Christmas Times - fun things with fun people!

Hello All - I hope you had a fun Christmas time, if you celebrate it, if not I hope you had a great weekend.

I've had a great Christmas day and Christmas time in general, so rather than just do a Christmas day post I thought I'd roll all of the Christmas adventures over the past few weeks into one blog post.

I caught up with Ria after she'd finished some big projects and we had dinner, ice cream and took selfie's by the city Christmas tree.

We went home the weekend before Christmas to have an early Christmas with my family, and I bought my nephew that "when I grow up I want to be a zombie" t-shirt, because I'm an awesome auntie. He actually DOES like zombies,  its not just because I like zombies. 

We also got to see Sultan and feed him carrots - I kind of love this photo as you can see the mountain between his ears!

We also visited Naumai Park before, where I had strangely never been! It was a really lovely spot.

I decided to finish up work early this year (my final day was the Wednesday before Christmas) and I spent Thursday afternoon hanging out with Ria - having lunch, sewing and exchanging gifts. She really spoiled me! I'm lucky to have such a thoughtful friend. 

She gave me a candle, some homemade passion fruit curd and toasted coconut, but the best thing of all was this portrait!

That's right! She painted me a portrait of Mia!! I was so excited - as you can see!

 I also bought her some treasures, I really had in mind something rad I wanted to make her but life was so hectic in the weeks leading up to Christmas and it didn't happen.

I also started sewing some fun Christmas stockings whilst I was at Ria's as this year Rich and I decided we would fill a Christmas stocking for each other.

Christmas day itself was pretty quiet around here, which was nice, Rich made pancakes for breakfast and we got to see what was in our stockings!

I will probably do a couple of extra posts about all of my Christmas sewing, but until then, I thought I'd share a photo of the stockings I made for us - no prizes for guessing which one belongs to me!

These are the goodies I received from Rich! A pin, patch, squirrel notebook and some hazelnut treats.

I also made Mia a wee bow tie for Christmas, she wasn't very impressed with the bow tie but I did manage to get one cute picture!

We went for a big walk on Christmas day, to the summit of Mount Victoria and along Oriental Parade.

I  also managed to finish up a new dress to wear to Christmas dinner on Christmas day! I will do a separate post about the dress soon as I need to take a few more photos!

Our friends kindly invited us to their place for Christmas dinner and we had a delicious meal and decorated cookies!

We also  got to hang out with some feathered friends, as our friends live near the Zealandia Sanctuary, this guy is a kaka which is a native New Zealand parrot.

Finally we opened the Christmas cracker that my Mum gave Mia, I promise she did play with the ball for a bit - even if she looks super GRUMPY in the last photo!

Sophiia's Dressing Gown - Part II

You may remember this post - where I used Kuromi to show you all the dressing gown I made for my niece Sophiia for her birthday. Well I have a couple of "action" shots of the dressing gown to share (that's not to say my Kuromi softie wasn't a most excellent model). 

First up - when Sophiia first received the dressing gown, I'm not convinced she knows exactly what it is. But she looks pretty happy nonetheless (everyone loves presents!)

Then here's the action shot - modeling the dressing gown.

The good news is that I received a text from Sophiia's Mum Talyor to say Lukah (my nephew, Sophiia's big brother) had asked if I could make him a dressing gown for his birthday too (in October).

I guess I must be a cool aunty after all?

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