A Finish and Yummy Treats

This design has been so much fun to stitch over the past few months. It's pretty well travelled too, having been with me on my trip to visit my cousin, and then to the beach several times as well.

This is Christmas Cuckoo Clock by the Tiny Modernist, last year's mystery Christmas stitch along.

I used all the recommended DMC threads and 32 count vintage grey Belfast linen. 

So happy to have another of my 2024 projects ticked off the list!

It's been quite hot here this week, we've days that have reached 30c plus, so a friend and I went along to check out a newly opened cafe in town, Rubylicious Cakes.  This lemon meringue raspberry cupcake was divine, 

So was this passionfruit ice cream, yum!

See you soon xx

Beach Days

Over the past month or so, we've been making the most of the sunny and hot weather and heading out to one of our local beaches in our campervan after work on Friday afternoon.  I've usually got everything ready to go by the time Glenn gets in from work, and we're off. How lucky are we to have several beautiful beaches, all only about 45 minutes drive or less from home.

Diesel loves coming too, lots of beach walks, splashes in the waves and hanging out at our camp site.  He gets super tired by the end of the weekend and will usually snooze the day away once we get home.

Some weekends it's just Glenn, Diesel and I, other times Hannah comes along too and puts her tent up, and we are often joined by our friends with their campervans.  Some weekends there's fishing, but usually there is lots of time for just chilling out, enjoying a bbq for dinner, lots of cheese and crackers,  and a few glasses of bubbles.  Often I take my stitching and it doesn't even come out, as I might just spend a few hours reading.  Life at the beach is so much fun, stress free, and I start each week at work with a clear head.  We hope to get a few more beach weekends in before the cooler weather of autumn comes in April. 

See you soon x

Red work, Stitching & Books

Inspired by our friend Clare's wonderful Merry Christmas banner, some of the ladies from my stitching group and I have started a stitch along on the Rosalie Dekker pattern.  I'm using the pre printed linen that came with the pattern and my thread choice is DMC 321, one of my favourites.  It's been quite some time since I did any red work stitching but so far I'm really enjoying getting back into it. 

I did finish the Tiny Modernist Christmas Cuckoo House last week, photos to come once I've ironed it, ha ha.  Now I'm focusing on Peace and Goodwill by Brenda Gervais, a lovely design, and I enjoyed a bit of stitching time on it at the beach last weekend. 

I ordered some of the new Lori Holt happy charms recently, and a panel of her bags to make up too. I'd been wanting to get one of these panels for absolutely ages so was so thrilled to see them in stock at Rainbow Stash.  I need to buy some of the zippers next.  

As usual, I've been reading a lot lately, this was my pile I picked up from the library just before Christmas.  I'm still carrying on my 2024 goal of reading during my lunchbreak, otherwise I'd have my lunch and go straight back to work.  Funny story, twice now in the past twelve months I've reserved Kate Morton's Homecoming and each time I've ran out of time to read it before it needs to go back for the next reader. Third time lucky in a few months perhaps.

Newly purchased Onyx Storm to add to the pile of books to be read.

I finished Inheritance by Nora Roberts over the weekend, a good romance and ghost story. I picked up the next in the series, the Mirror, yesterday so will start that after my current read, We Solve Murders by Richard Osman, the first in a new series. 

We have a long weekend coming up, a public holiday on Thursday for Waitangi Day, and having taken Friday off work, we're off to Poranghau Beach with our friends for a few days. The weather is looking good, Glenn has bought a new fishing rod, so will he be lucky with his fishing? Lots of walks along the beach, catching up with our friends, it will be a fun weekend.

See you soon x

Girls' Trip

Back when my niece Zoe was a little girl and Hannah just a baby, we started spending a week during January in Palmerston North with my family there. We did this for many years until Covid in 2020 and then for the past few years we've only been to visit a few times.  This January Hannah and I had a wonderful few days staying my cousin Donna and her boyfriend. We filled our days with lots of shopping, sightseeing, eating out and enjoying catching up with my aunty and uncle too.

One of the days we went blueberry picking at Blue Acres, a farm near Ashurst, such a fun afternoon, one for the pot, one for my mouth ha ha.

One evening we visited the He Ara Kotahi bridge, which is near the esplanade in Palmerston. There's a pathway that goes for quite a few kms, and along the way there is a stream where you can feed the eels. 

One of the most loveliest aspects of the week was just spending time with Hannah, and following her around as she found shops to visit, and food and drinks to try. This was a strawberry macha latte, and was quite delicious.

We spent a day in Whanganui, and visited Virginia Lake and the Winter Garden. This has always been a favourite place to visit for me, we went there many times when I was a kid.

Hannah decided to recreate this photo from 2017!

It was such a stunning day weather wise, quite hot too.

We spent an afternoon at the movies, Paddington in Peru, such a fun family movie.

Hannah's favourite shop, where we went three times ha ha

We also were able to catch up with other friends and family members, including another cousin and his partner, and see their amazing fruit and vegetables gardens. I also got to meet the lovely ladies at the sewing group, Sew On, my cousin volunteers with for the Arohanui Hospice, where they make lots of different things from recycled fabrics and craft items. 

Such an enjoyable few days in the Manawatu.

See you soon x

Welcome to 2025

Hello friends and happy 2025 to you, ha ha, just as we hit the last week of January! 

Glenn and I are both back at work after our summer break, Hannah is back to high school for Year 12 (second to last year) for course confirmation later this week and peer mentor training, and then her school year officially kicks off next week. 

The weather here after Christmas was pretty crazy, as you'll see later on my post, lots of rain so some of our summer holiday plans didn't eventuate but that's ok, there were plenty of things to do around home and Glenn made some great progress on painting our house and other jobs.

So here's bit of a round up from Christmas and New Year before I get on with this year's goings on in another post or two.

These dahlia's from my aunty's garden are just so "Christmasy" - I've asked if I can have a tuber or two, they remind me of candy canes. 

Glenn took us out for our annual Christmas eve lunch, this year to a new-ish Indian restaurant in town. 

Christmas Day was such a lovely day, started with a walk along the river trail with Diesel. We had family come for Christmas dinner and enjoyed all the usual Kiwi Christmas treats.

I made a chocolate brownie trifle, which everyone loves, and it's so much better the next day!

Between Christmas and New Year, we easily filled our days with house painting, a shopping trip for the Boxing day sales, catch ups with family and friends, decluttering and lots of stitching, reading, watching Netflix, etc. 

As I mentioned, our weather has not been very summer like, we even had snow on the ranges to the east of town on the 5th January, this is the view from the end of our driveway. My parents even had their fire going, crazy stuff!

More holiday adventures to share in my next few posts.

Moving onto a stitching update - this is the stitching bag I made for our stitching group's Christmas Swap, the design is by Primrose Cottage Stitches. 

I decided to order this year's Book Of Days by Needlework Press to record my stitching and plans. It couldn't travel on its own from That Crafty Kiwi so ordered the cutest needle minder and some fabrics.

The two holiday stitching projects I chose to stitch over the break are both finished - 

Santa & Cardinal Birdhouse by Jim Shore for Mill Hill:

Christmas Magic by Primrose Cottage Stitches, stitched on 32 count natural Belfast linen using the recommended DMCs.

For the rest of my holidays I've mostly stitched on the Christmas Cuckoo House by the Tiny Modernist. I'm hoping to finish it this week then I can move on to some of my 2025 stitching plans. I have so many things I'd like to work on this year, including some red work embroidery projects, which I haven't done for quite some time.

See you soon xx