Christmas down on the farm!

This year Rich and I spend Christmas with my family in Taranaki - we arrived on Christmas day and spent about four days at my parents place. Here's a selection of photos from our time at my parents farm.

Both of my parents are keen collectors and this is my Dad's latest purchase - and original phonograph! How cool is that? We always had a gramophone growing up, but this is really something else. Dad played a song for us on this thing - its a real piece of history.

 Here's a few photos taken around my parents place - a little different to life in Wellington right?

When we visit my parents we always visit my mum's donkey Sultan and give him some apples, after we fed him this time around we found out he was actually on a diet. Not sure if he should have eaten all those apples we gave him!

Whilst at Mum and Dad's we spent some time with my brother and his family - including my nephew Lukah and my niece Sophiia. This trip Sophiia learnt how to say "Auntie Teresa" which basically meant she could get me to do anything she wanted. She is still calls Rich "Man" (at the start of this trip I was still called "hey Lady").

Finally here's my outfit from Christmas day - just because you're down on the farm doesn't mean you can't be fabulous!

Hope the first week of 2013 is treating you all well xoxox

Christmas 2012 via instagram

I do have a whole lot of Christmas/New Years pictures to post - but I thought I'd start off with a short and sweet post of Christmas via instagram.

Rich and I have now visited David White Gallery on two Christmas Eves in a row.  Perhaps its now a tradition? David White Gallery is one of my favourite op shops/second hand stores, its the biggest jumble sale in the city, I just love it!

I ran out of time to make my niece and nephew Christmas stockings - so I bought them these cute little Christmas bags.

On Christmas morning we opened our present from Nankz and Paul - the best oven mitt EVER!

My brother and his family bought me Hello Kitty Monopoly for Christmas - unfortunately its all in Spanish.

On Christmas day we celebrated with some sparkling riesling which my mum had bought from the South Island on her recent holiday.

Here's the view outside my parents front gate - a little bit quieter than my usual life in Wellington.

My mum made these rainbow jelly cups for Christmas day - so cute!

Here's Rich and I at boxing day dinner with our Christmas crackers.

Some of the horrible jokes inside the Christmas crackers.

The Christmas trees at mum and dad's house.

My mum and dad have a bouncy castle at their house for my niece and nephew - fancy!

Rich bought himself a Nexus 7 tablet for Christmas - he can even play it as a piano.

One of my brothers bought me a cupcake soap on a rope as part of my Christmas present.

He also bought me the vintage sewing book I asked for - thanks little bro!

One of my op shop purchases whilst I was away - a cute blue compact.

Wellington Christmas Tree 2012

The day before Christmas Eve Rich and I decided to head down to Waitangi Park to check out the city Christmas tree.

The weather was exceptionally weird on this day for Wellington - we live in a very windy city so in general fog and cloud doesn't sit around for long.

But on the day before Christmas eve there seemed to be a whole lot of very low cloud around - in fact it closed down the airport for some time and people who were traveling for Christmas couldn't come into or leave from Wellington.

I decided to take some pictures on our walk as the city rarely looks like this - in fact I thought the tree looked rather like something out of Bladerunner in these photos.

Christmas times with Ria

A few days for Christmas Ria invited me over to her house for lunch - I know how much Ria love Christmas but I didn't realise she would make me such an amazing lunch.

First course was baked chicken, cranberry jelly, beans and asparagus.

Second course was pavalova, berries and cream.

Here's a photo of the Christmas tree at Ria's house - its super fancy.

We spent the afternoon hanging out, eating delicious food and watching Adventure Time.

We also exchanged presents - fun times. This is the very cute handmade card I received from Ria.

She also gave me a very lady like cup and saucer set in a lovely shade of green.

She also gave me a film camera - the photos print out with vintage frames on them. I can't wait to finish up this film and get them developed. 

What did I give Ria for Christmas? Well a few weeks back I started working on an Adventure Time cross-stitch project for Ria. I do really love cross-stitch, but its the kind of craft I won't touch for months and months then I will suddenly get inspired to complete a project. Here's the finished project - I bought the pattern for the project from Esty.

Once you make a cross-stitch the next decision is how to you actually present it - whilst I would have loved to have made this into a cushion, I just didn't have time. I decided to frame it instead, I picked up a fun glass frame from an import shop and added some sparkly stickers and the project was complete.

Ria said she's going to put the cross-stitch on her work bench at costuming school - hurrah!

Here's a photo of use by the tree at Ria's house, fun Christmas times.

I hope you've all been having a fun Christmas time so far xoxox

12 days of Christmas Swop - Days 9 to 12

So its already Christmas Eve evening and Rich and I are mostly ready for Christmas so I decided to take some time out for blogging and let you know all the other goodies I received in the 12 days of Christmas Swop.

DAY NINE

For day nine I received some peppermint bark and some peppermint hot chocolate - unfortunately I don't have a picture as my camera is acting pretty crazy lately. I took a photo but when I checked back later there was no image in the camera. I'm hoping I only need a new memory card and not a new camera.

DAY TEN

My Day ten package was some lovely hair accessories - I'm not sure my hair is quite long enough to use the spin pins yet. However, I am in the process of growing it out so hopefully soon I will be able to use them.

DAY ELEVEN

Here's the package from day eleven - the note card attached says "There is a learning curve to stripes. Practice with the little ones first".

Inside was a pack of salon effects strips and a pad of Christmas post-it notes. I've used the post-it notes as labels on some Christmas presents.

DAY TWELVE

The final day of the swop included a fabulous little clutch purse - I love the colour.

That's all from the 12 days of Christmas 2012 - a big thanks to Chloe and Juanita for organising this swap and also to my lovely swap partner Allison for all my Christmas goodies. Doing this swop kind of helped to keep my Grinch tendencies at bay - it Chloe and Juanita run it again in 2013 I will take part for sure!

Well I hope you all have a lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day tomorrow - Merry Christmas