I have new boots!

When we were in the city at the museum the other day, we stopped into one of the tramping shops to look at boots for me. They had a couple of different models on sale (limited sizes) which I tried on, but didn't get any as I wanted to try on some others before making a decision. Then in the middle of the night last night, I remembered I'd need some boots for our snow holiday, so I didn't get snow in my shoes...so we decided to go boot shopping this morning (after working out if we could afford to buy any right now). First I needed to buy some insoles to try them on with (I used to have extra insoles in my old boots, that got thrown out with the old boots because I forgot to get Peter to take them out before they went in the bin. I then tried on 3 different pairs of boots trying to work out which, if any, were comfortable and suited my foot shape and size. I finally worked out that one pair did fit well and they happened to be the cheapest ones! (on sale for $200, originally $449) So now I need to spend some time wearing them around the place to wear them in (and what is really great is the store gives a 30 day trial period, so if I decided after doing some real walking in them (as opposed to wandering around a shop) that they aren't the right fit, I can take them back, no worries.

Cleaning update

It's taking longer than I'd like. The problem is Hamilton weather - damp and humid all year round (no dry winters like Brisbane). So behind any furniture that is next to a wall and especially in the dead corner of every room (where the air gets trapped and doesn't circulate) I have to clean the skirting boards, the lower wall and the back of the furniture as mould/mildew (what is the difference?) has started to grow. It isn't as bad as last year, now all the rooms have been freshly painted over the last year, but it is still there. I have even been extra conscious this year about opening all the windows on the fine days to allow as much ventilation/air flow as possible.

Splashback has arrived!

The glass splashback we are installing behind our new stove arrived this morning! We now have to wait until the electrician moves our stove switch on Monday and then we can install it. I'm happy that our timeline for getting it done in time to get the stove certified is staying on track.

Cleaning day

I have declared today cleaning day! I wrote a list of cleaning jobs that I wanted to get done during the school holidays (not the everyday sort, but the twice a year type of jobs). Up until now I have only got 2 of the jobs done (and one of those I only did yesterday afternoon). So today I want to get through the rest of them and while I'm doing them I'm getting the kids to tidy up (and bin it if necessary) their craft stuff and other things they have collected. It will be nice to have the house clean and tidy before we get back into the normal routine next week.

A woman who fears the Lord

I've just been reading one of John Piper's older sermons (I was actually only 3 month old feotus at the time he preached it) titled 'A woman who fears the Lord is to be praised'. The point that really stuck out to me at this time is that...A woman who fears the Lord is not anxious about the future. So even if unexpected issues keep arising with our kitchen improvements, I shouldn't be anxious, but trust God.

Here's an extract:

And now, finally, we ask, How can you identify a woman who fears the Lord? What does she look like in action? I think that is what the acrostic of verses 10–31 intends to give us. What is a woman like who fears the Lord? What sorts of things can we praise her for? I'll just mention four things that the wise man has chosen to celebrate about the woman who fears the Lord (and which I want to celebrate in my wife!). First of all, a woman who fears the Lord is not anxious about the future. Look at verse 25. I love this line, and I praise all you women who are like this: "Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come." Satan dangles in front of her the specter of tomorrow's troubles, but she glances up at the almighty God at her right hand (her magnificent German Shepherd!) and laughs at Satan's folly. She fulfills in her own life Proverbs 14:26, "In the fear of the Lord one hasstrong confidence, and his children will have a refuge."

Her fear of the Lord makes her fearless of man. But it doesn't make her naïve. She knows that the Lord has appointed some means for our safety. For example, verse 21, "She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet." Winter is a fearful thing in Minnesota, and God has appointed that we do more than pray that our feet not freeze. Clothing must be made or bought. When a woman fears the Lord, she will not be anxious about tomorrow, she will do what God has appointed for her to do and trust him in everything to show her mercy.

If you want to read or listen the whole sermon click here.

Better day

Today has been much better for my feelings of productivity, as well as actual measurable productivity. Today I have:

1. Ordered and paid for a splashback to go behind our stove (one of the things needed to comply with the hidden government regulations mentioned yesterday) - it should arrive Friday or Monday.
2. Booked in the electrician to come and move our oven switch on Monday (so that we can install the splashback).
3. Found out that we need to get the electrician to order the switch that we want to use for the oven switch.
4. I cut out the pieces for 3 pin wheels.
5. We delivered one of Joanna's remaining birthday party invitations.
6. I used the gas hobs on our stove for the first time - I like.

Guest bedrooms...

Do you have a guest bedroom?

How frequently is your guest bedroom used as a guest bedroom?

Does your guest bedroom serve a second function (eg. office, toy room...)?

I'm watching The Block 2011 and everybody's first room was a guest bedroom. They spent lots of money and time on the room and only one team made it dual function (study/bedroom) and they got crucified by the judges for it. But for those that made an exclusive purpose 'guest bedroom' how much will it be used for this particular function?

We never had a big enough house in Brisbane to guest bedroom. But when we moved to NZ we decided it was important to have a room for guest to stay in as we expected family to visit. But it still needed to be a dual purpose room as we couldn't afford a large enough house to have a sole purpose guest room. Which meant we had to compromise on bedding comfort and have a sofa bed instead of a normal double bed (and after sleeping on the sofa bed for 5 weeks ourselves, I think it is the most comfortable sofa bed we have slept on and we've slept on a few). Because the reality is that in the 35 months we've been living here we have had people sleeping in our guest room for 13% of that time. And the only people who've stayed in our guest room have been family and 1 couple from a local bible college (they did a mission at our church for a week).

Then if we think the opposite way...as a family of five, we need more space than one guest bedroom if we were to stay at anybody's house. Space that most of our family and friends don't have (even if they do have a guest bedroom).

So why is a guest bedroom such an important selling point when renovating a house for maximum profit? Are we kidding ourselves about our willingness to have people in our home or our willingness to fit in with somebody else's life if we stay at their house (not to mention any of the practicality problems)?

Need to vent (or is debrief a nicer word)

Yesterday, I got nothing done. Well, yes we went to the museum and that was lots of fun, but I didn't get to cross one single thing off my to-do list. There are a couple of things I've been trying to get done for days...making the pin wheels for Joanna's party and finish clearing our stuff out the playroom (ie. complete the move back to our bedroom).

Then there is the kitchen improvements. Like any renovation (which those of you who have done the DIY reno thing would know, and I knew in theory, but doesn't make the reality any less annoying), things are taking longer than anticipated, there are unknown factors about cost, there's regulations you have to comply with that are hidden in large government documents...

First

Naomi had her first haircut on the weekend. I just tidied up the ratty ends and evened it all up a bit.

What a mess!

This is the result of Naomi eating fried brioche with dark chocolate spread and berries for breakfast yesterday.

We thought she might be applying her camouflage for some muddy covert army mission.

Kitchen improvements update

On the weekend we installed the range hood we bought last week, in preparation for the electrician today and the gas fitter tomorrow coming to install the stove. A job that we hoped to take only Saturday morning, but ended up taking all of Saturday and most of the free time we have on Sunday.

The worst part was installing the ducting kit up through the roof and out the eave. Because we have a low pitch roof and the ducting is made of semi ridged material (think aluminium pie trays, but in the shape of a 150mm wide tube), we had to try and squish it through a gap in the roof framing a bit smaller than 150mm without ripping any holes in it. After one end starting to unravel like a role of sticky tape and then putting a couple of holes in it, I ventured in the the roof cavity to help guide it through without any more damage (we were fast running out of ducting length and couldn't afford any more wastage)! It was the first time I'd been up in the roof since installing the insulation.

We also needed to paint the wall, painting over the gap where the old range hood had been. We also took the opportunity to do the 2nd coat on the whole section of the wall there where the oven and freezer normally live (Peter only put one coat on when he painted the kitchen walls last September).

Peter did get a new tool! A 'Wallboard saw'...to cut the holes in the ceiling and eave (and would have cut the section of the scotia out, if he hadn't already attacked it with a router and chisel).

Red, yellow, (All) Black

This morning, we went to the Museum to see their new Rugby exhibition. It was titled 'Red, Yellow, (All) Black - A local look at our national game'. It was all about the history and life of the local Waikato team - the Mooloos. Along with all the memorabillia, photos and history, there was also some cool interactive stuff including:

• scrum machine - which measured the force that you could exert on it;
• match the rugby socks to the correct NZ rugby teams;
• and on a really cool spongy fake grass area there were the following activities:
• pass the ball through the hoop;
• kick a goal;
• sit and reach flexibility test;
• agility run test;
• standing jump test.

The kids had great fun playing with the interactive stuff (even with a group of kids from the local Kelly Sports Holiday Care Program - I was impressed with the manners and consideration the big kids displayed towards my kids).

Blogging family

For those of you who are interested...Ben has started blogging. We started it nearly a year ago as a place to put up some of the cool photos he takes with his camera - it is titled 'Through my eyes'. But after not much activity because of us being to busy and Ben not using his camera much, we have resurrected it this holidays. And now Ben has been at school for a while and is used to writing short stories, he is now also typing his own titles, explanations and captions to his pictures - he isn't too bad at finding his way around the keyboard. Click through and check it out.

Morning at the Park

Winter school holidays in Hamilton, I am very aware of the weather. Being winter there is a fair bit of rain and cold, so if you don't get the kids out of the house on days when there is some sun...you can find yourself stuck inside for the whole two weeks and all concerned suffering symptoms of cabin fever.

So after a couple of wet-ish, overcast, cold days, the sun poked through on Friday morning and I decided on taking the kids on a trip to one of their favourite parks (Claudelands park) to run around, climb, swing etc. It was a fun enjoyable morning for us all...Naomi's had great fun going down one of the slides again, and again, and again.

Ben and Joanna had fun climbing all over the Spider's web.

And as you can see, I had fun taking photos of it all!

Cupcake creations

The day I was trying in vain to make the layers of Joanna's birthday cake, Ben had a friend over to play. Due to the abundance of cupcakes from my multiple cake making attempts, I served these for morning tea. I made up some quick icing and layed out a few decorating items (coloured sanding sugar, dinosaur sprinkles, fairy sprinkles and skittles) and let the kids decorate their own before eating it. The common theme for decoration ended up being faces, but no two faces were the same!

(Now some kids may think this activity cool enough to wish they were a permanent part of our family, but no, while eating his decorated cupcake, Ben's friend declared that he wished he lived at our house

because we had All Blacks football cards in our Wheat Bix box! - I was unpacking the grocery shopping at the time)

Update - I said I'd let you know how cake #3 went...well I am happy with the height of it and I think I'm happy with the colour (although it is a little hard to tell because as I used the whole 1/2 quantity of cake batter for it, I didn't have any spare cupcakes to cut into and check the colour like I did with the first two attempts). I also worked out more specifically why I needed to use more pink colouring than the recipe and why the first attempt at pink just looked dirty. I can blame it on our free range chook eggs with their deep yellow yolks! Because using these means that even the plain coloured cake is quite yellow looking instead of the paler usual colour of plain cake. One situation where the cheap, mass produced, battery hen, sickly pale yolk eggs would actually be desired! (although I'm going to stick with our home grown, free range eggs - which we are getting 2-3 per day at the moment)

Trickier than I thought...

I'm planning on making a three layer rainbow cake for Naomi's birthday party (with white meringue icing covering it). There is a white layer, pink layer and brown layer. I started trying to make the layers today (I'll then freeze them until the day before the party), but still haven't made 1 successful layer.

First tried to make the white layer, but didn't divide the mixture into the correct proportions, so it turned out too thin.

I then tried again and at the same time decided to try the pink layer...I had a better technique for dividing the mixture this time, but didn't put enough pink food colouring in, so it turned out just looking like a dirty white layer!

Take #3 is currently in the oven. It is a remake of the pink layer with a stack more food colouring in (what I think would have been most effective would have been to get some food whitener to take the yellowishness of the butter out - I've seen Heston Bloomenthal use it, but I don't know where to get any). I've also decided after seeing how thick the previous one turned out, that I actually want thicker layers than the recipe says, so have put more mixture in the cake tin this time. Will it turn out how I want it to? Or will it not be right and I will feel like I've got nothing done today?

Enjoying the sun

We have been enjoying the sunny, fine start to our school holidays. I've been conscious of getting the kids outside to play as much as possible as the wet weather is suppose to return towards the end of this week. My garden is also thankful for the fine weather during school holidays where I have more time to do stuff. I've weeded 2 of the garden beds (there are stacks of weeds in them as I haven't weeded since I planted the winter vegies - either the weather has been wet or I haven't had the time), each taking me 1.5 - 2 hrs to weed and I've filled 1/3 - 1/2 of our garden waste wheely bin with weeds. I also have planted some spinach, bok choy and sugar snap pea seeds to germinate inside in the warmth before I plant them out in the garden, so we hopefully have stuff to eat in spring before it gets warm enough for the summer veggie crop.

I've also done some painting - we're revamping an wardrobe we bought 2nd hand from the slavos (or sallies as the kiwis call them) just after we got married. We are painting it the same colour as the built in wardrobe doors, so they look like they go together in the room (they both have slatted doors). I did the first coat yesterday, but we've run out of paint so I'm going to have to go to the hardware store this morning and buy another tin before doing the second coat (we also need more to paint window frames and doors etc.).

Also got a guy to come do a quote on installing our new stove (gas man). He hasn't emailed us the numbers yet, so can't do any more about that at the moment.

This morning is a shopping morning:

• Mitre 10 - for paint and ducting for range hood
• Salvation army op shop - because I go with the girls during the term and Ben asked if we could go in the holidays so he could come too (they have a box of free soft toys that the kids like to pick one and bring home)
• Spotlight - to look for supplies for joanna's party (cake decorations)
• Nosh - again half because I go with the girls during term and Ben has never been so would like to see it (plus they have free cheese tasting) and I also need to buy some meat and stuff there.
• The if we have time I'm going to stop at one of the kids favourite parks on the way home for them to play before getting home in time for lunch.

School holidays

And the weather is sunny and dry. So we are going to spend the afternoon out in the garden!

I plan to plant some seeds to germinate inside and get a jump start on spring planting. And...I really need to get on top of the weeds among my winter veggies.

Kitchen improvements

Yesterday, we bought a new stove and range hood to put in our kitchen. I'm excited, although I now need to wait to get quotes for installing it and then actually getting it installed. Then we can all cook up a storm!

Wairere Falls

This is one of the places we'd thought of going to since we arrived in NZ... but just hadn't got around to getting to. The falls are the highest in the North Island (at 153m), but they're not really on the way to anywhere else, and being a bit over an hour's drive away, it's just been that little bit too far. But, after 10 days of thoroughly miserable weather, today was forecast to be cold and fine, so that sounded like weather for a traipse through the bush.

It was frosty this morning, and was only forecast to get to 11C, so we dressed the kids up nice and warm to make sure they weren't going to get cold, and headed out. The walk is really pleasant - through beautiful forest along a thundering river. The kids did a good job of walking, but we were

running a little bit late on our plans to get to the top for lunch by the time we got to the lookout near the base of the falls. We decided to just push on

anyway, and got to the top by just after 1pm. Mel had made a fancy lunch: caramelized onion and potato bread puddings and tasty lamb meatballs.

The trip back down was like any trip down: an attempt to

not slip over on muddy tree roots! Each of us managed to land on our backsides once, but didn't manage any injury.

We had intended to stop at Kaimai Cheese on the way home (another place we'd wanted to go to, but hadn't got around to!), but we only got back to the car at 3:45pm, and they closed at 4pm. Fish and chips at home had to be good enough.

A full set of photos are up on flickr

Joanna watching the show

She is holding her rose to give to Dorothy.

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Dorothy

Yesterday, Joanna, Naomi and I went to 'Dorothy the Dinosaur's travelling show. Joanna had saved her pocket money for 2.5 months to pay for her ticket to go. She really enjoyed the show and even had a rose to give to Dorothy.

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Back to normal

Life back to normal = less blog posts

Ben was well enough to go back to school last Thursday...which meant my days have been able to go back to their normal rountine...which means the daily tasks are feeling easier again...which means I have more energy and time for extra tasks...which means less time to blog.

Extra things I have done include:

• making Joanna's birthday party invitations (fairy theme)
• cleaning the deck doors (they were covered in mould from condensation)
• tidying/clearing the sideboard (including ditching the dead flowers in the vase)
• painting the skirting board in our bedroom (which although is a small surface to cover, takes a long time due to the precision needed)
• swapping over Naomi's clothes from size 1 to size 2

I want life to get back to normal...

Ben has been home from school sick for a whole week now. Because of that our regular daily and weekly routines haven't happened for a week now. The first couple of days of non routine were nice, I managed to get some things done that I hadn't been able to find time to do. But now I find that doing tasks that are normally done each day/week are really draining me. Things that I do with ease and not much thought when life is in it's normal routine, are taking more intentional thought and effort to get done and are therefore tiring me out more. My brain feels fuzzy and I feel like not much is getting done.

unfortunately...

Our fijoa trees that also turned one have not grown as much. They are only a little bit taller than when we bought them.

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Give it a chop

The other gardening task we did was to chop all more branches off our neighbours tree to let more sunlight into our veggie patch. We'd really like to take off some from the height but the owners didn't want us to change how it looked from their side (it is a rental but the owners were there recently doing some refurbishments between tenants).

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More gardening news

I also spent the day out in the garden on Saturday revamping our dessert garden. It has been over run with weeds for months now. So I pulled out all the weeds and the strawberry plants (which slowly emerged from the weed forest). I then replanted the strawberry plants (they had gone crazy with runners this year so i only needed about 1/3 of the plants i pulled out) as well as planting 14 raspberry plants which a friend from church had given us (extra plants from her own garden tidy up). Now i just have to keep on top of the weeds and look forward to a great berry crop next summer - hopefully.

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We have a lemon tree!

After wanting a lemon tree ever since we moved in here (not to mention also when we were renting but it was a bit impractical then), we finally have one. Bought it at the annual 'Waikato Tree Crop association' plant sale for the bargain price of $15. I made sure I arrived before the sale started this year as I knew all the citrus trees were sold out in the first half hour last year.

It is a Meyer lemon which was bred specifically for cooler climates so can withstand some frost. It is also a heavy year round cropping tree. I'm looking forward to our first homegrown lemon.

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One year old

Our olive trees had their 1st birthday on the weekend. They are about twice the height they were when we bought them a year ago. They have a fair bit more growing to go before they make the hedge that we are wanting.

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Doughnuts

Are definitely best eaten fresh (the same day as they are made). They are just a bit dry the next day, not soft and light like they are when first made.

Yesterday, I made mini doughnuts with chocolate honey glaze (another Donna Hay recipe) while I stayed home to look after Ben and the rest of the family went to church. There was two reasons I made them:

1. Because they take a bit of time to make (about 2/2.5hrs including all the waiting time while the dough rises), which I don't usually have free to make them.
2. As a treat for Ben to help cheer him up seeing as he has been feeling terribly sick for so long.

Ben enjoyed them, although they were the last thing he ate (at 11am) for the whole day yesterday as his temperature and condition went downhill from lunchtime onwards. And Peter really enjoyed them, using the 'freshness' excuse to sneak into the kitchen multiple times to eat one.

This is the 3rd time I've made doughnuts now and I think this is the best batch I have made so far. I'm getting better at knowing how much to kneed the dough and also a better method for making a warm place to use for the dough to rise, so it doesn't take as long.

Blog day/Blob day

You might find I blog a bit today - totally random thoughts. My brain not functioning well for household tasks/concentration due to lack of sleep last night. I've been stuck on the task of trying to send out about 6 texts to organise play dates for the school holidays for the past 1.5 hours...I've managed to send 1.

I'm finding it a bit frustrating as there are many things that need doing...a mountain of clean washing to sort and put away, a load of dirty washing to wash, finishing kids church material for next term (it need to be done by next weekend)...

Rubbish...

I've been reading a couple of blog posts (here and here) about littering and thought I'd tell you about the litter we get at our place...

We live on the corner of two major-ish roads which have a resonable amount of pedestrian traffic, so we get a lot of rubbish not just on our footpath put thrown over our fence into our front garden. There is a lot of the standard chip packets, pie wrappers, chocolate bar wrappers (there is a dairy about 3 doors up from us). We get the occasional beer/premix spirit bottle (ie. about 1 per week). But we get some interesting stuff too - a mobile phone (which was still working with recent texts on it, so we handed it in at the local cop shop), and a driver's licence.

This amount of rubbish would possibly make some people go crazy, but thankfully Peter and I can tolerate a certain amount of mess without any issue (which we put down in part to being 'last borns'). Although sometimes I get wish there wasn't a constant low level of litter at the bottom of our fence. What does get me annoyed is when they 'post' the wrappers into our letter box as if it is a rubbish bin!

Not doing much today...

Spent from 6.30pm till 1.30am up at the hospital with Ben. He has had a fever (temp 38C plus most of the time) for 5 days now and started complaining of stomach pains yesterday afternoon. But after much poking, prodding, Dr seeing and blood taking the diagnosis is still an unidentified 'virus'. I'm happy as all the investigating last night has basically ruled out anything more serious, which was the reason we took him to the hospital.