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.

Reinventing the lounge

Warning - this is a picture heavy post. Probably the most amount of photos I've ever attempted in one post. Hope you can see them all (there should be 11).

So calling it redecorating would just be a euphanism. It's bloody hard work so I have decided 'reinvention' is a better suited description of what we are trying to achieve.

We moved in 3 years ago at Easter (how did time go by that fast?!) and at the time said we were pretty happy with most of the decor but we wanted to paint the lounge and dining room soon. Soon is now!

I used a very tecnhological way of determing when we should start by working out that the actual painting would take the longest so a 4 day weekend at Easter would be the perfect time to do this (now I hope to god that the painting will take half the time of the stripping or we could be here all year). Given our rather hectic schedules over the next few weeks and the fact we are both spending a fair amount of time away from home we decided this was the best weekend to get the stripping done.

The wallpaper has to be stripped because it isn't in a fit state to be painted over (not to mention how many coats would probably be required to cover up the orange...sorry, I mean terracotta).

That white strip is where I demonstrated to Graeme the unfitness of the paper by peeling it easily away from the wall. Oh how I wish the whole lot could have been that simple...

So we started stripping yesterday at 11am after our first trip of the weekend to Bunnings where we bought scrapers and a tiger (for perforating the paper to help the steam/water/whatever you are using to soak into the paste to make it easier to remove) and a new mailbox (possibly to be mentioned in another post when it comes out of the garage and gets put where it's supposed to be!)....

Look at those pretty swirls.

There was a point yesterday where I decided this was a fine enough pattern to remain on the walls indefinetly.

We started with the tiger swirls, a sprayer filled with hot soapy water, the scrapers and our bare hands...

It was a slow and painful process.....

and an hour or so later we ended up in Bunnings for the second time.

This time to hire a wallpaper steamer.

which moved things a little faster but still not quite as fast as we had hoped. We did continue to make steady progress (and managed to fit in a Starbucks break with some friends before getting back to it late afternoon). The only thing getting us through at this stage was listening to music DVDs at top volume (Muse and Travis in case you're interested)....

It felt like we were never going to finish this one wall. We made a pact to finish it before we went to bed and put on a Bill Bailey DVD when the music DVDs finished. And at just before midnight we finally made it...

By this time I had developed "the claw" where my hand was stuck in the position of holding a scraper and it hurt to stretch it out. We went to bed exhausted and wondering if we could get away with just leaving it looking like this forever.

But with a new dawn came new enthusiam and so this morning we were right back to it and make a fair bit of progress on our second wall...

We only had the steamer for 24 hours so it had to go back at 1pm today. We still have a long way to go but we've made a good dent in it.

We bought some wallpaper stripper to try on the evenings we are at home this week and then will probably hire the steamer again next Sunday and hopefully have it finished.

We got coffee on the way home and sat down to look at our achievements...

There is one member of the household who is quite concerned with our antics...

He can't work out why we are making so much mess and why his bed is in the dining room!

Hopefully I will keep snapping pictures as we get further along and I will be back with some more photos and updates as we go along.

The exciting bit is that we actually bought some tester pots today so we can start playing with colours ready for when we can actually paint our chosen colours on the walls (which will be after an undercoat goes on).

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 :-)

I can't think of a suitable title so this will have to do...

Just a quick one tonight.

I'm off to Auckland tomorrow overnight leaving Graeme to fend for himself with the 2 dogs...at least the 3 of them will get some peace and quiet while I'm gone. I'm suffering from a change of seasons cold and perhaps being a little bit whingy about it. I'm on the mend now though after boosting myself with echincea and vitamin C and keeping the oil burner topped up with eucalyptus oil (why does all this good for you stuff have to be so hard to spell?!).

I thought I'd share some recent photos to make up for my lack of words. Hope to be back with an update at the weekend.

Hopefully they are all self explainatory and you do not require captions as I am feeling too lazy for that.

Catch ya later

March = Autumn

As our seasons are in reverse to the northern hemisphere that means that March is the start of Autumn. It feels a little autumnal at the moment. There's a few leaves falling from the trees (more to do with the wind then the actual change of seasons I think) and it's starting to feel colder in the evenings and first thing in the morning.

In previous years we still carry on having some nice sunny warm days throughout Autumn and that's what I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this year.

I'm feeling a little cheated by summer this year - it hasn't been nearly as nice as previous years. Too much wind and rain for my liking.

But the weather is what it is. I can't change it so I shall try not to moan and just enjoy what is.




I have the day off today as I worked yesterday (Sunday). I flew up to Auckland (on an obscenely early flight) to see another group of our volunteers off. Apart from being really tired from an early weekend start it was a good day and got even better when I settled down with a book when I got home and realised I didn't have to go into the office today! On the flight back from Auckland I managed to get this lovely shot...

I think it's official - I am addicted with taking photos from planes :-)

In other news we currently have two dogs which is lots of fun! Our neighbour is away so we are looking after his dog for 3 weeks. He's quite different from Rhett. The main difference being that you have to coerce him to eat! After nearly 3 years of Rhett scoffing anything that falls in his bowl or anywhere on the floor within 3 seconds it is a big change. And we have to remember to feed the dogs at a time we can stay and make sure it's Ramses eating his food and not our greedy dog! Mostly they are well-behaved together but there's quite a few mad half hours and tugs of war just like this one....

It should be an interesting couple of weeks.

We're both fairly busy at work at the moment so we will be trying to make the most of the weekends to make up for long hours during the week. Hopefully that means we will have some good photos for you over the next wee while.

Happy Pancake Day

My belly is full of pancakes and sugar and lemon juice (fresh from the lemon tree in our garden).
I am content.
And I can totally recommend THIS recipe.
BEST. PANCAKES. EVER.

Happy Pancake Day!

Taupo

We got back this afternoon from a few days at Lake Taupo.

It all started when we couldn't get tickets to see Billy Connolly in Palmy because they had sold out. I did a quick search and discovered there were tickets left for the Taupo show so we decided to make a weekend of it.

We drove up on Saturday afternoon which was pretty rainy and miserable. We could hardly see the mountains from the Desert Road and then we got stuck in a bit of traffic due to an Iron Man contst which had people running from Turangi to Taupo (crazy people!). But we arrived in the end and checked in to our hotel about 10 minutes north of Taupo - the Bayview Wairekei Resort. The hotel was lovely. We went for a swim that afternoon and Graeme attempted to teach me to play squash (for those that don't know I am hugely unco-ordinated) which was heaps of fun! Then we had dinner at the resort cafe that night.

On Sunday morning we headed out to Huka Falls which were just down the road from the hotel. They were spectacular. We went for a walk up the track both ways but didn't go too far because I was not wearing "suitable" shoes. But we went just far enough away from the crowds and got some lovely photos. This photo was taken from the bridge right by the carpark so it was swarming with tourists!

We also went to the Honey Hive and took a drive down to the Prawn Farm (although we didn't go in) before heading to town for some lunch. We also managed to fit in another swim that afternoon before getting ready to go into town for dinner before Billy.
We miscalculated our time though and ended up only able to have starters for dinner because we needed to leave to get up to the Events Centre on time. (Yummy starters though - the most amazing onion rings and rosemary & feta pizza bread at Dixie Brown's - must go back some time to actually try their dessert cocktails!)

Then came the show which was fabulous. This was the second time we have seen Billy Connolly live (the first time being at the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow in 2005 before we left for NZ) and he didn't disappoint. I had heard him tell some of the stories before (in DVDs, TV shows etc) but they were still funny and he added lots of other details in as well. I was also pleased that the zoom on our camera allowed me to take this shot...

He was definetly worth the money and the huge wait we had in the carpark when it came to leave!

This morning we visited the Craters of the Moon before leaving Taupo. It's a site of geothermal activity and involves a 45 minute walk around a site which has lots of steam and mud pools and 'craters'. It stunk of rotten eggs (due to the sulphur but thankfully it wasn't quite as bad as Rotorua!) but was worth a visit.

Then came the drive home (which normally takes about 3 hours) which was better today with no rain. We stopped in Taihape on the way back for coffee and cake and made it home for 3pm.

This afternoon we've been unpacking, sorting through the photos and got some food in (cupboards were empty!). And tomorrow it's back to work for both of us. After having 11 days off I think I may be inconsolable come tomorrow morning!

Hope you all had a good weekend too!

Yucky weather

I wrote this post on Sunday 15th February and had to save it as a draft before I could finish it. I am only just getting round to finishing it and posting it - sorry for the delay! So please bear in mind this post doesn't relate to this week.

What a week.

The rain started on Tuesday and we had a ridiculous amount of rain in a 2 hour window which meant the city's drainage system couldn't cope and there was a lot of flooding.

Had I stayed at work all day and not ventured out until after 5pm (as is the norm) it probably wouldn't have affected me. Once the rain slowed the drains started to work and by the time Graeme got home he said the roads were fine.

But I had a meeting in town at lunchtime which I couldn't miss. So I ventured out. Got to the meeting and was lucky enough to get the park right outside the door. Still managed to get soaked running in though. Meeting went well.

Then I decided to do the banking and some stationery shopping before heading back to the office. When the parking meter took my money and didn't give me a ticket that's when I should have realised I would be better off hibernating. Luckily I spotted a traffic warden across the street so marched over to them (I should point out here that I was wearing flimsy sandals and a skirt because the day had started off nice!). The traffic warden wrote down my number plate and let me off for 10 minutes when I explained what had happened and that I didn't have anymore money. Then as I stepped back to go in the bank my foot landed in a puddle about 2 inches deep....yuck!

Got to the bank and had problems there but all fixable. Then I went stationery shopping and everything got soaked as I tried to load it into the car. But I was done in town and could head back to the office.

That's when it got worse! I couldn't turn down some roads because they were completely flooded (see shot below) so I kept turning hoping for a road that was less flooded.

The worst part came when I pulled up behind a minivan and a car pulled up behind me and we were all trying to turn left. There was a council worker in the road measuring the flooding and he told the van to go the over way.

So the van started reversing....

I put the car into reverse and looked behind to see the car behind me in the exact same spot. I looked front and the van kept reversing (at this point I was swearing). I lent on the horn but not quick enough to stop the van before it hit me.

And the driver behind still hadn't moved! Then he had the cheek to reverse pull out and give me a dirty look as he went past!

So the van pulled forward and up a drive to do a u-turn and I turned also. I had to get out of the car to check the damage in inches of water (I was absolutely soaked at this point). Luckily there was hardly any damage - just some scratches so I waved the minivan driver on when he stopped to check.

I was okay but in panic mode at that point. I rung Graeme and said I was going home and not driving again so he could either get a taxi home or I would go to his work then and there so he could drop me and have the car. He chose the taxi option.

The water went down pretty quickly once the downpour let up which was good. It's pretty much been raining on and off since then which is a wee bit depressing though!