Craft Markets

This morning Deb- my partner in craft - and I set up shop at the Mahia Seaside Markets, which is just revving up again, after a quiet Winter season. Today I displayed my hand-dyed Rainbow Wrap - all vibrant colours on carefully cut and rolled newsprint - so much fun to make and Phoebe makes her own right beside me - I love it! A couple of beachy diptych-canvas' in blues and white with sun sea sand, etc words...
...some pretty merino fleece flower hair clips and ties...
...Heavenly Hearts - Lavender hearts made from vintage embroidered fabric, ribbon and buttons and filled with Lake Road Lavender...mmmm....
...and pet ladybird rocks and paper/table weights with inspirational words on them (lovely!)...

A Fruitful Orchard

Well, Mum, this isn't meant to make you feel a little jealous, BUT!

How good do these crabapples look? Our tree is COVERED in them - I can almost taste the jelly - hey, didn't I say that last time???

And below is the youngish white-fleshed nectarine, almost ready...mmmm.

We have also discovered we have a pear - not sure what variety, yet - brownish so far. And there is a plum which has heart-shaped green plums on it - fun to try working out what things are...a peach with a bit of a pointy bottom, 2 almond trees, a lisbon lemon, a limequat, a grapfruit, 2 guava, 2 figs, a passionfruit, a black grape, a quince and many apple trees - definitely there are a couple of Braeburn and a Golden Delicious and a massive perhaps Cox's Orange... the oranges and the feijoas.

So our fruit bowl is looking good and we feel very grateful!

I just need to remember how to bottle now...

"I'm 5!" - Phoebe

Recently, we had a totally enjoyable and very special day at home for Phoebe, who is now FIVE!

Much of the day was taken up with the preparations for her tea party in the afternoon, which was fun in itself and lent to a gradual building of excitement - Phoebe is a really great helper + does so many things so ably.

By 3pm we had red and white balloons all over the place, a little bit of pink and white gingham, which you must have for a tea-party, glitter and flowers everywhere - because the birthday fairies had been.

[I must remind everyone out there who may have forgotten about the birthday fairies...they always leave Phoebe a fabulous trail of glitter, flowers, sequins, confetti, shells - always beautiful - and it goes all the way from her bed to the birthday table with the presents on it. This year they were very impish - they made the trail go to the bathroom first - right up to the toilet - they must have known that Phoebe always needs to sort that out first thing - especially being all birthday-excited and all.]

Anyway, it was a lovely birthday, complete with a fairy walk to hunt for fairies (cos we know they were around, since there was the fairy trail for Phoebe) - in the end we took our watering cans and picked flowers and filled up and decorated the fairies' bath and left them some snacks - and when we all came back from afternoon tea - they'd left all the children a tiny gift - I love those fairies!

And at dinnertime, we had our neighbour, Pete, over to celebrate - Phoebe really enjoys him - she chose tacos for her dinner and it was really fun.

Tunanui Stream - our little river...

When we get just too hot and bothered from all our gardening and jobs around our property, this is what we do!

Just at the Northern end of our property is this river-frontage, which is incredible to us.

The name - 'Tunanui' - means "Big Eel" - not that we've seen any...YET!

Our neighbour, also an Aaron, reckons he's caught some Brown Trout here...we'll see. We've seen evidence of the fish babies so far.

And just in case you think Aaron and Phoebe are walking on water, well, no - there are lovely shelves of rock, which are very convenient for lying on, exploring as Phoebe is in this shot, or just for getting in slowly...

...lately, with such a warm November as we've had, the river is really quite tepid - perfect for cooling off!

Vegetable Abundance...aaah!

We have been applying a simple seaweed brew to the foliage of our vegetable gardens and I'd like to think that these lovely looking veggies are because of it. After watching the movie "One man, one cow, one planet", we became inspired to create these vats of smelly good stuff, which we now and especially leading up to the full moon, "flick" out over the gardens in a circular fashion.