Friday, August 28, 2009

It's nearly time...

So I only have a few days left now...three sleeps in total before Rich and I leave for Uijongbu, South Korea (Uijongbu is a satellite city of Seoul).

After spending time with my parents in Taranaki we headed to Hamilton for a few days to see my younger brother and catch up with some friends. At the moment we are at Rich's parents in sunny Tauranga (well it's sunny today at least we have had a lot of rain and a MASSIVE lightnening storm as well).

On Sunday we will be heading up to Auckland for a midday flight to Singapore, where we have a five hour stop over and then a second flight to Seoul where we will arrive early on Tuesday morning.

Well that's all for now really - I'm sure there will be more updates when I actually reach Korea and something interesting happens!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Crafty Foxes Tee Shirt Swap

Just one final crafty picture - a long while ago my craft group "The Crafty Foxes" had a tee shirt swap. The basis idea of the swap was that you would recieve an unloved/unwanted tee shirt from another person - revamp it and return it to them in it's new form.

I recieved a little yellow tee shirt from Iris and I turned it into a yellow bunting - this isn't necessarily the BEST photo of the bunting but you get the idea.


Fun with Felt Swap

Another Swap I took part in recently was a "fun with felt" swap which was a small swap with fairly simple requirements and here's some of what I made - a felt zombie/voodoo doll, three patches and a skull flower brooch.





Conor's Cross Stitch

It was my friend Conor's birthday in June and seen as we seem to have an ''unspoken'' tradition of sending each others Birthday's packages VERY late, I only actually got around to sending his birthday package a few weeks ago.

I sent a whole collection of random items over to him in London but I included in the mix this cross stitch I made - I thought he'd find it amusing - well at least I knew he wouldn't be offended when he recieved a ''You Suck'' cross stitch.

Tofu Swap

I recently took part in a personal swap on craftster and the theme we chose was tofu. It was a little hard to come up with an idea of what to make for this swap to begin with but I eventually decided to make a couple of soy candles in little jars with skulls on the front and also a little plushie piece of tofu which is really cute for a piece of tofu - at least I think so.


Cutie Cutie Cupcakes

When I was staying with my parents recently I thought I may as well use the opportunity to make some cupcakes because I'm not sure if I will be able to make cupcakes in South Korea.

The cupcakes ended up being the cutest cupcakes I have ever made with pink icing, heart sprinkles and little lolly penguins on top!


Monday, August 24, 2009

AWOL for a while...

So for those of you who know and love my blog know, I have been AWOL for a while. This was mostly due to the fact that since leaving Wellington Rich and I have spent most of our time living with my parents in Taranaki and there is no broadband available where my parents live and trying to blog on a dial up connection (especially when you want to upload photos) is impossible.

So now we are at Rich's parents place near Tauranga we finally have broadband again so it means I can blog some of the goings on which have happened over the last little while.

We left Wellington quite a while ago now and took the bus from Wellington to Wanganui. We decided we needed to stop off in Wanaganui to break up the long bus trip a bit. I know that Wanganui has a bit of a bad image as a nothing town but it's not actually that bad (despite having to walk for miles to try and find a cafe open after 5.00 pm!).

One of my favourite things in Wanganui is the extremely old Durie Elevator (which was opened in the early 1900's) which travels though - as you'd expect Durie Hill! You have to walk through a very long and creepy underground tunnel to get to the elevator which was half the appeal of it (well to me anyways). Then you ring the bell and the lift comes and picks you up and takes you to the top of the hill for a cost of about $2 - I couldn't help but think the whole thing would be great in a horror movie. I'm pretty sure some of the locals would have a story or two about this lift.
When you reach the top of the elevator there's a great view of the city and the river and you can also walk up the top of a tower. The day we went it was VERY windy but also very blue skies so you had an amazing view all over Wanaganui.
After spending some time in Wanaganui it was time to head to my parents new farm in Kaponga, Taranaki. Like many parts of Taranaki there is a really old Dairy Factory near my parents place which hasn't been used for many years - but these old, unloved, derelict buildings do make for some good photographic opportunities.
When in "the Naki" Rich and I had a chance to do quite a few different things - including a trip to Tawhiti Muesuem which is a really amazing muesuem near Hawera with all sorts of life like models of early settler life in Taranaki.We also had at least one trip to New Plymouth whilst we were in the Naki and spend some time walking along the waterfront, although I was a little annoyed at myself for forgetting to bring my skates along - it was a perfect day for skating!


Our final adventure whilst in the Naki was a day trip up Mt Egmont. We spent about five hours walking but we didn't do one track instead we did a mix and match of a whole variety of tracks which meant we saw Dawson Falls, Wilkies Pools and we even got close enough to the summit for Rich to make a snowman (although the snow man was pretty tiny).