Saturday Walk in Petone!

Summer has arrived in Wellington! Its clear blue skies and sunny days right now (although knowing what the weather is like around here, that could change tomorrow). On Saturday we met up with some friend for coffee in Petone, but went for a walk along the shoreline before we met up. It was such a fabulous day I decided I needed to take a few photos.

We did a much more epic 12km walk today and I will post more pictures of that soon - I even saw some rabbits during that walk. Happy times!

12 Days of Christmas Swop 2013

Last year I took part in a Christmas Swop organised by two pretty amazing bloggers I know - Chloe at An Exercise in Trivial Pursuits and Juanita and Juanita Tortilla. I've met these two lovely ladies through the wonderful world of blogging and I have been lucky enough to meet BOTH of them in real life too!

Shopping with Chloe in Singapore and looking pretty amazing - I mean who wouldn't look amazing in Hello Kitty glasses?

Spending the day with Juanita in New York City - we went fabric shopping (of course) and visited the MET.

I will be honest with you guys - when it comes to Christmas I can be a grinch. Seriously. All the commercialism gets me down. Don't get me wrong - two weeks off work at Christmas is amazing. But I hate Christmas carols and I will never understand why we continue with all these ice themed decorations when its summer during Christmas time in New Zealand.

However, doing the Christmas swap last year did make me less grinch like - so I decided to take part again.

Yesterday my package arrived from Jamile in California. 

In case you were wondering - that IS Hello Kitty ribbon. Jamile obviously did her home work in regard to what I like. 

The official 12 days of Christmas countdown starts on Saturday. I am HOPING that before then the post office will come through and deliver MY package to my swap partner in Chicago.

Wellington Sewing Bloggers Christmas Picnic

Yesterday was the Wellington Sewing Bloggers end of year meet up - I didn't get many photos of the event itself, but here a photo of the food! You can't say that we don't put on a good spread.

We also had a secret Santa - with a twist, its kind of complicated - but lets just say it was a "bad" secret Santa where you could "steal" others peoples secret Santa packaging.

After much present stealing - I finally ended up with this assortment of goodies. I really had my heart set on having THAT zip because of the cool zipper pull.

We also had a sewing swap - which we have pretty frequently. The swap looked a little like this....

Here's what I picked up from the swap - a whole bunch of awesome patterns. I love them all - which one to sew first?

Finally as it was a sewing bloggers meet up I thought I best make something new to wear - this dress is SUPER simple as I'm pretty low on energy right now. It's the "Staple Dress" by April Rhodes.This is actually a "$5 remnant dress" as I bought the fabric from the remnant table at The Fabric Store!

Rich took a few more up close photos of the dress when I got home from the picnic. I'm not 100% convinced I like it or not? I always over think everything I make though and think its not good enough!

Hope you all have a great week - nearly time for Christmas break - hurrah!

Travel Memories Tuesday: Uijeongbu Snow

I still remeber the first time it snowed when we lived in South Korea - basically because I went crazy with excitement. Then I slipped over, but that's ok because it was snowing!

It does snow in some parts of New Zealand - but I have never lived anywhere that gets regular snow. In fact, before I went to Korea I would say I had seen snow maybe four times. So to see REAL snow that lasted for days was incredible. It felt like winter did in movies and on TV.

I took the above picture in the city we lived - Uijeongbu and it doesn't look like much right? Just a car driving down the street. But it just seemed more exciting because of the snow, everything is more exciting with snow! 

First Day of Summer!

I've been a little quiet lately - there seems to be so much happening and I've been a little bit tired as well. I had some kind of virus that just wouldn't go away that left me exhausted. But I am starting to feel a bit better and more importantly I've been getting out and enjoying the sunshine as it is now officially summer!

Sunday was the first officially day of summer and I had plans to hang out with my friend Matt to meet for brunch and then head to the Thorndon Fair.

We had brunch at Picnic in the botanical gardens, I think it was the first time I had eaten there and it was pretty delicious. But let's face it - they could have fed us any old crap and we would still have been happy sitting in these gardens.

Before we left we stopped off at the Lady Norwood Begonia House as Matt wanted to see the Lotus flowers - they were really pretty.

Then it was time to hit up the fair - this was only the second time I've been to the Thorndon Fair and I had forgotten just how huge it was. As it was such a hot day I decided to start things off with a slushee drink - you could choose your own flavours.

That's right they had "Tigers Blood" and also Godzilla and Slime - my favourite was marshmallow!

I didn't take many photos of the fair as there were so many people! But how adorable is that cake stall? I took Rich home a "mancake" as he wasn't feeling so well. 

The Prime Ministers house is in Thorndon and part of the front gardens were open to the public for the fair - there were some kiddies rides set up in the garden. So Matt and I went to have look, its not every day you get to visit the Prime Ministers garden right?

We even had a cheeky peek at the Prime Ministers house - because we live in New Zealand the only thing that was blocking us from going any further was a lone road cone and a single police car!

Before we left for the day Matt wanted to show me a street that had a whole bunch of fancy old houses, as he knows how I love fancy old houses. He told me one of the houses has a ballroom in it and they sometimes have plays and other events there. Fancy Thorndon!

Unfortunately I forgot how hot the summer sun was and the only thing I took home from the fair for myself was sunburn. Note to self - wear sunscreen! I hope you are all having a great start to the week.