I'm not at SENZ...

These last couple of weeks I’ve kept looking at one of my chickens and wondering if it’s actually a rooster…when it started crowing this week, my suspicions were confirmed. While we can keep roosters because we are rural, I don’t want the results of hens and roosters running around together. Lucky for me, I’d brought them from a reputable breeder, who was more than happy to take him back and replace him with a pullet (well lets hope it is lol). I assumed that they would want him for the dinner table, but when they saw him, they said he’s too nice for that, they’ll show him this year and then use him for breeding from next year. It buys him some time anyway I guess. Trouble is to do the chicken swap it’s a couple of hours drive away, so that was my Sunday pretty much gone, chicken changing, dog walking and the housework (when you have three inside dogs the house needs a vacumn everyday ;-)


My twinnie is designer of the month over at Scrapbook Dreams and one of her layout challenges is ‘Then and Now’. So here’s my very simple take on it.

Brenda, I am jealous of your trip to Arthurs (is it still called that, or did they change the name?) and I hope you found it, since they shifted it. Can’t wait to read all about SENZ. Your blog won’t let me leave comments but trust that I’m reading it, and if you drop me your email addy I’ll send you comments that way lol. Gotta wonder about technology…why it works sometimes and not others, or in this case, why it’s been fine for so long and then packs a sad now.


I’m really looking forward to these next school holidays. My nephew is coming down for four days and I’m taking him and his girlfriend up to Kaikoura for a visit to the seals (and the best fish and chips lol) and then to Hanmer. One night in each. I know we’ll have a great time. When he was nine, Lyall and I took him round the South Island with us, on a driving holiday for two weeks. I still remember the best thing about the holiday for him at the end of the trip, “getting the truck and getting my fake photo taken.” The truck was just a Warehouse one lol, and the fake photo was this super imposed photo at Ti Papa. It looked like he’d caught this big marlin – even had his Dad fooled lol.




Just because they are so cute and have such a great time hooning around together...

Have a fantastic week people.

From the shaky isles...

As we travelled along Main North Road (which is really State Highway One), we had to slam on our brakes, we couldn’t quite see why the cars in front of us had stopped…and then we see a black shape dart across the other side of the road, and then back again, (I was in the median strip now lol) and backwards and forwards again. You know I can’t leave an animal in danger, I was after it, another lady had stopped her car and trailer in the middle of the lane and jumped out, she was after it, a truckie stopped the traffic and fortunately the dog took off down a long driveway, where the lady who had jumped out of her car, and I, managed to catch him.

Donna had to find somewhere to turn and I had to try and hang on to the beastie, - some kind motorist threw an old lead out their window at me, so that helped a lot. Long story short, he came home with us, so we could hunt down his owners.

Fast forward to the evening and they had got home to their property, to find windows open, curtains trashed, chickens inside…had we been burgled they wondered? And where’s Moses? Turns out clever Moses, at only seven months old, had figured out how to open a window, and he hopped in and out a few times, and the chickens saw an opportunity to check out the inside of the house lol. His owners scoured the neighbourhood before ringing the council. We had rung the council so they had our details (along with listing on TM, petsonthenet, emergency vet etc). One very happy and relieved owner, and very happy us. Dan, Archie and Moses had a wonderful time together. Darcy of course was as jealous as buggery and we had to lock her in another room and Tui was freaked out by this visitor and she was locked in a room too! But just look at his photo – how cute is he!

Look, I’ve actually been creating. Two layouts. Not quite caught up to my twinnies, twenty six for this month. I might manage that for the year LOL. The first one is for SP’s sketch challenge, though it’s ended up in the wrong folder in the gallery on SP. The other one is for this new challenge blog.

Janine had a list of winter goals, and I thought that this was such a good idea. At the beginning of this year I nabbed the hometown list idea off Mandy. Since my hometown is a little munted at the moment, there’s not too much on my hometown list I can do – I must go back and check that list – I wonder if some of those places no longer exist? So I’m thinking about my winter goals.

o I want to scrap at least ten layouts. I was going to put six, and then remembered I’ve booked into Heidi’s six layouts class. Ha ha, now I only have to do four more to make that total. That’s a winner LOL.
o I want to clean out all the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen – they need a good declutter.
o Start trawling through House and Garden’s etc and formulate how we want to update our house.

Not much really…but other things have a habit of getting in the way at the moment, so I’m keeping these manageable. Well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it…:-)

Our home is never empty. Last Sunday Dad and Pat headed off to travel around this fair island of ours and this week we have a friend of Lyalls here. He could shift in permanently lol. He doesn’t drink or smoke, I’ve yet to hear him swear, he does the dishes, makes his bed and he even helped fix the door on the chicken coop and used the post hole borer to make holes for our carport to go up. Soon he’ll move into a rental property and then sell his own property. After he’s gone, it’s the Swannanoa Retreat and then July school holidays are nearly here and my cousin and her family will be down for a few days.

Can you spot Darcy in this photo?

One of our sunsets this week, thanks to a bit of volcanic ash.

Oh and belated birthday greetings to my lovely sister in law. Last Saturday I sent her a text wishing her happy birthday - and then quickly realised I was a week to early. This week I'm a day to late. And yes, she scrapbooks too lol.

Have a good week people. Fellow Cantab’s may our week be less shaky than last week…

And this week

What a lovely day I had out yesterday with my twinnie. I came home all inspired to do some scrapping, so threw the heater on in my scraproom and then locked myself in there. The result is a three quarters done layout which I thought I’d finish today. However, I got up this morning and hugged my lovely Dad and Step Mum goodbye. As you know Dad has been the dog/chicken/cat/house looker after while we were cruising the seven (well two really…) seas lol. Dad and Pat are off for a bit of a tiki tour round the bottom of the South Island before heading home back to Auckland. Anyway I digresss… So said our goodbyes, at which point my darling husband decided a visit to A & E was in order.

Yesterday that said hubby was doing some fencing and gave his thumb a good slice. When I got home from my travels with Vicki and found this out, I suggested we head in and have it checked, but no, he’s tough and a few bourbons later quite numb as well lol. This morning not quite so tough and no Dutch courage either. So instead of spending my day in my scrapping room it was spent at the doctors. I will have to lock myself in my scraproom again tonight, I don’t like having part done projects lol. And as for his thumb, a tetanus shot, some glue, some expert bandaging another Dr’s visit on Tuesday and no work for a few days – however no stitches and no surgery on the thumb. Which is good, cos I tell you, it’s not a good look to have a month off work, come back for a week and then injure yourself. That’s on top of visiting the specialist on Friday to find out he’s buggered his shoulder and needs an operation on that, so is now on the wait list for that. I’m glad I’m not his employer lol.


In chookie news, one of my babies has started laying. She’s given us an egg every two days this week. Not so exciting for you, but we think it’s great news lol.


And BIG HUGE congratulations to Mrs Frizz on her Kaiser DT appointment!


Have a great week people.

For my friend Annelie...

Now most of you know Annelie and are aware of her new venture, but just in case you don't...then you need to head over here.

The trip...

Here’s the photos…

I guess I have to start with the boat, since it was a cruise lol. You wouldn’t have known there were eighteen hundred people on board – except maybe at breakfast. Although there are four different restaurants to eat in, at breakfast most of us headed for the buffet. Kiwi’s like their brekkies lol. Our room was spacious and we were very well looked after by our room steward, Ronaldo. Did we get sea sick? First day out from Auckland, I felt a bit queasy but Lyall and Donna were fine, by the next morning I was okay too. Apparently wasn’t just me, about half the boat was sick and two ladies fell over and ended up with a broken arm each (the ship has a full on mini hospital – two operating rooms, six ‘rooms’ for those needing care, two doctors and three nurses). I was fine for the rest of the cruise (to be honest it was so calm you had to remind yourself you were on a boat lol), and then on the three days at sea to get home to NZ, I felt queasy again the first day, so thought I’d take a sea sickness tablet to be on the safe side (haven’t used them before) and boy, I then spent the next twenty four hours in a complete drugged out haze. They made me feel far worse than the boats rock’n! And it wasn’t even rocking that much lol – so if there’s a next time, no sea sickness tablets for me I’ll just run with the queasy feeling, and hey at least I wasn’t throwing up.

Food – lots and lots and lots of food. Something for everyone. From the barbeque grill out of the deck to the five star restaurant inside. And because you’ve already paid, no bill each time lol. Also if you’re like my hubby who doesn’t like ‘flash’ restaurants because the portions are two small, well then you can just order more – “I’ll have those three entrees and those two mains, oh and that for dessert” lol. They even have a chef to do the cooking for those with allergies. Though they didn’t always get that right and I had to send stuff back a couple of times, as did others with food issues.

People – mostly the people were great. A few oldies thought they ruled the world and would get a bit pushy and obnoxious, but on the whole people were super friendly and up for a laugh. We had been on the boat for a couple of hours when this lady steps in front of us with a huge grin on her face…between us Donna and I had taught her three boys, and Donna had also gone to school with her, and I used to ride horses with her Mum – so we go back a fair way. Her oldest boy was on the boat with them, one last trip before he heads off to Police college. Poor Bradley, his Mum reminded him constantly that we helped to toilet train him etc LOL. We also had our old neighbour of twenty years on the boat. New Zealand is such a village. Great mix too - about twenty families with kids of varying ages. A number of grandparents taking their grandkids on a cruise. Two groups of special needs adults, who were super fun and chatty. And then a few couples in the forty ish age group and then mainly retired people.

Of course we did the tourist thing and went out croc spotting – it was a fantastic trip up an estuary at Port Douglas, with only twenty of us on the boat. You hop on and the skipper Jenny says “now I need to do a bit of a safety talk…if you look around you’ll notice there are no life jackets on the boat, that’s because we don’t want anyone in the water!” So true…It was great seeing crocs in their natural habitat and the big ones are used to the boat so are semi content with the boat getting relatively close. The little ones bugger off pretty quick. We also did stuff like visit the aquariam at Townsville and saw, touched, oooded and arhed at all the fish, coral etc. They have a big low tank where you can touch lots of creatures – starfish and sand sharks and little fish that come and nibble gently on your fingers.

The weather – well this was just great the whole of the trip. We got rain when we headed from the South Island to the North, driving up to Auckland. We got rain in the middle of the North Island on our return drive South. We saw a lightening storm way off into the distance when we left Brisbane, but other than that, it was hot and sunny. So hot that a couple of times we just headed to an air conditioned shop to cool down lol. It also meant that the pools were well used. The ship pool for the adults was six foot three, so much treading water was done in there while relaxing and chatting to people. Cairns, Airlie Beach, and Townsville all had lagoons to swim in – and I did. These are like man made pools meant to look like a beach (with sandy shores etc), however no stingers. If you want to swim at the beach between November and April (roughly – as stingers were still around while we were there) then you have to wear a stinger suit (which kind of looks like a head to toe fine fishnet stocking - you would have to be a model to look good in one lol).

Shopping. Yes of course we did some!! Since most of our stops were resort towns, there were lovely togs, sarongs, surfy gear and pretty summer dresses for sale. Lyall kept suggesting I get a dress or two – however resort town style wear doesn’t really go with gumboots down on the farm LOL. I however did get one new ‘cossie’ – thinking it would be great for our visits to Hanmer – only to be paying for it and the sales lady saying “now you know these bathers won’t last long if you wear them in hot pools or spa pools as that ruins the material, and make sure you wash them with a bit of shampoo if you swim in a pool or at the beach, never put them in the washing machine.” Okay, so there goes that theory. They will look pretty in my wardrobe now. When we got to Brisbane we hired a car and headed south west. Thanks to a contact on Facebook I had addresses for two good scrappy shops and a mall. Both the scrappy shops were great and I did buy one or three things and the mall is the biggest mall I’ve ever been in. Mind you most of the shops are the same as we have here and prices if anything were more expensive given the exchange rate than in New Zealand. Groceries and alcohol are far cheaper here, which surprised us. And we got to have a junk food thanks to Hungry Jacks (Oz version of BK).



Well I think that pretty much sums up what we did, without writing a book lol. If you want a true holiday where you don’t have to worry about cleaning, cooking and your most difficult decision of the day is whether to go to the seven o’clock show or the nine o’clock then I can totally recommend cruising as an option for you. We would happily do another one in years to come, but we won’t be in the group that does a yearly cruise or hops off one boat and onto the next – we liked it, but heck not THAT much LOL. (and there’s that little thing about paying for them too!)