52 Weeks of Memories - Week 4 - Little

Who knew something so little would cause so many problems. Had to get a new key for the car as the old one stopped working. Many hassles later it seems to be working. Hopefully it keeps working. The immobilizer was playing up earlier today so hopefully I've got it all fixed now.

52 Weeks of Memories - Week 3 - Reflection

So I had big plans of going somewhere with water to take a nice picture with a reflection but as usual, it didn't come to fruition. So I looked around the house to see if there was a reflection anywhere but a mirror. And then I noticed the TV.

You can probably see the mess that is our lounge in the picture. And all of the Christmas cards that we received (They're still arriving so I'm leaving them all up there until we get no more for a week :P)

Travel Tuesday - Where we went in Europe - a brief overview

In June and July of 2014 AJ and I went on a big five week holiday in England, Ireland, Scotland and Paris. We had an amazing time, met up with family and friends and saw some places that I'd been wanting to see my entire life.


We spent about a week in London, utilising the 'London Pass' as much as possible. Saw some amazing sights in and around Greater London.

After that we spent 5 days camping at the Download Festival in Derby. Was an amazing experience as here in New Zealand we generally don't have big festivals like that (especially in the rock/metal genre - which we love).

After the festival we went to Ireland where we hired a car and tried to cram as much as we could into each day. We were there for about 9 days but could have spent a lot longer.

We then headed to Scotland which we adored. We managed to have really nice weather and saw a lot more of Scotland than we had originally intended - including driving the road right up the Northern part.

We then spent a few days in the Lake District with some friends showing us around before heading to Norfolk which is where one branch of my family came from before immigrating to New Zealand in the 1860s.

We then took the Eurostar over to Paris and spent a day and half there with amazing friends who we'd only previously met on the internet.


So that's a brief overview of our trip. Over the next few weeks I'll be talking about each part in more detail. We'll see just how much detail once I actually start writing.


Cheers for reading :D

My Garden Update Jan 2016

Once a month I thought I would update you all with what's been going on in my garden.

I'm quite proud of the amount of produce I've been getting this season. So far I've harvested full sized tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, capsicums, jalapeños, other types of pepper, silverbeet, spring onion and our lemon tree is almost always bursting at the seams.

The following are some of the flowers that have appeared so far this past Spring and this Summer:

Iris

Rose

Snowball Tree (unsure of its' real name)

Cool white and yellow dahlia that popped up. Normally they're just yellow.

Our overgrown yard with the flamingo tree when it's pink (my favourite time)

The following pics are a fraction of what I've harvested since Christmas. I've been freezing what we don't use immediately.

52 Weeks of Memories-Week Two-Weather

This week's theme was 'Weather'.

This is our backyard with our new washing line that AJ put up after our old rotary one collapsed. Beautiful sunny day perfect for getting the sheets out :)

52 Weeks of Memories is organised by Toni from Finding Myself Young
http://www.findingmyselfyoung.com/p/52-weeks-of-memories.html

ABCs of Me

So I was browsing through some blogs the other day and happened across this old post:  http://www.kedarhower.com/2011/06/abcs-of-me.html from ages ago. I have a habit of going back to the beginnings of some blogs :P
So I thought I'd do this myself as it's just cool


A. Age: 28

B. Bed Size: Queen

C. Chore You Dislike: Dishes. I leave them for as long as possible.

D. Dogs: No. AJ's allergic to a lot of them. Maybe one day.

E. Essential Start to Your Day: A cup of tea. Or two. Or three.

F. Favorite Color: PINK!!!

G. Gold or Silver:  I prefer the look of silver so I try to get white gold things as it's better quality than silver.

H. Height: 175cm

I. Instruments You Played: Flute. Haven't played it in years.

J. Job Title: Relief Primary School Teacher

K. Kids: None yet. I'm so clucky though.

L. Live:  Papakura, Auckland, New Zealand

M. Mom's Name: Mary

N. Nicknames: Rosey, Rose, Clam (the last one makes no sense and was given to me by my sister when she was a kid) 

O. Overnight Hospital Stays: Nope

P. Pet Peeves: People not indicating while driving. How the hell am I supposed to guess that you're going to cut in front of me?!?!?!

Q. Quote from a movie: 'You Shall Not Pass!' (LOTR)


R. Righty or Lefty: Righty

S. Siblings: Two younger sisters - Heather and Rachael

T. Time You Wake Up: When my alarm goes off for the second time in the morning. I try and get up around 6 during the week and 8 on the weekends. There are those times that I just need a sleep-in though. And I do love a good sleep-in.

U. Underwear: Full briefs

V. Vegetables You Don't Like: Honestly can't think of any. I've liked everything I've tried.

W. What Makes You Run Late: Losing track of time in the shower.

X. X-Rays You've Had: Both my wrists when I was a kid (fractures - one year after the other), ankle (sprain at Uni after too much drinking - I don't drink much anymore) and chest (checking lungs as I get a lingering cough - no reason for it though). Also the x-rays they do at the dentist.

Y. Yummy Food You Make: My Christmas Peppermint, white chocolate cookies. They go down a treat.

Z. Zoo Animal Favorites: Giraffe, squirrel (they only exist in zoos here) and tamarin.

Travel Tuesday - An Intro

Hi and welcome to Travel Tuesday.

For the next few Tuesdays (in other words - however many places I go/have been) I am going to post things I like about places I've been. This will range from Europe to Australia to summer road trips around NZ to just day trips around Auckland.
All pictures I post will have been taken by my husband or myself.
As a teaser, here's one of my favourite pics from Ireland:

52 Weeks of Memories - Week One - Happy Place

This year I've decided to take part in the 52 weeks of memories photography challenge from over here

I'm going to cheat a bit for the first photo as it was taken a few months ago when we went there with friends. I'd planned on going there today but the weather is abysmal.

My happy place is Tapapakanga Beach

Every time I go to this beach it automatically raises my spirits

2016 Goals

I'm not going to have too many goals for this year as I find that with too many it gets a bit overwhelming.

1 - Get into a decent exercise routine. I really want to get fit this year. I'd love to not be the person bringing up the rear on bush walks. 

2 - Contribute financially. I haven't had a job for a while now. I do relief work at one school, but I really feel like I need to ramp up my efforts so that we can finally pay back a few loans that we have from our parents.

3 - Keep house clean and tidy. I don't really like housework. Does anyone really? I do tend to procrastinate on it for way too long and the house tends to get a bit dirty. I plan on concentrating on a certain part of the house every day.

4 - Get garden under control. I'm not sure how well this will go. Even if I manage to keep a certain part of it under control. Like my vege boxes. We don't mow our lawn so that won't be included in this (we like the grass a bit longer - AJ chops the seed heads if they get close to knee height though).

5 - Improve blog. I want to blog more regularly. I enjoy it and if I can build it up with regards to readership then that'd be awesome. I've got a second diary this year and already have post ideas for a lot of the year. I also have a list of different things I want to do on my blog.

Happy New Year!!! (review of 2015 goals)

Happy New Year Peeps! Hope 2016 is an awesome year for you.


I thought I'd start this year with a review of my goals from 2015.

1 - I'm going to continue the hunt for a full time teaching role and hopefully be successful.
I continued the hunt. Wasn't successful though :( Time to start looking at other options again.

2 - I'm going to endeavour to keep the house clean.
I am a lot better than I was. It helped that we had friends staying at various parts of the year. Could still do better though.

3 - I'm going to start crafting again.
Success! I made most birthday cards, mothers day, fathers day and about a third of my Christmas cards. I also made some cute little angels as Christmas presents for my Mum and Nana (might post a tutorial closer to next Christmas).

4 - We're going to make a budget and stick to it.
We recently went through our budget and we were over by quite a bit. When you take into consideration the extra big expenses of a new alternator for the car, new laptop for me, new power pack for AJs computer, and new tyres for the car we actually did ok. Hopefully there won't be any big expenses this coming year.

5 - We're going to finish paying back our parents money that we've borrowed.
Because of the extra expenses of the previous goal, we haven't as much money towards that as we were hoping. We're about halfway there with AJ's parents. Haven't even thought about my parents yet. 

6 - Finish my Diploma of Business that I started years ago and never completed.
DONE!!! I completed this in June and received my Diploma in the mail (I've already been to 2 graduations - I didn't need to go to a third).

7 - Start an exercise routine and stick to it.
For a lot of 2015 I didn't. Towards the end of the year when my weight sky-rocketed I knuckled down. I have a routine now. But I don't do it on public holidays. Those are my days off.

8 - Try to eat healthier.
We have been. I've tried a few new recipes but none really stuck. Everything we eat as meals is generally healthy though.

9 - Make an effort to catch up with friends that I haven't seen in ages.
I've caught up with a few different people throughout the year. Lots more people I want to catch up with though.

10 - Blog more often.
I've been ok with this. Blogged the same amount as 2014. Need to come up with a blogging schedule or something.



Check back in about a week for some goals for 2016.