These days I have mostly been making...

... jewellery. I'm doing a stall at a school fair on Sunday, and although I hadn't planned to sell any jewellery at it I've now changed my mine. After finding a whole shoebox full of unsold jewellery from when we lived in Ireland, it would seem rude to ignore it now that I have the chance of shifting some! And rooting through the box inspired me to grab my beads and pliers and create some new things to go with the older ones.

Here are some I made earlier:












Hope I get some sales on Sunday!

4 x 4 x 4

My friend Suzy was doing this on her blog, so I thought I would copy her.

The rules-

1. Go to your pictures file.
2. Go to the 4th file.
3. Go to the 4th picture.
4. Post it and tell the story.

I have multiple picture files, but I am going to the one that is most freqently used. Here is the 4th file from the 4th folder.

This is a photo of part of my bedroom in my old house in Belfast. It was taken when I was getting the house ready to sell (although it has since been taken off the market and rented out, due to the housing market collapse in the UK).

I loved that house, but this is the first time I have looked at photos of it since we moved to New Zealand, and I am shocked at how small the rooms are. In the photo above, the camera lens was not able to capture most of the room, but I still remember how little space there was on each side of the double bed, and how much of the room was taken up by a triple wardrobe and a chest of drawers. Now that we are in a country with more space and bigger houses - and built-in wardrobes! - I wonder how we managed to live in such cramped conditions. Our bedroom here isn't especially large, but there is space to walk all around the bed and that is a king size one.

Beached Whale

My boss at work sent this to me a couple of months ago, and it still makes me laugh. A lot of the humour is because of the exaggerated Kiwi accents used, so my loyal readers in the northern hemisphere may not really appreciate it, but here ya go anyway.

A few of the clothes shops around here have started selling t-shirts with the beached whale on them, so I think the joke is going mainstream now and likely to become less funny. I'll enjoy it while I can!

A chicken photo for Chris

My friend Chris demanded more chicken-focussed blogging. His wish is my command! But it is nearly dark and the chickens are in bed, so I will have to use the only photo currently on my memory card, which was taken for an entirely different purpose.

They're getting bigger, and bolder. We are having to cope with constant invasions of the living room and attempts at sharing our food, and the front steps and path are a minefield of droppings, but they're a great source of amusement to us as well. And we're training them to keep out of forbidden territory by using water pistols. They learn fast, too; even picking up a water pistol sends them frantically flapping to the far side of the garden. Pity we can't set up something automatic to keep them in line while we're at work...

Here comes the summer

Summer has hit us with full force this week - blue skies and blazing sunshine for the last few days. It's hard to believe, since two weeks ago we had to put frost cloths over our veggies for several nights to keep the frost and snow off them, but the weather changes fast in this little country.

Here is today's weather summary - note the time that the temperature reading was recorded at:


I have just been to the Warehouse for some essential supplies.

You just can't be too careful in the sun here in New Zealand. It's much less forgiving than Irish sunshine even in the same temperatures (not that Ireland reaches these temperatures very often), and I consider SPF30 to be the minimum that I should be wearing if I'm outside for more than a couple of minutes. I got burnt twice last summer, and I don't plan on doing that again.

However, as you can see from the array of products in the photo, I'm not quite sure which of the various creams and lotions are best! We found Nivea body cream to be quite greasy and hard to apply, so I'm looking for something less messy. One of the girls we work with had an aerosol spray that went on beautifully, so I'm hoping the Cancer Society spray on the right in the photo will be similar.

The chickens don't seem at all put out by this heat. Their coop is well shaded under what we are told are crab apple and oak trees, and they seem very happy scratching around and dustbathing in the sun. It's just me and Skry who are struggling to adjust!

NZ Elections

The general election was today, and I didn't vote. Does that make me a bad person? Women fought and died in order to give me the right to vote, and I'm not using it.

In my defence, the reason that I didn't vote was that I don't feel like I have enough understanding of the issues in New Zealand yet. We have been here for less than a year, and I haven't been paying much attention to things that don't involve my job/holidays/house/husband/chickens (in no particular order).  Who am I to make a decision on behalf of the rest of the country about whether Helen or John or somebody else should be in charge? How can I make a decision to support the Maori Party or the Green Party or New Zealand First or any of the others? I'm not even sure of their names, let alone what they stand for.

The election results are mostly in, and it looks like National (John Key's party) have won. But I have no idea what that means... I'm still glad I didn't vote, because I do not have the ability to make an informed decision, but I hope to be in a different position next time a general election comes around.

I'm still here

Just in case you're wondering, no I haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I'm just very busy preparing some bits and pieces to sell at a craft stall at the end of November. I'll update you all on that in due course...

Here is what I haven't blogged about over the past week or so:

- Skry and I were one of only a handful of people in our office who came in to work in Hallowe'en costumes on Friday. Skry won a prize for his Black Knight outfit (a voucher for a local cafe).

- we went to a table quiz in our office bar and came third. I take full credit for that as I accidentally picked correct answers out of thin air for two really obscure questions.

- we went to my cousin-in-law's father-in-law's 70th birthday party, had a great time, and I had to be practically hauled away from the karaoke machine.

- the chickens continue to thrive.

- my bedding plants continue to die (and there is a strong corelation between this and the previous point).

- my brother Stephen and his girlfriend (hi Laura!) popped by for a couple of days in Christchurch before they continued on their travels around the South Island.

- I still don't know if I'm going to vote in Saturday's general election, let alone who I might vote for if I do.

Now I'm off to watch an episode of House. The fun never stops around here!