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

Welcome to 2024 - a long over due catch up!

Happy 2024 to you - I hope you have had a great start to the year so far. I was planning to begin posting here again at the end of my summer holidays but unfortunately I ended up very sick for a week with covid, couldn't believe it was as bad as the first time I had it, but I'm fully recovered and back to good health. Then it was back to work, a weekend away and now its February, crazy how fast the weeks are going!

So a few snippets from our Christmas and New Year - we had a very lovely, low key family Christmas day this year as my sister in law was unwell with covid.  The weather had been very hot leading up to Christmas too and the day itself was roasting. My parents and Glenn's Dad came for a meal with us later in the day, which was just yum, all the usual treats including the annual brownie trifle.

Between Christmas and New Year we enjoyed some chilled out days but also spent time catching up on jobs and gardening around the house including a much needed sort out of our garage and two storage sheds. Such a good feeling to declutter and sell unwanted items.

On the 3rd January it was time to pack up the campervan and off we headed on a summer roadie with our friends Bruce and Alison.  We had an absolutely fantastic time travelling around the East coast of the North Island.

Day 1: Home - Napier - Wairoa - Opoutama (a beautiful freedom camping spot)

Day 2: Opoutama - Mahia - Gisborne - Tolaga Bay

Day 3: Tolaga Bay - Tokomaru Bay - Ruatoria - Te Araroa

Day 4: Te Araroa - Hicks Bay - Waihau Bay. Up and around the East Cape and now in the Bay of Plenty.

Day 5: Waihau Bay - Te Kaha - Opotiki. 

Found a motor camp with the fanciest bathrooms we've ever seen at a camping ground.

Day 6 - Opotiki to Ohope - a perfect spot for swimming, trying to catch  fish and watching the boats and water skiers in action.

Day 7: Ohope -Whakatane - Rotorua - Lake Okaro. A very tranquil spot by the lake.

Day 8: Lake Okaro - Taupo - Napier - Home.

We travelled over 1000kms on our trip and it was amazing - the people we met, the beautiful scenery, along with devastation still from the cyclone and other weather events during 2023. There's so much roading work to be done in the months and years ahead.  This was a big tick on our bucket list of places to visit around New Zealand. Bit of an eventful ending to our trip with a back tyre blowing out about 20km out of Taupo, so grateful for roadside assistance, and poor Diesel had to see the vet once we got home as he was unwell with a bad ear infection. 

We're loving the summer fruits available - nectarines, peaches, plums, apricots and all the berries especially strawberries.

Glenn was able to finish another project he'd been working throughout 2023 - our new outdoor cooking kitchen complete with a new inbuilt Weber barbeque. He designed and made the entire area himself and it's been put to great use already this summer.

We also enjoyed a day out in Napier recently, spending our Christmas money and vouchers.

Our summer garden is going great guns and so far we've harvested brocoli, tomatoes, lettuce, beans, radish, cabbage, and cucumbers.

Thankfully I was well enough last weekend to go with Glenn to Wellington as we'd booked concert tickets months ago to see the Foo Fighters.  We had a great weekend, and the concert was fantastic. 

Next time I'll have an update about what I've been stitching over the holiday break, and some stitching plans for 2024.

See you soon x