October 2019 round up

I've lots to share so I'll get on with it 😉👍

The weekend after my last post we drove out to Tamahere Artisan market, there was a good mix of arts, crafts and toiletries.

I could have bought so much more but I was restrained,  Joe was with me 😉

We bought a selection of soaps and a body butter, made with booze! Just had to....

The weather is definitely improving and the garden is starting to look great, the dogs have been enjoying the sunny days

We were lucky enough to have use of the Karakaraki Christian camp for three days of crafting. 

I've been crocheting too, I finished the scrappy big granny square and sewed in all the ends. Earlier in the year I finished the cross stitch tulip rug, there was loads of yarn left, so I used it to make a wall hanging, the rug will be hung too.

Sue brought over a crochet magazine with a couple of really nice projects, I bought some brights colours and made a start, it's still a work in progress, just the flowers to do. I had intended to make it longer to fit on my chair, I didn't like the dimensions of it as a throw, but when I worked on another square I thought sod it! and I left it as it was. It's bright and makes me eyeballs ache! 😋

Our house is built into a slope, which makes some areas rather interesting. Outside our front door there is a tiered garden, it's in the shade from mid morning on-wards. It's had numerous things planted there, but how it is how I like it best. We have hellebore's and hosta's, and a few ferns that come up, they get huge so we cut them back regularly.

More of the rose arbour, each morning I am treated to more blooms on the Dublin Bay rose, the lavender is covered in bees. My limes have gone past the lime colour stage but are perfectly fine in a gin and tonic

One g&t coming right up!

I re-organised the pantry and gave the booze pride of place, all ready for summer drinking in the garden

I've been making good use of the new bread maker, lunch times are good

Spring always sends people into spring cleaning mode, not me! However we did have a trailer load of stuff to go to the dump, and while Joe was unloading it all I was in the dump shop looking for more crap to bring home! I found an old trolley calling out for a revamp, at $30 it was coming home with me. I may start it next weekend, I already have some chalk paint and some antique wax

Last weekend saw England playing the All Blacks, New Zealand, in the rugby world cup semi final. It would be an understatement to say we were happy with the result!

Michael was extremely happy, he'd been getting a lot of stick before the game. It's always good to beat the All Blacks. And while Michael sang his heart out there were some very quite Kiwis!!

 

The 27th was our 29th wedding anniversary, we took Michael and Natasha out for dinner at the Furnace in the city centre, my dinner, photographed, was delicious

There were a couple of scary moments with a Lime scooter, I thought me life was over people!

 

Last Wednesday I went with Sue who is a  member of Hamilton Gardens, to a preview of a new garden opening this coming Monday. It's called the Picturesque garden, I didn't take any photos because I shall go back when there are less people and better light. After our walk through, we had wine, ham off the bone in rolls with salad and chicken kebabs, there were also fruit kebabs. We all were invited into the Pavilion where Dame Malvina Major talked of her career and of the opera Magic Flute by Mozart. The Picturesque garden walks you through the story of the opera.
Needless to say neither of us lasted more than 10 minute of the rather poor movie of it!
I did take photos of my fave gardens though....

At that point I shall leave you there 

and go pour myself another glass of bubbles, 

have a great weekend xx

An engagement, a concrete deck and some home improvements

I mentioned in my previous post that we'd had an engagement, well we have. Michael popped the question on the 1st December 2016, a complete surprise for everyone, for him too I think. We thought he'd never get around to it! They've been together 4 years on the 1st so it was high time. They took the dog to Raglan beach and he made Natasha climb up on some big sand dune. They watched the sun go down, then as they were getting up to go he said to Tash, help me get up, as she turned around to pull him up, he was down on one knee holding out a ring! How romantic and lovely is that? We're all chuffed to bits of course, the wedding is going to be here on 1st December 2018, so we have a couple of years to prepare and me to get more plants in the garden. We've still to have the official engagement party. 

Here's the happy couple

 And here's the ring, he did good job that boy of mine.

So what else has been going on? Shitloads! That's what.

If you've been following  my blog for a while you'll know that we like to knock things down, pull things out and put it altogether again a bit different, or in some cases a lot different.

The last updates I posted on the deck are here with the finished (minus a handrail) here

The handrail still isn't finished but it will be soon, hopefully, we just needed to find some funds from somewhere.

We did however get the concrete base down, it was a bit of a push getting it done before our visitors arrived. Also we were battling a very wet spring, which proved to be a bloody pain in the arse on the day.
Michael's good mate Andrew lays concrete for a living so he was there with Michael to help get the job done. As I already mentioned the weather had been appalling but it started off OK and so we took a chance and gave the go ahead to the concrete company.
But first it had to be made ready for concrete to be poured

 

 We were expecting rain the day the concrete was arriving

 

 It's a thing of beauty and is being well used, it's lovely and cool under there too, it get very hot (usually) in our summers.

To add to all the stress getting ready for our visitors we had started on renovations downstairs, I know right, bit fick ain't we? I think the last post on that was here

This is what we managed to get done about a week before our visitors

The frame work for the pantry

 Door into the hallway, behind the pantry

 Framework for new linen cupboard

Door frame going in (leads to bathroom and hallway)

 Linen cupboard

Pantry

 Half wall relocated behind sitting area

Pantry, doorway and sitting area.

ETA I found some more photos
Getting ready for painting

I have pretty much painted downstairs but I really can't find those photos so I will have to take new ones, but in the meantime....

During all the madness I decided I wanted to move some cupboards around in the kitchen.
I hate my kitchen!
I seemed to have rather a lot of stuff in the cupboards!

 Looking better

 We took out the L shaped cupboard that enclosed the kitchen and which also made for difficult acces when the dishwasher drawer was open. we bumped the tall cupboards down the wall and rotated the L cupboard 90% and squeezed in to the right of the oven.

 When we look back into the family room we have so  much more space!

 I managed to persuade Joe to take out the corner cupboard on the left and put in a couple of shelves.
So much more workspace now.

Since this last photo was taken the old window, when the pink frame is, has been closed in, and I threw on a couple of coats of paint on the walls. A bit of a bodge job but it looked a whole lot better than before. I'll take a photo of it painted for next time.

See ya soon