A day in Dunedin...

It all seems SO long ago now (I haven't been paying as much attention to my blog as I should recently) but a few weeks back I had to head to Dunedin for some work training. Which I was really excited about as I'd never been to Dunedin before, so after the two days of training I decided to stay about and see the sites and sounds of Dunedin for myself and found it to be a cute place!

The first place I visited was a clothes shop called "Fern" which was a lot like my friend Kat's old shop "Triangle" - emerging designers from all over New Zealand were stocked in this shop and I managed to pick up a very cute pink skirt with a slightly deranged bird print on it. I am hoping to send some of my jewellery down there in the not too distant future to see if they would like to stock it.

The second place I visited was the Dunedin Train Station - which is apparently - "one of the 100 places you must see before you die". I'm not sure what the other 99 places you must see before you die are. But I am losing my train (no pun intended) of thought, the train station was very cool and my favourite parts would have had to have been the stained glass window featuring a train and the mosaic on the floor and stairs. I have always liked the Wellington Train Station (from the outside at least - this inside leaves something to be desired) but the Dunedin train station is so beautiful.




Next it was a time for a general look-see around Dunedin to check out all of the old buildings. I am sure that for people from Dunedin this isn't particularly exciting, but I loved it!










Seen as Dunedin is a University town, there was a lot of cool street art around. Here's a couple of shots of some street art I snapped. I especially like the giraffe - he's too cute!


My final visit before I had to rush off and get my plane was the Otago Museum - Kat had told me about an indoor butterfly exhibition they had there. When I say indoor butterfly exhibition I mean with actual live butterflies flying about you, not some exhibition with dead butterflies behind glass. The Museum had set aside an entire room and made it into a tropical climate with appropriate plants and the like - they even had a waterfall inside and they had a whole HEAP of butterflies.

You can tell by the number of photo's taken - I really enjoyed this display! (plus how often do you get to take photo's at a Museum Display?)

New Crafty Magazine - and this time it's a kiwi one:)

So looking up craft geek stuff on the interweb - I came across another cool lokking craft magazine.

I am particulary excited about this magazine for three reasons -

1) It's a New Zealand Craft Mag
2) It's only $8 unlike most of the imported craft mags which cost upwards of $15 (well the ones I like do anyways)
3) It's called "World Sweet World" I LOVE the name!

Here's the magazine link - I've ordered my copy and I am now waiting with anticipation my my mailbox.

http://www.worldsweetworld.com/

Walk In beaumont national park

In order to escape the general madness of life over Easter Rich and I headed out to Beaumont National park - this park has it's entry in the weirdest place - it's in the middle of the industrial estate in Petone! But once you got over that it was a really great place to be on a warm day.

ROCK TO WELLINGTON - LORDI, ALICE COOPER & KISS!

So this post has been a while coming - but here it is at last - tales of Rock2Wgtn. Over Easter Kat, JP, Steve and I went to the first night of the Boganfest know as Rock2Wgtn. I have never ever seen so many bogans in my life - both at the gig and in and around Wellington in general - I have to admit I am not used to seeing bogans any more.

I have to admit - my main reason for going to Rock2Wgtn was I thought it would be kinda funny. My intention was to go along, hang with friends and have a good time, my expectations weren't very high. So imagine my surprise when this turned out to be in my top 5 gigs ever.

Lordi were ok - lots of extreme costumes and extreme songs about Satan and what not. Which is what I expected really. The show was a bit like a cross between a horror movie and star trek.

The next act was Alice Cooper and it was AMAZING! I wasn't expecting too much from Alice Cooper - I only knew a few of his songs from growing up in the 80's but he turned out to be my favourite act of the night. He had a whole story to go along with his stage shows - which included a zombie baby, excellent. He had numerous costume changes and when he sang Poison - it was amazing. I think we were all filled with Rock n' Roll excitement by the end of his show.

Finally the night finished up with KISS - I have NEVER seen so much Rock n' Roll excess in my life. The big boots, the sparkly costumes, the flying fox - THE FIREWORKS! I really only knew about two KISS songs but it didn't matter too much - as they were generally awesome. Although the bit where Gene Simmonds did randomly spit out stage blood seemed a bit odd - but what do I know? I'm not a bogan.


Kat and I - Kat obviously laughing at my stoned - bogan look....

Cheesy mosh-pit moment - captured by JP

Me with Kat and Steve

What can I say.....but...."OH LORDI" (really - Kat and I did spend half of their set wondering if they were taking the piss - however - I think they are a very very serious bunch of people).

Mr Alice Cooper - he was the act of the night for me - incredible stage show!

Finally - KISS - what can I say about KISS when the photo's speak for themselves...

So...SURPRISE.....I am going to SHANGHAI

I usually like to keep my blog nicely ordered - making sure I blog about things as they happen. But this entry is going to muck up my order a bit - and put everything out of order - but I HAVE to share!

So nearly every kiwi knows about Air NZ grab a seat - if you are online at the right place in the right time you can pick up some crazy cheap flights...and occasionally you can pick up crazy cheap international flights.

On Thursday this week turns out they had crazy cheap flights to Shanghai - my friend Kat e-mailed a couple of people early in the day to see if anyone was keen on going with her and Fiona and I both put up our hands.

I had to admit - I was really doubtful that we would get the flights - especially for the three of us!

But then - rather amazingly - I recieved an e-mail from Kat saying she had got flights for us leaving May 12 and after making a rather nervous leave application (which was accepted - thank GOD!) I am now happy to say....I am going to Shanghai - next step is accomodation and visa's!

This is by the the most crazy thing I have done!!

Kat's Easter Egg Hunt

On Easter Friday my friend Kat had a pot luck lunch and easter egg hunt at her place. As a lot of you know I've put on a bit of weight recently with my health problems rearing their ugly head again so I've been back on Weight Watchers.

I was wondering what sweet and easter-like thing I could take to the party without it making me put on a whole bunch of weight in one sitting!

I have recently started buying this magazine called the "Healthy Food Guide" and in one of the issues they had a recipe for mini cupcakes called "Big Fat Zero Cupcakes" - as long as you make these babies as mini's they work out to only 1 point each with worked out well for me:)

Here's the recipe if you'd like to try them out:

BIG FAT ZERO CUPCAKES
Makes 36 Mini Cupcakes

You will need:

Small Paper Patty Cases
3 Eggs
1/2 Cup Castor Sugar
3/4 Cup Plain Flour
1 Tablespoon Boiling Water
1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Essence

Preheat the Oven to 180C

Use mixer to beat the sugar and eggs together until pale and thick. The mixture should leave a trail when you lift the beater out and will nearly treble in size. Allow 5-8 Minutes depending on how powerful your beater is. Using a metal spoon, fold in half the flowe. When that is incorporated, fold in the remaining flour. Lastly add the hot water and vanilla.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared patty cases and bake 10-15 minutes or until golden and springy when gently pressed.

Allow to cool before icing.

By the way - I decided not to take part in the Easter Egg hunt (if I hunted them - I'd only eat them) but Rich managed to hunt down a few.

I actually asked for no eggs at easter which worked well - as Rich bought me Flight of the Concords on DVD instead as I asked for something which would make me laugh. So I am enjoying my Easter present still where as if I'd had been given eggs they would have long been eaten by now!

Smashing Pumpkins

My "Rock n' Roll" Easter started on Thursday night - I was very excited about seeing the Smashing Pumpkins and Queens of the Stone Age. I was more excited about the Pumpkins though - I hardly ever listen to them now but when I was a teenager I absolutely LOVED them - they were one of my favourite bands ever (My other two were Blur and Oasis - how times have changed! Although I still like Blur).

We arrived a little late - but I've been going to gigs for years and bands never start on time right? WRONG! We basically missed QOTSA and only saw two songs in their set which was a major bummer. I really wanted to see them.

But what can you do? Perhaps they will come back to Wellington one day?

After our two songs we went at waited to get some water from the bar which seemed to take an infinatly LONG time - it has to be one of the worst managed bars I have ever been too.

When the Pumpkins finally started I was very exicited!! They gig has in general got a bit of a bad wrap about town in the papers from people in general and I have to admit I didn't LOVE it and I have seen better gigs but it was fun rocking out to old songs from my youth like "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" and "1979". But I think a lot of people got a little over it at the end when Billy Corgan decided to show us just how flash he was with his guitar by mucking about with it and making lots of noise and making the crowd sing him Happy Birthday twice!!

So it wasn't the best gig I've been to - but it wasn't the worse either - I had fun:)