My Weekend - Rugby World Cup madness takes over

Rugby World Cup madness has now taken over Wellington, I'm not a rugby fan at all but I am happy to take advantage of all the cultural events taking place around town. Rich and I went to check out the "fan zone" on the waterfront to watch the opening ceremony on the big screen.

Just to give you an idea how rugby mad this town has become, here's the front of one of the pubs in town with the opening game projected onto it!
On Saturday morning I decided to do a bit of shopping in Kilbirnie and whilst I was there I took the chance to visit the Japanese shop. The Japanese shop in Kilbirnie imports all kind of vintage goodies from Japan - they sell vintage Kimonos for around $25 and sell all kinds of pretty fabrics.

They often sell old pictures and photos at the Japanese shop - I loved this photo of this Japanese bride. It looks like its from the 1960's - she looked so fabulous in her wedding frock and long gloves.

On Saturday afternoon and evening Rich and I went to the Petone Carnival - like everything else, this year the carnival is focussed around the rugby world cup.

They had a lot of fun stuff at the carnival and a lot of it was free - including this petting zoo. The chicken was kind of cute but I've never seen a chicken before that was happy to have people pet it! It was a little weird.

Here's a dusk view of the carnival - yes all those people are lined up to go on that ride! The rides were only $5 to ride as many times as you want. So people were going a little crazy I think.
There was a night parade at the festival - but to be honest it was pretty lame. There were two good things, the fire dancers and these guys on unicycles with matching zebra trousers.
One of the big events for the festival was the fire sculptures - there were about 10 sculptures altogether I think and of course, like everything else at the moment, they were rugby themed.

Burn Baby BURN!

The evening finished off with a whole lot of fire works - I took a WHOLE bunch of photos but decided just to put a few up here. It was a really impressive display and went on for a really long time. Plus we could stand on the beach and watch the fireworks go off so we had a perfect view.

I hope you all had a good weekend!

International Snack Swap

A while ago, I did an international snack swap on craftster. The swap was a pretty simple one - you needed to send your partner some snacks from your country and also craft them a small item to keep snacks in.

I talked to my partner about the crafted items and she said she was happy for me to take my own spin on it - so I decided to make these kawaii cakes with a mix of Japanese and Korean craft supplies I had.

Some rings I've made

I have been making a few crafts lately, however, most of them have been for swaps or for friends so I won't be able to post them for a while.

However, I have made some rings for me lately. I'm really into big bold rings right now (as if you couldn't tell from the pictures!).

First is a "bow" ring, when Rich and I visited Japan last year, I saw some bow rings in Harajuku which were really cool but also really expensive. I thought I could make one myself and now I finally have.

On only had this blue/green ribbon on hand when I decided to make this ring, I think I'd like to make a few more - perhaps in pink or red or poka dots.

Also, it is kind of HUGE! I do like it thought - I'm not sure how practical it will actually be.

The other two rings were made using craft kits I bought here in Korea and also in Japan. I think I do like the kiwi fruit ring the best (I am from New Zealand after all!) but the strawberry one will go with more of my outfits as I have a lot of red clothes. I'm not sure it goes so well with purple nails though!