Monday 29 June - Music Evening

The music evening had a theme of water, water everywhere. Clyde were the first house up to sing & they sang Bridge over Troubled Water as their choice. Every house had to sing a Welsh song called Calon Lan. The words were very difficult to learn, as they were in Welsh, & I thought Clyde sang that song the best of any of the 4 houses. However Hamilton house did a wonderful rendition of Sloop John B & they won the house singing competition.

Sunday 28 June - Storage Unit

Today we went back to the storage unit to drop off some more carpet. It was a good chance to take a photo when we weren't busy rushing about.

Friday is Rubbish day

I think I have told you all about our rubbish system, where we have different coloured bins that go out on particular Fridays. Today was the red bin & green bin day. This is the red bin truck empting our red bin.

Tuesday 23 June - Our new Bedroom

After a very busy day it was great to sleep in our bed even though it is in the blue room.

Thanks to Jo & Gary for coming around in the morning to help us move all the heavy furniture into the storage unit. It was about 8 trips with the trailer to get all our furniture there. We were absolutely knackered by 7:30pm so we didn't even stay up to watch the tv programs we usually watch on a Tuesday night.

Sunday 21 June

This is the list that I wrote out of what should be moved to where.

The Blue Room - before roof refit

We sat down on Thursday night & worked out a list of what is going where. Maybe I should scan it & call it a photo of the day. However I have taken a photo of the blue room as it is currently. Very shortly Scott & I will be sleeping in here on our bed from our bedroom, we haven't slept in that bed since the fire.

We took a load of contents from the wardrobe in the spare bedroom up to mum's for storage. At the time I write this post Scott & the boys are taking the wine from behind the 2 seater couch, in this photo, plus the curtains from our bedroom plus the contents of Scott's side of the wardrobe up to mum's. We are hoping to move the two seater couch into the dining room/living room just so there is no chance of damage at the storage place.

On Sunday we are hoping to move Brent's bed into the spare room, the bed that is there currently will briefly stay in our bedroom while the bed from our bedroom will be moved into the blue room. The coffee table in the photo will just have to be put in our bedroom to go with the spare bed to the storage facility on Tuesday.

I suppose the one good thing about sleeping in the blue room will be that I can fall asleep watching TV & I will be on my bed already. LOL

House News!

Yippee! Our permit has come through from the City Council so we can now start the business of rebuilding our roof. We found that out on Monday.

Today the building contractor from Contract Construction came by to take a look at what needs to be done. He was going to come "after lunch" & true to his word he came after lunch but about 5 minutes before I had to leave to pick up James from school, isn't that always the way? Anyway he wants to start Wednesday next week. Now I know I am supposed to be thrilled but really I am just overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead of me.

I asked him what rooms we need to clear out & the definite ones are the master bedroom, Brent's bedroom & the toy room. He did say that he will put a plywood partition up the hallway at about my craft room so that is going to effectively be the closest room to the demolition & rebuilding going on. He then warned that as soon as we take the roof off that house will be cold. Scott said that it is already cold but I have a suspicion the contractor means really cold. He also said that with the roof off water is likely to be leaking in places we didn't think it would especially if we have rain (which of course is a huge likelihood as we are quickly approching the middle of winter).

So the upshot of it all is, we have to clear all the contents out of 3 rooms & probably for safety my craft room all by next Wednesday. The bad news is that we don't get a key to the storage place until Monday & we have to arrange moving all our stuff, Stan the useless man, hasn't organised anything for us. I forsee a very, very long weekend & an even longer Tuesday.

Anyone want to help? Sorry I won't have any spare beds or spare rooms for anyone to stay.

Wednesday 17th - Been creating again!

I have been playing around with the Upsy daisy stamp set & the Urban garden DSP working out a class for next month.

Soup

For the last few weeks we've been getting leeks in our vege box but the boys aren't really keen on them as a vegetable, so today I decided to try making leek & potato soup.

This is what it looked like before it had really started the cooking process. We had it for dinner & everybody liked it, the good news is there is even left overs so they have gone into the freezer for lunches for me later on.

Sun 14 June

I have been really enjoying the fejoias that I have been getting in my organic box recently. For those in countries other than NZ you might know them better as pineapple quava or quavasteen. I think we are coming to the end of the fejoia season so I thought I had better take a photo of them while we have.

Saturday 13 May - I'm a snail

Sometimes James just cracks me up. I asked him to take my laundry basket down to the drying rack. His creativity can astound me, in fact apparently it's a good exercise to give your child an object & tell them to think up uses for it.

James had a washing basket & in the space of a minute he was a snail that then turned into a turtle that then turned into some space man.

Organic Box

Yes I know I've posted my organic box before but because it changes with the season I thought it would be a good idea to have a photo of what came in the box yesterday.

We got:

apples, feijoas, pears

potatoes, yams,swede,carrots,onions,leek

You're a Star - James

James won player of the day at football on Saturday so as a reward he got the red plate tonight.

You're a Star Brent!

Brent got the red plate last night because he came third in his class in the recent spelling exam. Congrats Brent!

June 7 - When it all goes wrong

Sometimes nothing really goes to plan. I was hoping to send out my Stampin' Up! monthly newsletter yesterday but that never happened because all the men in the house were complaining about the lack of housekeeping. What annoys me even more is that they do much to help the situation.

Last night's dinner just didn't happen. I put the kumara chips on at 5:15 put the fish on to cook in tinfoil at 5:45 thinking it would be cooked by 6pm. Well 6:45 rolls around & the meal still wasn't cooked. It's just as well there is a fish & chippie round the corner from us because it ended up being fish & chips (bought not homemade) for dinner.

June 3

After another frosty start it turned out sunny & mild. I managed to get a swim in today, the first swim in a very long time. I swam 1km in 30 minutes, 750m of it in freestyle. Then I stopped off at the Avon lady & picked up my order, I did a small detour on the way home to go to school. It suddenly occurred to me that James wouldn't have a utensil to eat his noodles with so I did the good mother deed of the day & dropped off a spoon for him. Then it was back home to do the housework. The afternoon was really when my taxi service kicked into gear. 3:30 picked up Brent & took him home, 4:30 picked up James from football practice & then drove into town to pick up Scott & then we all went to the swimming pool for the 5:30 swimming lesson. James swam very well, when he knew he was being watched by the instructor. Brent was getting taught how to do tumble turns. Then at 6:15 we were on the way back home for a dinner out of the crockpot, I just love it for nights like this when we are on the go from 3:30.

Wednesday evening is always hectic so I have only just remembered to take today's photo & that is of the nearly ready to wash, dishwasher, just need to put the crock pot in the back.

June 1 - Huge Surf

After the stormy weekend it is no surprise that the breakers were really crashing at Lyall Bay near the Wellington Airport. What a spectacular sight of nature's awesome power.

May 31 - Snow at sea level!

It is not often that it snows in Wellington & certainly not at sea level but it did today. It snowed & hailed & was bitterly cold. The beautiful thing was that I was sitting in a warm house, with great friends scrapping, what could be better than that!

May 30 - Boathouses

Irene & I went for a walk along the water front on the estuary side of the inlet. What really took my fascination was the beautifully coloured boathouses. We walked past them & they all looked really well maintained so I asked the local girls if people store their boats in these houses. No they don't, these houses are where people actually live. They live in little sheds over the water, most of them had their own private slipway with a boat pulled up it. It really was eye opening to me & now I know why they are called boatHOUSES & not boatSHEDS.

May 29 - Winging my way to ScrapCamp

Jenny Engelbrecht organised a scrapcamp this year at Pauatahanui Inlet. It was a lovely sunny day in Christchurch but Irene & I were quite surprised to find that our flight had been delayed. It was delayed due to bad weather else where in the country. Other than that the trip aboard the ATR to Wellington was uneventful.

May 28 - Supermarket

This is where we go to do the weekly grocery shop. New World in the Fendalton Mall.

A Scrapbook Page

What a surprise, I have finally been doing some scrapping. Now all I have to do is scan all the layouts into the computer, stitch them together & post them here on the blog. I think that it may be quite some time before you see all the layouts I completed over the weekend.

A lot of these layouts have been sitting around half completed since last year so it was wonderful to get the opportunity to just pull them out & finish them off. Unfortunately some of the photos are so old I can't even remember what year they were taken.

This layout falls into that category. I do know it was when we lived in Wellington before children. Scott told me last night that I had a new camera that I was playing with. I'm not sure which one it would even be but I do know it's not my current one.

These are the parliament buildings in Wellington.

June 2 - Frosty start

I think this might be the first frost of the year. We've had cold days but usually cold with rain not one of those clear cold days.

When I dropped the boys off at school today at around 8am it was only 1C, but for all that it's cold, I just love the sun that comes out during the day.