Photo Friday - Mount Doom and the Rangipo Desert

...

Read More

Pots from Old Jeans by Wendy

I'm very proud to say that I am Joe's mum and fortunate that Jenny is now part of our family. Joe's old bedroom is now a guest room ( with a fold down bed made by his dad ) and my workroom were I can surround myself with fabrics and be inspired. This week I have made a couple of fabric storage pots from the legs of old jeans. One pair were black the other standard blue ( slightly harder to sew as...

Read More

The Week That Plans Changed

We had a great weekend in Okarito. Our hope had been to spend some time on Saturday exploring the glaciers at Fox Glacier and Franz Josef, but once we'd driven over to the towns we found the cloud base to be really low along with frequent showers which made the idea distinctly unappealing! We headed back to our quiet seaside spot and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon fossicking for greenstone on the beach,...

Read More

Photo Friday - The Remarkables

The Remarkables, Queensto...

Read More

Kitchen Gadget 10. Kenwood Chef

Earlier this year we wrote a post about the accessories that we use with our Kenwood Chef and the time has finally come to talk about the main beast! Afforded pride of place on our worktop since it was given to us as a wedding present we've used this for all sorts over the years. Before we got a bread machine this was our main workhorse for kneading our bread; now it has a slightly easier life...

Read More

Birds and Beaches

With our ferry from Wellington to Picton on Monday lunchtime we spent Sunday night in the city and had a chance to visit Te Papa - a large museum that attempts to tell the story of New Zealand from the first settlers, through the European settlers several centuries later, to the present day. A really interesting visit. We also took the opportunity of being in a large city to sort out Joe's thermarest...

Read More

Photo Friday - Queen Charlotte Sound

...

Read More

Life's a Game 10: Carcassonne by Rachel

This year we're sharing with you our game of the month. These are all favourites from our collection, or ones we play with our friends. Octobers game is Carcassonne and is brought to you by Rachel, a good friend and a fellow lover of board games: Chris and I have acquired a good cupboardful of games over the years but Carcassonne remains a firm favourite. I think one of the main reasons is that...

Read More

Chicks and Camping

We've successfully finished off our time as Wwoofers and all said and done it's been a really positive experience. Alastair and Suzie have been great hosts and we've enjoyed getting stuck in to all the jobs around the place. We've had our last four working days this week and we've spent them doing everything from mowing lawns, to making cheesecakes (homemade cheese of course), to laying gravel on...

Read More

Photo Friday - Bridal Veil Falls

...

Read More

Patchwork Cushion

The stairs in our house seem to have become a natural seat. As they extend by a few steps into the kitchen / dining room people tend to perch a few steps up to join the conversation in the kitchen but stay out the way. We had a lump of foam left from another project so I decided to make a narrow cushion to sit on the stairs. The only fabric that matched the current décor was the box of denim so out...

Read More