24/02/2012

The Super Rugby season started today. We went to the first home game at Eden Park – the Blues v the Crusaders:

There was a pretty big crowd in, which was cool. People here are still riding the happy wave after winning the Rugby World Cup last year. And the good people responsible for sorting out these things have struck gold with their ticketing policy: general admission tickets for adults were only $20 a pop. We took Katie and Nigel, and Tom, our nice neighbour’s nice teenaged son.

Sadly, the Blues lost by one point. Piri Weepu tried to kick a last-minute droppie and snatch the victory, but he didn’t quite manage to get the necessary height. Oh well.

23/02/2012

We’re playing Scrabble with Katie, my niece, and Nigel, her boyfriend. It isn’t going well:

Earlier in the day I taught the two of them how to play gin rummy. In the first game I won with 38 points – Nigel was second with 312 and Katie was whupped and finished on 473. In the second game they had their revenge: Katie won with 182, Nigel was second with 191, and I was taught a lesson in manners and ended up on 358. I hate it when that happens.

22/02/2012

Best photo of Tui ever:

I think she was blowing a raspberry.

21/02/2012

Today’s photo is unexciting, but significant:

This, gentle reader, is my first piece of work for a national publication.  It’s an article for NZ Business, a business magazine, and it discusses the ways in which smaller businesses can incorporate sustainability principles into their operations, to benefit both them and their communities.  I’ve agreed to write a series of articles on this topic for NZ Business, so I’m working on the second article right now.  I hope that this will be the first in a long line of freelance writing projects that I can tackle!

20/02/2012

Today I have a Special Guest Star for the photo of the day: Miss Edith. Here she is fresh from London, with her lovely mother Jane:

And – as an extra treat – here she is with her equally lovely father Geoff:

19/02/2012

Tristan’s work has taken us to Takapuna this afternoon, to watch an elite women’s triathlon:

I really like triathlon as a spectator – you can’t see what’s going on during the swim, but the other two parts of the race usually involve laps of a course, so you can find a good vantage point and see a lot of action.

And jeez, these women are impressive athletes. It’s awesome to see.

18/02/2012

This is an unstaged photo of Tui’s food consumption so far today:

We regularly go to the kitchen and find that she’s eaten exactly one half of her food, or a third of it. And often she’ll refuse to eat anything until she’s been for a walk. We sometimes wonder whether she’s developed a weird canine form of anorexia athletica.

17/02/2012

This is the never-ending craft project that I tackle when I don’t have other, smaller projects on the go:

It’s an enormous Union Jack, which I’m embroidering on very finely woven fabric. I think there’s something like 18 stitches to every inch, so if I go blind one day it will probably be because of this project! I’m making it with faded reds and blues, and ecru instead of white – I’m going for a vintage effect. When it’s finally finished (at some very distant point in the future) I intend to get it framed and keep it. It will be the first piece of embroidery that I’ve created just for me!

16/02/2012

One of the nicest things about working from home is the way in which I can jump up from my seat every now and then and do something domesticated, just for a change of pace.

Of course, most of the time I occupy myself with practical, unexciting tasks – taking out the rubbish, hanging out the washing, that kind of thing.  However, this afternoon I was suddenly struck by the urge to whip up something pointless and yummy.  So I made this:

It’s hokey pokey, party people (or ‘honeycomb’, if you’re not from around these parts – in other words, it’s the stuff that you find in the middle of a Crunchie bar).  It might be one of the first things that I can remember making as a young girl, and I don’t imagine that I’m the only one who used her early culinary talents in this way: hokey pokey is cool fun to make because it fizzes up excitedly when you add the baking soda towards the end of the process.

And it’s very sugary, but quite delicious.

15/02/2012

After a day of stormy weather the sun came out just in time for Tui’s walk, so we went to the beach. We walked around the rocks to a neighbouring bay, just in time to see the local kids’ yachting club come back to shore:

I really like this photo: although it’s slightly out of focus, I love the reflection of the clouds on the wet beach.

I also love my newest photo app obsession: Pixlr-o-matic. It lets you apply all sorts of filters and effects to existing photos in your library. Here’s that shot through the ‘Hagrid’ filter:

And here it is again, this time through the ‘Harry’ filter:

Hours of entertainment – and it’s a free app, which makes it even better!