Another one of those sunsets

I rushed out to take this picture, when I should have been washing dishes. Cool I thought, then I turned round to see this.

Way beyond cool and into awesome I think.

Bathroom Renovation #7

Here are the changes today at the beginning of week two. At last the new bit of floor is laid and the big gaping hole has gone. The front door has been moved and the window is in its new position.

We do seem to have a new alfresco hole in the wall. Hope it is covered up soon.

And the best bit is the shelf is up and the basin is sitting on it. I think it looks great.

Oh and lastly here is the hole in the wall in our other bathroom. Just beside the toilet so you can bend over and see who is at the front door, isn't that handy, not.

Spring Clean

Above is what my youngests bedroom used to look like until this weekend. As it was the long weekend we decided to take the bull by the horns and clear out his bedroom. After a trip to warehouse stationary for boxes and a lot of junk removed, we turned the big pile of rubbish into the neat and tidy room below. Doesn't it look so much bigger.


Once we had finished my youngests room I got carried away and tackled the rest of the house. We removed in total 3 car loads of unwanted stuff and rubbish. Two and half car loads of stuff were recycled and only a half a car full was actual rubbish that could not be recyled. Now our cupboards are all organised, a really good feeling. My youngest is enjoying playing with toys that were lost in among all the rubbish, and he even tidied them up when he was finished.

Trip to Palmerston

Today was Hawkes Bay Anniversary Day, which meant a holiday for me and the family, yea. And because it will be my birthday next week, Peter my wonderful, brilliant hubbie gave me some cash to spend at the shops. In fact he gave me a big fat envelope of cash. My Mum sent me some too, thanks Mum. So off Peter, my youngest and I went to Palmerston North for the day some shopping. There was quite a lot of "Are we there yet" from my youngest.Broken up by "Gosh look at the Viking" in Dannevirke. Dannevirke has a Nordic connection. And "Gosh look at the wooden church painted to look like stone." At least that is what Peter has told us. So blame him if we are wrong.

And "Gosh look at the windmills", which for a change where all totally still as there was not a breath of wind. Followed by "Peter keep your eyes on the road, don't look at any of the wonderful views", the road through the Manawatu Gorge is a bit worrying. It is a bit like a veranda on the side of a rather pretty cliff. Peter is well known for spending too much time looking at the view and not enough looking at the road.

The shopping was good fun. Peter and my youngest spent some time with the ducks and some time in the play station game shop. When you are on a piggy bank budget it takes a while to make up your mind.

Then a lot of sheep, mountains and weather on the way home.

Bathroom Renovation #6

At the end of week one (its a holiday here tomorrow), I think we are getting somewhere. The bathroom has been plumbed, wired and gibbed. Front door is still boarded up and there is still a big hole in the floor, but at least we have lights to look at the hole in the floor with. Can't wait for next week.

Bathroom Renovation #5

I know that you can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs. But do they really need to leave the old toilet and the old waste pipes sitting beside our front door. Oh and yes, just incase you are wondering, the window will be going back in eventually and become the window of my new pantry.
The view of the front of our house. All visitors have to walk past the toilet before they get to the door.
Our new hall way where the front door will eventually be.
The inspector came to check out our new plumbing. The new plumbing passed inspection with flying colours. Unfortunatly our house didn't. We have to replace the above rotten bearer beam.
Our shiney new toilet in the other bathroom. The old one had to be replaced in order to put in the new one. Don't understand why.

What do you mean Halloween is next week!

Rana dressed up in her Halloween costume a week to early. Well actually, because we have a large hole in the hall floor, Rana and her sister Buffy had spent a great night exploring under the house, dusting up all the cobwebs as they went.

Bathroom Renovation #4

The bathroom renovation has started at last. The bathroom has been stripped, new plumbing laid and the hole cut for the new front door. Hopefully by tomorrow we will have a new front door in place.

Painting complete where's the spouting

After a hard weekend's painting here is the finished result. I am really please with it and so glad to get rid of the old blue, which was not to my taste. Unfortunately our spouting is not ready and will not be fitted till next Tuesday. We could have had an extra weekend to get the painting done if we had known.
What we did notice as we were going around the house, climbing up and down ladders, was lots of the above paint flaking on the east and south side of the house. I thought there was only a couple of patches and I was going to patch them up. But as there are maybe a couple of dozen spots it is possibly time to repaint, one side of the house at a time. Below are a couple of the colours we are thinking about. Still not sure weather to go with the very pale dove grey or a darker version. The pale, bluey, greyey white is winning at the moment.

Today's Daisies #69

In the post today was a lovely parcel full of daisy fabrics and cards that my Mum made. What a brilliant suprise, even though she told me they were on the way. Thanks Mum.

Blue Skies

It was a beautiful spring day to day, with the temperature hitting 21 degrees celcius. The skies were blue with a few little fluffy white clouds. And the view over to Ruapehu was as clear as a bell.

This is my .... favourite movie of all time

After a lot of careful consideration my favourite movie of all time is "Amelie". The evening we went to see this film was one of those perfect evenings. The weather was balmy and warm, a rareity for Scotland. Peter had picked me up after work in Edinburgh and we had an early supper at Pierre Victoire in the Grassmarket. We had the set menu of steak and pomme frites. Then toddled over to watch the film. Brilliant evening.

Other movies I like are Blade Runner the directors cut, Mama Mia, Hot Fuzz, Keeping Mum and The Worlds Fastest Indian. I like movies that are comedies mostly. I like to laugh, usually quite loud and in the wrong places.

Sky

Today was spent painting the facier board around our house. We are getting the spouting replaced. Last week they stripped of the old leaky stuff and next week they will be putting up the new unleaky spouting. In the mean time we needed to get up the ladders and paint the boards. Which meant a weekend of painting. One of the benefits of being up a ladder is you notice a lot of sky, yes I know I should have been paying attention to what I was doing. But if I hadn't been looking at the sky I would never have seen this unusual phenomena. I think it is caused by a thin layer of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere.

Today's Daisies #68

The daisies are flowering down at my mailbox again. If you sit on the pavement you can almost feel as if you are in a wildflower meadow, not just a little clump of flowers at the side of the road.

The garden is full of irises at the moment. Not sure if purple and yellow is a great colour combination, but they do luck good from a distance.
The bees are busy in the rock roses.
Below are some of the other flowers flowering in the garden at the moment.

Moth

Found this really cute moth on my front door. I think the markings are incredible.

Work Office Move

This will be the view from my new office. We will be moving in some time next year I can't wait.
One of the Phutekawa trees in front of the office is blooming already. Christmas must be on the way.
From our little balcony you can get a good view along Marine Parade.
Of course being Napier there had to be an Art Deco car.
Just thought I would include this shot because I liked the summer feel of it.

Bathroom Renovation #3

Do you remember this post of the lovely taps I had choosen for our bathroom. Well guess what when I went back to get them a week later they had been discontinued! They did have one set in stock. "Great" I said "But can you just check that they are suitable for our water system". After a lot of humming and phoning the manufacturer the answer was "Hmm no actually this tap will not work for your water system." Back to square one on the tap choice.After a lot more browseing and hmming. A bit of stropping out of a shop because the sales assistant said I could only have the ugly taps over there with my water system. I will show her I thought. We have choosen the above taps, which are not ugly.

And of course the above matching shower mixer. Which will also work with our hot water system.

Then there is the umming and arghing involved in the choice of shower. Why do I have to be so fussy. We can't have a large shower head with our hot water system, obviously. The shower to match the taps and mixer is a bar type that looks like a microphone, handy for singing in the shower, but not that good looking. Remember I mentioned that I am really fussy and have ideas. Well I had an idea in my head about a floating shelf to put the new basin on. Peter was keen on the idea too. So the nice man at Kirsten's recycling yard has made a brilliant shelf for us. I picked it up today and had to try the new basin on it. I love it, exactly what I wanted. I can't wait to see it all finished.

Sorry can't find a picture of the shower cubicle, it is just a standard frameless shower, with two walls tiled in standard white tiles.

Oh and we are still sticking with the green colour originally choosen. There was a little wobble and another three sample pots tried, thank you to Bruce (who knows everything about paint) at Tumu for mixing them up for me for free. But after all that the one we choose last time is still favourite.

Oh and an apology for boring you with all these details.

Simply Exciting

Just bought tickets to go and see Simply Red on valentine's day next year at Church Rd Winery. I have been listening to loads of Simply Red vids on You Tube in anticipation. This is the one I liked best. I love the original version and I really love this version. Hopefully I won't explode with excitement before February. Just off to dance around the sewing room again.

This is..........my favourite Kitchen gadget.

This is my favourite Kitchen gadget. It is very versatile and can whip up a delicious meal at the drop of a hat. It can be a bit temperamental at times. But as long as it is treated with care, allowed lots of rest and fuelled by the occasional bottle of beer or glass of wine I think it will last a life time. I found mine in the Scottish Borders, but I suspect they are out of stock there now.

Oh, just realised that there is another older model still in the Scottish Borders. Not sure if it is quite as versatile as mine though.

Bathroom Renovation #2

The plans are drawn up, the building consent application has been submitted, the fittings are ordered (more about them soon) and the builder is standing by to get started. It then dawned on me that we would need to choose a paint colour. Now you may think that I should do that when the bathroom is finished. Unfortunatly the builder would like me to whizz in and paint the bathroom one evening between the walls being completed and before the fittings, tiles and toilet are installed! I think he is punishing me because I want to do the painting myself. Choosing colours for me takes a long time, both Peter and I are very very fussy and always want the exact right shade. The choosing usually starts with me standing in a shop picking up random colour charts to take home. Our bathroom, which is to become a shower room is small and quite dark, so I thought we would need something bright. Not red for a bathroom. Not yellow as to bright. Not blue as too cold and that is the colour it is at the moment. Not white as all the fittings are white. Which leaves us with green or greeney cream.
Then a few choices are stuck up on the wall, to be hummed over. This is where Peter usually joins in. Against the white the cream did look a bit grubby, so we decided to go for a green.
Next step the sample pots. After waiting for what seemed like hours for somebody to mix up the paint, and being told how to choose a colour by the instore colour consultant, we left with a batch of pots to try. When we got home, one of the pots contained pink paint, we gave that a miss. The pale greens either looked to minty or to bright (yes I know I thought we needed something bright, I was wrong). I think we are going to go with the middle green. Very similar to the colour in our lounge and on one wall of the hall, perhaps a couple of shades lighter.
Finally with one colour choosen and because the whole bathroom is getting ripped out and re gibbed, I have been able to almost paint a whole wall from the one little test pot. We can live with it for a week or so until the builders get started and see if it is really what we want.

I am so looking forward to getting rid of the plastic bowl we have to use as a basin, because of the huge hole in the bathroom basin. You would not belive how many times I have got wet feet by pouring the water from the bowl into the cracked sink, instead of the bath. And I am so looking forward to having a pantry in my kitchen. But not looking forward to the upheavable involved in getting there, or of having to share one toilet and shower between Peter, myself and the two teenage boys. I think my middle son crawls out of bed and sleeps standing up in the shower he is in there so long in the mornings. Though it could be worse they could have been teenage girls.