I have a office!

Well an office maybe slightly overstating it (??!!) but I have space and I am so happy!

It is rough and ready and is basically some $15 Ikea legs and an old door for a table top. But look at that clear surface!

Our spare bedroom used to be a really nice guest bedroom.  It was always prepared for the unannounced guest and I had really enjoyed putting it together.  However all that changed when I did a styling job for my family and needed to used the bed; so out came the bed and havoc then ruled!  Since then it spent some time as a projects room and more recently a dumping ground!

But change is afoot and I am on a mission to clean it up.

Right now however it looks like this one one wall ....... Oh ..beautiful.

But if you turn you head to the right ..... you get this......

I'll consider this the half way point.....

Frangipani Flowers

As I have been flat out since we got back doing a range of things (that I will post about in the near future!) we will be going back in time today......

Just before we went to New Zealand my lovely friend from work Kate, asked if I would make some flowers for her daughters birthday cake.

Her beautiful daughter loves all things yellow so she asked me to make some Frangipani Flowers for the top of her birthday cake.

Making flowers, at least for me, is really soothing, but like many things setting up is sometimes the hardest part of all.  So after a bit of procrastinating I set myself up in our living room one evening, and got started... this is my basic setup:

I thought about putting up a tutorial for making Frangipani Flowers but there are already so many on the Internet if you search.  Also everyone gets results in slightly different ways and sometimes you just have to make it up as you go along.   

Once the flowers have been made they have to dry for a while, and egg cartons are the best way to do this. 

They take about two to three days to dry and after that colour is applied.

After that it was just a matter of boxing the flowers up for delivery.

Kate just this week sent me though the promised photo of the much anticipated birthday cake:

I am so glad that Kate's daughter was so happy with her birthday cake!  

Home sweet home...

Well we arrived home at 8am yesterday morning and were home in Newcastle by lunchtime. It all happen so suddenly one minute we were in NZ and then we were home, but it is good to be home!

However to finishing off our NZ trip there is just one last post and then reality will well and truly set in.......


Our last day in Dunedin started bright and early with a trip to the Farmers Market in the old Railway building. The Market was small and as we could not partake of all the beautiful food we did not stay long, but we did buy some Manuka honey to bring home.

The railway building was spectacular (as you can see the Dunedin mist has not cleared yet!).

As were were standing admiring the railway building we noticed that the Dunedin prison was directly across the road! Right there in the center of town and across the road from the railway... not the place I would have put it but you know...

As we had a bit of time we went for a walk through the city and they really do have some spectacular architecture!

After that it was bye bye Dunedin as we drove through the fields of sheep to the airport and got on our plane to Christchurch.

Although it was a beautiful day the day that we flew into Christchurch the next day, and our last day in NZ, was overcast and very very cold!  However despite that, we braved the cold and jumping on a bus went to see some of what Christchurch had to offer on a cold Sunday.

We started our day at the Riccarton Art Markets which are in Riccarton House and Bush parkland. 

We then went on the tranquil walk through the preserved bush land in the hope that we would see a Kiwi before we left.  Unsurprisingly we didn't, but it was a nice walk.

And we got to see the oldest building in the Canterbury Planes. 

And a very large tree.   

From there we grabbed lunch - and we finally (!) had a piece of Lolly Slice - a very unique NZ invention. 

Then on the bus again we hopped and went into the center of Christchurch to Re:START.  Re:START is a project set up in Christchurch to start to rebuild the city center.  After clearing all the dangerous buildings from the site they erected shipping containers to house some of the shops that had previously been in the city.  It is an amazing sight - brightly coloured shipping containers and reestablished street-scape that give the city hope. 

At the end of the mall you finally get a glimpse of, not only what the Re:START mall looked like before the clean up, but also the true extent of the damage from the quake.  It is a sad and eerie experience looking at what had been. 

So there ended our trip to NZ.  We headed back to our hotel and got ready for the horrendous 4am rise to catch our flight home.   

 

Dunedin

We had only 1.5 days in Dunedin so we had to make the most of it!

First off we had to extend the car for another two days as it appears that many of Dunedin attractions are out of the city - who knew?!

So we started the day off with a drive through the city to the Dunedin Botanical Gardens.  These were by far the nicest  Botanical Gardens we had seen so far - this one actually had flowers in bloom!

After this we went to see the worlds steepest street - Baldwin Street.  We were thinking that we would walk up it but it was very steep and it was very cold!  

After this we headed out to the Otago Peninsula as we were going to see the Northern Royal Albatross colony. Apparently this is the only place in the world where they land on the mainland. 

The drive out to the Peninsula is just stunning. 

On the way out to the Otago Peninsula on the 'high' road you drive past Larnach Castle.  We had heard that it was worth a visit. The gardens and building were quite amazing - but the view was something else.  

We finally dragged ourselves away and continued on our way to see the Northern Royal Albatross.  

They are hard to spot as although they have a 3 meter wingspan, they are along way away! Not to mention the thousands of seagulls to distract you! But we did spot a few and it was quite a view out on the point, it was however freezing. 

This is what one looks like up close! 

Getting back to Dunedin we drove along the coast road and that too had much to offer in the way of views! 

It was a huge day and by the time we got back to the hotel we were just in time to see a sunset....