SOLD!!!!!!!

Yes, we have finally gone and done it and sold the house - woohoo!!!!!!!!!!! England here we come!

Scary news is that we leave in 32 days - holy crap, sooooo much to do and sooooo little time to do it in. Those days are going to fly by. 

We look like we have been burgled. The garage has gone from this....

To this....

We had a brief break from packing yesterday afternoon to watch a fantastic sight. We heard a small plane making rather a loud noise and rushed outside to see. It was flying upside down and did several loop the loops - how exciting! Our very own, private aeronautical display! I was that glued to watching so I didn't miss any of it, that by the time I rushed inside to grab my camera he had finished. 

OH also discovered an antique of his - an Atari! We kept an old tv for playing games, as apparently it isn't a good idea to use your good tv (might be an urban myth but we didn't want to take the risk). 

Just look how simple the games are - we were easily pleased when we were little weren't we!

Right, that's enough playing, LOTS to do and not much time to do it in!

See you soon!!!!

Xxxx

Boy zone

Little Boy is having his afternoon nap, and I'm just sat having five minutes break to grab a bite to eat and catch up on blog reading. I looked up from the iPad to gaze at the chaos that surrounds me. 

Would you be able to guess that a little boy lives in this house? ;-)

I wouldn't normally show the world my lounge in such a mess, but it tickled me. It's like he is marking his territory with tractors, trucks and cars!

Messy boy but I love him to bits!

Xx

Book signing

Have you heard of Keeping up With the Kaimanawas? It's a TV show that charts the progress of the three Wilson sisters who took on the challenge of trying to tame wild stallions caught up in the annual muster of Kaimanawa horses. 

One of the sisters, Kelly, wrote a book about it, and Big Girl was very excited to hear that Kelly was going to be doing a book signing at a local venue. 

Well being very British and used to queueing I thought we should arrive fifteen minutes before the start, to get ahead in the queue. I don't think there was any need....

Even after six years here in NZ I still can't get used to the lack of crowds anywhere. We were second in line to go in!

There was an Adopt a Book section where there were lots of lovely second hand books donated by libraries etc, and they were free to help yourself! Big Girl picked a few, and I found a great one called 'The Little Yellow Digger' for Little Boy. 

There were several authors available for book signings at various times during the day, but we were lucky enough to see Kelly wandering around when we first came in, so asked if she could sign Big Girl's book then. 

She's a lovely lady and very pretty. This is photo session number two as Big Girl looked at the first lot and decided her hair looked a mess so could we do it again? Luckily Kelly was very amenable and didn't mind at all. 

A little later on Kelly did a talk about the story behind her book, and we were lucky enough to get front row seats....

We also met Terry Fitzgibbon, a New Zealand author and illustrator....

He was doing a mural and asked Big Girl if she'd like to help colour it in....

There were book characters to meet, including Clifford....

Peter Rabbit....

And Spot!...

Where's Wally? Can you seem him? ;-)

I forget the name of the book or it's author (sorry lady!) but someone had made a lovely wall hanging about the truck in the story. It was very tactile and you were actively encouraged to interact and touch the different parts. Isn't it great, very detailed. 

Well apologies for being sooo long since I last put up a post. You see, I have been rather busy. I may have some exciting news in my next post!!!!

Xxxx

A bit of cake colouring and a parcel

Big Girl was off school last week with the flu. She'd only just gone back to school after having a week off with a sore throat and cold, then ended up with this, bless her. When she wasn't sleeping, which she did a lot of, we thought we'd do have some quiet, crafty time at the kitchen table.

Have you heard of Dotcomgiftshop? They are a fantastic online shop, selling lots of retro, vintage style gifts. I guess it was because of the 'in thing' that is adult colouring books, that they very kindly made available some free colouring sheets. 

So we settled down with biscuits, cups of tea, and my very special colouring pencils. My mum got me this lovely set when I was doing art at school, so they must be at least 25 years old! (Makes me laugh when I read about things being 'vintage', and they were things I had when I was little!).

Even Little Man joined in, but he had to make do with crayons. I think he's going through a black/blue phase! It always seems such a waste buying little kids colouring books, as all they do is scribble, but I guess they have to learn. Not as much fun scribbling on a blank sheet of paper is it? He enjoyed himself anyway, so that's all that matters, and he seemed quite proud of his artwork....

But he pretty soon got bored of that and moved onto his fruit pie. This is a great idea to teach kids colours, sorting etc. Plus if they use tongs to sort the fruit they are developing their grip for holding a pen/pencil in the future. 

Here it is if anyone is interested. It says age 3+, but Little Man plays with it fine. He does find the tongs a bit bulky for his little hands, so I gave him some t-bag tongs (is that what you call them, for squeezing your t-bags?!). 

It's been a long time since I did art at school, but I tried to teach Big Girl shading and blending etc. I think she did a great job shading the chocolate chips....

I never got to finish mine, I must do one day, but here are our masterpieces ;-) ...

So onto the parcel. We got home yesterday to find this in the mailbox. Would you like to know what it is?....

Woohoo!! Squishy, wooly balls of pure pleasure - hours of entertainment in one small bag! Ok, I'm easily pleased. Even more so because being outside of the EU I don't pay VAT, so even with postage (which at £4.99 for up to 2kg of wool isn't bad) it costs me less than buying it in the UK with free postage! That's one of the excuses I make to OH anyway, I'm saving money ;-) Never mind I have to pack it all up and cart it back to the UK with me - I'm saving money! And I get to squish them, smell them, line them up in pretty patterns and just look lovingly at them in the meantime!

These were in the parcel too, two knitting patterns for Little Man. I'm dying to start one, but I don't like lots of projects on the go at once as I forget what I'm doing. So I have a few things to finish first. Guess it will give me the incentive to push on and get them finished!

Have a good weekend

Xxxx