One year ago today

Wow, that year went fast!

Love you G xxx

Big Day Out

On Thursday 14th January we finished work a little early, packed a bag and headed up to Taupo to stay the night. We stayed in a hotel on the lakefront and ate dinner watching the sunset. It was lovely. The hotel was safari themed and unlike anywhere I've stayed before.


On the Friday morning we left Taupo and carried on up State Highway 1 to Auckland where we were attending the Big Day Out. We were lucky enough to be able to check into our Auckland hotel a little early (another strange room - this time because it had a 'capsule/pod' like bathroom - very strange!) and leave the car behind before training to Mount Smart Stadium.


It was packed and a little overwhelming on arrival. Too many people, too hot and too much to look at. So we grabbed an ice lolly and found a seat in the shade and took part in some people watching. It was such a mix of people - all ages and all kinds. We stayed pretty close to the main area which held the orange and blue stages but moved seats a few times depending on what was going on.



My top 3 acts were:

No 1. Muse (how could it be anyone else!) They were amazing. Lasers and big screens and guitar playing acrobatics. What's not to like?!

No 2. Dizzee Rascal - I'm a little surprised by this as was expecting to like him but not necessarily love him but he really got the crowd going and Bonkers was amazing!

No 3. Lily Allen - unfortunately not as good as I'd hoped and the sound seemed a bit off but she was still worth a watch and got the crowd going with a couple of her more daring songs!



So a good time was had by all. I was exhausted by the end of it. Between the 3 hour drive from Taupo and a hot day and lots of music and clapping and singing I was ready for my bed by the time Muse were done. We had to get the train back to the hotel which was surprisingly easier than I had anticipated and we ended up back in our room just after midnight.

The next day we drove back to Palmy stopping in Hamilton to catch up with Kelly and Michael on the way. The weather on the Desert Road was shocking (very heavy rain and low visibiloty) but we eventually got home about 8.30pm. Needless to say we didn't do much at all on Sunday over than sleep and pick up the dog from the kennels :-)

Wedding : : The Boys

: : Top to bottom, left to right : :
1. At the hotel, 2. Posing at the heliport, 3. Same
4. Arriving at Boomrock, 5. Same, 6. Waiting for the bride
7. Groom shooting, 8. Bestman shooting, 9. Posing
10. Extreme golf, 11. No garters, 12. What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt?

Wedding : : Food

: : Top to bottom, left to right : :

1. Title, 2. Starter - Beef fillet with horseradish filled Yorkshire pudding & rocket salad, 3. Starter - Buffalo Mozzarella Vine Tomato basic & proscuitto
4. Main - Snapper fillet, pan roasted with pepper provolone tapenade, warm snow pea, scallion, pear tomato & bell pepper salad, 5. Main - Lamb rump with roasted kumara, pumpkin, potato & parsnip with mint jelly, 6. Dessert - Traditional New Zealand Pavlova with Kiwifruit Strawberries & Cream

I had the buffalo mozzarella, lamb and pavlova. Graeme had the beef, lamb and pavlova. It was divine.

*

We also had canapes after the ceremony which were amazing. Unfortunately, we were all busy with activities and photographs when they were served so there are no photos but they were beautiful. The pakorah was my favourite :-) Here's what we had:

Lemon chicken skewers with lemon pickle
Boomrock venison sausage rolls with Maharaja chutney
Carrot & pistachio ‘pakorah’ with yoghurt & poppy seed dressing

Wedding : : Details

: : Top to bottom, left to right : :

1. Bride's bouquet, 2. Mother of Bride buttonhole, 3. Wedding cakes

4. Bride's hair, 5. Bouquet's and dresses, 6. Mother of Groom buttonhole

7. Place setting, 8. the Table, 9. Table decoration

*

Just some of the details I want to share here. If you have an aversion to weddings you may want to avoid the blog for a couple of weeks. If you love weddings, come back every few days and I'll try to make regular posts.

Wedding Favours

I've been busy this week organising the favours for the wedding. I decided to make origami boxes for the favours. Anything involving paper and my hands is always good!

So here they are above - the pink bases and the start of the name tags.

And below - I've now folded the blue lids as well and even made a set of tags and boxes for me and Graeme - although we will only be getting part favours...trying to keep it a surprise so can't spill too much just yet!

I've also found pink ribbon to match the flowers and ordered some black and white tartan (which I hope will be here in time!) that's the closest match I can get to Graeme's kilt. I will tie the ribbon round the boxes and then tie on the name tags. These will then be the place name settings at the table.
Gorgeous huh?!

In two weeks time...

We will be Mr and Mrs. How awesome is that?!

I really wish I could add more words and photos to these last few blog posts of my 27th year but as you can imagine - there is much to be done.

Tonight we have been making changes to our ceremony and I have been making origami boxes for the wedding favours.

And our first guest arrives on Saturday (Princess Louisa) - I have her airport sign - which she requested months ago all ready for her arrival - complete with glitter glue - it's classy, let me tell you :-)

The picture is of my beloved fairylights in a basket with collected shells and pebbles and the ornament was our wedding present from Graeme's Gran and Grandpa. It seems right to have it out, twinkling next to the lights and ready for our guests to arrive and the big day to take place.

He's Home

...and sleeping off the jet lag after being smothered with hugs (of course)!

So good to have all our feet on the same piece of ground (or carpet) and to be operating in the same time zone.

And next on the agenda is a wedding...

Blogging from a new location

Worry not - I have not moved. I am right where I should be. Just blogging from the laptop tonight rather than the PC. The reasons for this are 2 fold:
1) The PC is so slow lately it's driving me up the wall and 2) Graeme's poorly and watching Lord of the Rings in bed so I am cosied up next to him watching Lord of the Rings with one eye (which is closing firmly at the bits that scare the living bejeezus out of me) while blogging at the same time.
This does mean I don't have my usual access to photos but hope to upload one or two through Flickr so you won't be too bored by my words and will get some visual goodiness.



It's been busy as usual round here but we've been enjoying ourselves. Graeme turned the grand old age of 29 on the 20th so we headed off down to Wellington for the weekend. Primarily to see the lovely All Blacks who were just as awesome as you would expect them to be. They may not have won the trophy but it was still an amazing feeling to be in the same stadium as them. We got absolutely soaked and chilled to the skin but it was so worth it!

We also got some wedding bits done and are pleased to report that we have chosen a celebrant so we have someone to marry us in November. That's a relief, let me tell you. As much fun as it would have been to have Lou ordained to marry us, I would quite like it to be official, thank you very much.

Well the batteries going on the laptop and Frodo's debating whether or not to throw the ring in the fire so I will call it a night for now and hope to be posting another update soon.

Busy Bees

Wow - what a week. It's been a busy one that's for sure. Between us we spent 4 nights away from home (2 each) and I drove about 800kms. We've tried to spend all weekend catching up on....sleep, housework, washing, home cooked meals, each other, decorating, TV and the list goes on.

Hopefully this week will be a little easier. No overnights this week and with Easter Friday it's a 4 day week. Never have I needed a 4 day weekend more!

The decorating isn't going as fast as we would have hoped. We are STILL stripping wall paper in the lounge. Must be about 75% done now. Then we need to sand, prime and finally paint.

We've picked the colour and are trying to sort out new curtains. I think it's fair to say we won't be finished over Easter as was the original plan. But we are definitely planning to be done by the end of April as it's starting to get colder and stripped walls make me feel cold!

And while I was away I found a gorgeous throw at half price in Oamaru which should fit well with the new colours. It will be perfect for adorning the back of the couch ready to drag down for napping and reading on a chilly weekend afternoon.

Speaking of weekend afternoons...soccer season has offically started with G's first game taking place yesterday. They have Easter weekend off and then it's back into the regime of Saturday afternoons. All good for me - I have the perfect excuse for doing girly things like painting my toenails, watching chick flicks and scrapbooking.

Wedding plans are coming along nicely with a few RSVPs and guests booking flights over the last few weeks. We have the photographer booked (and engagement prints ordered and on their way to us...engagement photos nearly 5 years after we got engaged!) and have chosen the hotel in Wellington where we will stay the night before and night of the wedding. We're also getting there in the way of flowers and a cake.

The only thing that we haven't made any headway in and that I am slightly worried about is a celebrant. Anyone reading this able to recommend a great celebrant in the Wellington region?

Hope to get round to a Wellington and also a South Island post soon with some photos and links for soon-to-be guests.

The photo above is sunrise taken on State Highway 1 between Dunedin and Oamaru on Thursday just gone. Makes the early starts and time away from home worthwhile :-)

Kings of Leon = Awesome

We saw Kings of Leon at TSB Arena in Wellington last night and they were amazing!
I was so giddy with excitment that at first I struggled to take photos...
but I managed to get a couple of good shots (as did G when I passed the camera to him).

Highlights were: Sex on Fire (obviously!), On Call, Use Somebody, Knocked Up and Charmer but the whole thing was pretty good! They were on stage about 90 minutes and the atmosphere was pretty good.

We have been spoilt by Barrowlands and Carling Academy in Glasgow and tend to find other music venues very poor by comparison but Kings of Leon put on a blooody good show and the sound was fantastic!

We also squeezed in some wedding stuff including staying the night at the hotel which we have chosen to stay in the night before and night of the wedding. It was lovely. We signed the contract with our photographer and paid a deposit (eeek - things are becoming real!), found a good idea for wedding cake and spoke to a really nice florist. Things are coming along exactly as they should.

Hope to be back tomorrow with some photos of Wellington and the hotel.

I blinked and when I opened my eyes again 9 days had passed...

....and other excuses about why it's been longer than a week since I last posted include:

* a 15 hour work day in Auckland + an afternoon arrival back home the next day
* two days + 1 night in Wellington for work
* walking by the river with my boys and taking photos of windmills
* fun new squeaky cow toys to play with
* taking Rhett-ster to the vets for his annual check-up and jabs and getting a clean bill of health
* deciding to decorate the lounge and dining room when the pair of us have more days away from home than we have at home between now and Easter
* making copious amounts of chocolate cornflake cakes...just because they taste good
* trying to plan a wedding
* hand making envelopes because it's really quite fun
* framing the coolest art ever - personalised especially for G from me
* baking bread
* drinking wine for the first time in ages and miraculously not getting a hangover
* spending 2 hours on the phone to an old (that's a reference to the length of our friendship and nothing whatsover to do with the fact she is older than me!) friend

It's not just Graeme that's awesome at the moment. Life is pretty damn good too. Busy as a beehive but good with it :-)

Lovely long weekend

It's been a fabulous 3 day weekend! Very relaxing and I managed to get a few things ticked off my to do list as well.

After being away last weekend the days all seemed to merge into each other and after an 11 day working week I was soooo tired by Thursday night. I felt that all I had been doing was sleeping and working for so long. But I'm pretty much recovered now.

On Friday we went into town and did a bit of shopping (including a visit to the new discount Dymocks store where I picked up Tales of Beatle the Bard for $11 - bargain!) and then took a wander through the Square to see the Waitangi Day celebrations. I couldn't resist a photo of the NZ flag given the occassion and also talked Graeme into taking a fabulous shot of the Clock Tower.

On Saturday we caught up with friends over coffee after a cruisey morning.

And today (well, I'm sure you will be as surprised as I was that I did this!) we cycled to the swimming pool and went for a swim! It was lovely. It's been way too long since we'd been to the pool (especially considering I have pre-paid swims so we don't have to pay) and we are committed to going back soon - hopefully next weekend.

Our neighbour was away for the weekend so we were dog sitting too. It's lovely to have 2 dogs and I was trying to convince Graeme we should make it a permanent number but he wasn't so sure after all the play fights and barking in the middle of the night! Oh well.

This week is a 4 day week for me as well. I am off on Friday then all of the week after and don't go back to work until Tuesday 25th February. I have some annual leave to use up before the end of the month. Plans at this stage are to scrapbook, walk the dog, go on some bike rides, pay a visit to some wedding photographers (and possibly florists and maybe even some cake tasting) and have a bit of a clearout at home. Plus blog some more! So you might hear from me a bit more often over the next couple of weeks.

A new addition coming to our house in the near future...

...I bet that title got a few eyebrows raising!



Here's is the first picture of the new member of the Stalham-McCrae household:

We won it on Trade Me today and are just waiting to hear about when it'll be delivered. And then of course - it's a matter of working out how it works...and using it!

This is all part of my plan to look good in a wedding dress!

Maybe the next post will show a picture of the dog using it...if we can get him anywhere near it!