gives you 3 DVD's at a time which is quite good but at the end of the trial I opted for the cheapest plan at $10 per month. With this plan you can only have 1 DVD at a time which is not very useful unless you're very efficient at watching them and sending them back quickly.

The pre-paid envelopes they send you are a great concept. The queueing system where by you list a whole heap of movies you want to see and they send the ones they have available is a bit annoying because you can't really prioritise them. They just send whatever is available.

Anyway after 6 months I decided I wasn't using it enough and that's where the real annoyance began. I logged into their website and tried to find out how to cancel my plan only to find I had to call them between 9am-5:30pm Mon-Fri. For a business that is entirely web-based it is pathetic that they require you to call them to cancel your subscription. I called them and complained about this process and they said it was for "security purposes". Given that they are more than happy to let you sign-up online using your credit card and do everything else online except cancel I find that hard to believe. They just want to make it as hard as possible for people to cancel.

Approximate cost: $from $10 per month

You wouldn't expect the most amazing experience 400km west of Melbourne in the middle of nowhere but...

You know those little country town pubs that you walk into and everyone stares at you? The Nati pub is a perfect example. A group of us went here for dinner on Sat night and I ordered the Bushman's Porterhouse.

The onion and mushroom sauce was quite nice, however the Porterhouse was the fattiest piece of meat I've ever eaten. Not only did it have the usual fat around the outside which is to be expected, it also have huge veins of stringy, chewy fat through the steak. I could only eat about half of it and left the rest.

To make things worse I ordered it Medium and it was extremely rare, I don't think anyone would like chewing on rare fat.

Approximate cost: $20

I searched online for a low cost conveyancing firm and came across these guys. They made the process of buying a house very quick and easy with minimal involvement from us. They work on a low base fee plus disbursements and this resulted in a lower bill than if we had used any of the fixed price firms.

Approximate cost: $550

This is one very upmarket Fish and Chip shop! It's a sit-down restaurant rather than your traditional Fish & Chippery. The decor is very nice and it presents well but the prices are very high for the quality of food. If I remember correctly the Fish & Chips was $17. I ordered a Fish Burger which was nice but not really worth $16 even in a sit down environment.

Approximate cost: $16

When we moved in just over a year ago we laid instant lawn (rollout turf). What a mistake! The drought continued and it was all but dead. We started looking around for some synthetic (fake) grass and came across Always Perfect Grass. We had about 5 companies come out and quote and show us their grass samples. There is a big difference in the quality of fake grass that affects it's lifespan, feel (under foot), look etc. We really wanted a product that wouldn't look like Fake grass, in particular we didn't like the sheen that a lot of them have in sun light.

Always Perfect use TigerTurf which is a very high quality synthetic grass. We decided to go with them for a number of reasons even though their quote was the highest. First of all the TigerTurf is a great looking product, secondly Paul was great to deal with through the quoting process. We chose a reasonably long blade (35mm) because we wanted it to feel lush under foot. Most schools lay much shorter synthetic turf that wears a bit better.

A couple of days before Paul and his team were due to come and install it, he called to say that the supplier was out of stock of the grass we had selected. Fortunately he offered to upgrade us to the next level of grass for no additional cost rather than us having to wait an extra 2 weeks for new stock. This was great, and I think a lot of other businesses could learn from his pro-active approach in this instance. Yes it cost him a little bit more but the customer was much happier.

The finished product looks fantastic and supposedly it will still look good in 20 years, with no need to mow, water, fertilize it. We are looking forward to our kids being able to spend more time outside without running around in the mud!

Approximate cost: $4500