Crop Circle training???

Could this be where it all starts??? Notice how deep he goes when he starts under the tramp. The grass took quite a few weeks to grow back in that spot!

Paintings for the newly wallpapered lounge

When we finished wallpapering the lounge/dining area, we went to put our beautiful pictures back up (they'd been down for 3 years, so I had missed them). We held them against the wall and.....YUK! they no longer went with the new neutral colours.

Went shopping for something new, but couldn't find anything that grabbed my fancy (well at a price I could afford), so instead grabbed some canvas's and decided to have a bit of a go at Camp Clean. I decided to take only items for painting, so that I would get in and do them, but must admit, at one point (after seeing Glenna all set up to Scrap), I seriously considered changing my plan and going and getting my scrapping gear. She talked me out of it.

So, 4 days, some new paint, 2 new brushes, some texture paste and silica sand later, here's what I managed to finish.

The edges are actually straight, not sure why they look warped? The piece of paua in the long skinny painting was found in the washing machine at camp - thanks campers! The swirl and spiral on the other canvas are made from hessian like string from the storage cupboard at camp and the beads from the Warehouse. All up, about $45 spent to create these two items.

Whilst painting the 2nd one at camp, Carol D said could see a reindeer in the swirly part of the rope, that's when I added the spiral, but I can still see the reindeer-probably always will -thanks Carol! (She reminded me I once did that to her with one of her paintings and yes she still she's the elephant now!)

The next painting is going to be on the bathroom walls, then Mike's man cave (or vice versa), then the rumpus. Slowly ridding the house of yellow! Yeah!!

Kings & Queens

When we visited Tirau's famours toy museum 'The Castle', we couldn't help but stop at the door and take of photos of the kids behind the painted board. Oh and then one of the adults too!





We then went inside to be confronted with many of our childhood toys. Boy did that bring back memories - Remember the Wombles?




There were loads of other old toys that brought back heaps of memories. Mike was drooling at some of the toys that were still in their original packaging!! The kids thought some of the toys would have been cool and some lame. Here are some more photos from the museum. Definitly worth a visit if you are ever in Tirau.

Kemp/Robinson Camping Trip

We had an awesome week away camping in Cambridge with the Robinson family. We had a great campsite, which provided sufficient room for our 2 large tents, 2 gazebo's (although ours turned out to be no good), enough room to park both cars behind the tents and enough spare flat lawn for a cricket pitch.

Our first day we headed off around 8am, stopping in Pokeno for (an expensive $55) breakfast. It was yummy, but way too over priced. We then continued straight on to the camping ground and proceeded to set up camp. (We had left our tent pitching instructions at home, but managed without any problem - or cursing - to set it up relatively easily) Once this was accomplished we went into town for some lunch and a spot of grocery shopping. We then returned to the camp ground and played cricket (all 8 of us) for about 3 hours straight. We all slept quite well that night.

Crack of dawn the birds chirped us awake - welcome to being at one with nature!
We had a great time exploring Cambridge and the surrounding areas, including an almost full-day stop at Tirau-I had never been, but now love this place. Full of antique and arty/crafty shops and book shop that is to die for. Loads of old waiting to be discovered books. I can't wait to go back there! Our time camping was a good mix of doing things all together and also as separate families, but always coming back to share the evening. It was great.

Loads of photos from the trip, so I'll get on to loading a stack over the next few days - just with captions.

These 3 photos - Our tent set up with the gazebo's (Gary & Tracy's tent a little obscured in the background behibd gazebo), our cricket pitch and the Kemp family 'Camp Cooks'.

Beautiful but...

It was certainly the back end of beyond! On our last day camping, we decided to head back over to Paeroa to see Mike's Dad again before heading home. I noticed on the map that there was a different route to Morrinsville (which you go through to get to Paeroa). I mentioned it to Mike and so we decided to try the different way. It started out well with roads just like any other, then we came to the dirt roads!!!! These went on and on and on until we felt like we really were in the back end of beyond. A house maybe every couple of K's! We made jokes about breaking down in a place like this saying surely cousin Cleatus would come take us home to Pa who (shot gun in hand) would insist we stay overnight while he worked on the car (and the Kemp's would never be seen again...). LOL.

Mike's sense of humour was starting to thin about 40 minutes in (by which time we could have been there going the other way). Just as I thought steam was about to come out his ears, we hit tar seal again and sign saying Morrinsville 11. It had no kms after the 11, so we just hoped and it all turned out well.

It's fair to say, we will never take that road again, but we did see some pretty amazing (and for the better part- untouched) landscape. One bit that really caught my eye was a massive piece of land named 'RockHaven'. This photo is just one of the 3 Mike was gracious enough to stop and allow me to take. It took about 5 minutes on a winding road to get across and around to the other side of the same piece of land, at which point you were looking down to the beautiful home built at the centre of the valley, surrounding by all these huge rocky outcrops. Just breath taking. A little too rural for me, but very beautiful.

Large tree-small caravan -no match...

We went to visit Mike's Dad during our camping trip to Cambridge. I took these photos while there. They had a very, very large Macrocarpa tree fall in a recent storm. It was at the bottom of the property by the stream and fell towards the bank, landing directly on the caravan - yes that foot-high mangled mess you can see in the second photo under all the branches is all that remains of the caravan. Luckily, no-one was staying in it at the time. The first photo shows the huge branches of the tree, (I know I'm not that tall, but most of the branches alone were 3-4 times my height). The branches are slowly being removed in an effort to start clearing the tree away and regain access to the rest of the property- I suspect this will be a long slow job!

Twas the Night Before Christmas....

When I finally gave in and said we could put up a Christmas Tree. Having just finished the wallpapering, the last thing on my mind was the huge effort that is putting up our huge (fake) tree. However, Jayden insisted that without one, Santa would have nowhere to put the presents! Our tree is so large (8ft tall and 1.5m in diameter at the bottom), that we usually put it up downstairs. I was dreading the process as that also meant clearing a space for it. A quick thought entered my mind - what if we forewent the bottom section (it comes in three sections). I tried it out and although a little wobbly - it worked, so we decided to put it up upstairs.

I only had to use about 1/2 the decorations (which gave me the opportunity to have a clear out of some old ones) and 2 sets of lights instead of three - I'm liking the idea of a smaller tree!

Jayden was very worried that Santa (knowing we always have the tree downstairs) would not be able to fin it, so he got out our Christmas rope lights and wound them around the handrail on the stairs from the rumpus up to the tree. Needless to say - Santa found his way.

So this was our tree the night before Christmas (just on midnight) and in fact the only shot I got of the tree! Seriously considering trading in the tree for a smaller one for Christmas 2009, or perhaps even going to a real one!!!

Wallpaper at last...

...Yeah!!! After three years of looking at my stripped walls, I had become quite accustomed to them. However after another set of photos taken with the bare walls as the backdrop - I'd truly had enough. So - 10 days before Christmas I decided I wanted wallpaper on the walls for Christmas. We already had the paper (sitting in storage for 3 years), plus the size and glue and all the tools, plus the sandpaper, oil and stain for the skirting board, so time was really the only expense (and getting mum's time too - as she's the main paperhanger in our family).

Anyway, after hours of sanding (with a little help from Jayden), staining, oiling, sizing cutting, pasting and some very precarious positions (on mum's part-over the stairwell), we went from bare walls to colourful walls. I got my photos back up on the wall by the stairwell and just need to get some pictures/paintings for the other walls to add a bit more life. Here's how it looked before and after.

So much to catch up on

It's been so long since my last entry. There's just been so much going on, that the blog has taken a real back seat. I have loads of picutres to share though, so will try and get a couple posted each day over the next few days.