oddshapedhouse

2009-08-02T23:57:00.003+13:00

Another time and place...

This blog is no longer updated.

To see my beautiful & bounteous art website please visit www.jenmick.com

If you're a friend, find me on Facebook - www.facebook.com/jenmickelborough

Thanks & Adios!

2009-04-22T15:16:00.002+13:00

Been a little while...

You know when it's been so long you have no idea how to start again? Well that's kind of where I've been with my blog. First going back to the UK I had zero grace for spending time in the ether and then I tried facebook for photos... Well I'm back - this time at least anyways, so please do enjoy some photos of my autumn escapades...

OK, so 2 days ago Fran and I went for a mini-adventure - up Ben Lomond for sunrise. Now a lot of Otago was populated by homesick Scots so there are heaps of Scottish placenames and this is a prime example, although at 1248m this Ben Lomond is 274m taller than the original. We decided to hike up the the saddle the night before and then get up early for the final ascent for sunrise.

Gondola ride to 450m - a fair start seeing we haven't been backpacking since.....

Camping spot - literally one piece of ground big enough for a tent clear of tussocks. Handy.

Behind you can see the Remarkables and dropzone!

Sunset.

Opposet - sunset colours in the East, often more impressive if there are no clouds around.

Rather a chilly night - that's our breath clouding the lens!

Sunrise.

Opporise.

Taken by the 2 aussies who had started walking up from town at 2am!

Ice grass, melting very quickly.

At the end of March it was my friend Tammy's 30th birthday and we went for a magical mystery tour to find this crazy teapot lady who we were told makes the coolest teapots. They're really fun & playful, kind of like our journey there. It took us a while as our only directions were 'just outside of Roxburgh' which turned out to be go through Roxburgh, and the next town, over the one lane brige, left onto the lane which turns into a gravel track and keep going til you're sure you must have missed it'!

I would love a studio like this!

Partner in crime - Miss Tammy Schultz

Inspiring, joyful, and obviously not bothered by dusting!

And just a little bit of Autumn bliss...

Is anything better than the smell of leaves in Autumn?

My Sunday coffee spot. Happily my cappucino comes drenched in chocolate.

2008-05-05T03:42:00.003+13:00

lone star state

and now, time for a highly varied photo marathon of all the things we did in texas!

arrival in dallas: 5 x big hold bags, 2 x hand luggage rucksacks, 1 x laptop bag, 1 x handbag - 1 overloaded trolley!

our first excursion - a real american meal at 'fran's hamburgers'.

love-hate relationship - beautiful colours of prickly pears (this one hand-finished into a heart) but barbed spikes that linger for weeks in your clothing!

teresa & jen and a doggy competition for the best sofa spot

we cycled everywhere in austin, often past this interactive artpiece

dusk on a trip to the hill county with paul

checking out those cowboy boots at 'the boot whisperer's' shop

beautiful wild horses grafitti - only in a town like austin

spring cherry blossom

titus, house cat & general soft touch

escape to the country - visiting enchanted rock, a 400m high exposed rock dome

big climb but well worth it for the views, bizarre land forms and boulder fields to explore

big boulders...

...and beautiful bare trees

american diner - austin style

chuy's - free tortilla bar with a variety of salsas!

day escape to the lady byrd johnson wildflower centre - lots of inspiringgardens and stonework

prickly pear in flower

checking out art spaces

a trip to the 'enchanted forest' - a woodland full of art although most not a light spirited and fun as this giant rocking unicorn!

and we thought being blunt was a kiwi gifting

easter sunday - american pancake breakfast in the front yard

a kite festival in austin - perfect conditions, mild and VERY windy!

this city knows how to have fun :)

more art - the red balloons that went everywhere with me, and got me onto rollingstone.com (click the link & play the video)

might could have done with a bigger car

the end of an evening in costume at SXSW music festival

last day - a natural spring in limestone country. beautiful, but absolutely freezing, we saw snakes, fish and terrapins! a perfect finish to a lovely trip.

2008-05-04T23:38:00.003+13:00

final farewell

I couldn't post our last pictures of NZ without a quick flashback to Christmas Day frisbee golf in the park, led of course by Mr Stephen Ward. The boys were totally into the 18 hole course, but as I could only get my frisbee half as far as them I got fed up quite quickly!

Fran getting serious!

Steve hitting the goal - took us a while to work out what these chain baskets were for before we discovered the wonder that is Frisbee Golf.

Me trying to look like I know what I'm doing.

My favorite park of the day - Steve's frisbee well & truly wedged in a tree - that pole they're holding is about 15ft long!

Finally up close & personal with a Silvere Eye - minescule & beautiful native birds.

Leaving dinner with our Chums - the lovely Blaire & Chris, and Marky Mark.

Last view of the Remarkables :(

2008-05-04T22:27:00.004+13:00

...the end of NZ!

As our time in New Zealand was drawing to a close we decided we'd better get out there and visit some places still on our to do list. For New Years we headed up to Mount Cook to camp & walk for a couple of days.

Pretty nice backdrop for our first night!

Celebrating the New Year... well, 30mins early - we just watched to catch some ZZZs!

Fran attempting to cheer me up after a bad night's sleep

We walked up towards Mount Cook taking in the lush greenness and weird plants

The Mount Cook Daisy

Typical NZ Footbridge!

A nice little snack stop. Whilst we were walking in the boiling heat we marvelled at the number of Asian tourists wearing thick gloves and face covers - a really common sight when touristing on sunny days.

Lunch stop and a very cool view - literally watching icebergs as we munched our sarnies. We were out in the midday mid-summer sun and Fran sucked in the rays like a solar panel... only to shed his outer layer weeks later, looking like his had a rather nasty skin disease as we went through US customs!

We visited the Omarama clay cliffs as we drove back home - having seen them from the road on the way up we had no idea they were this impressive in person. Doves nest in the wall sides - makes for a rather surreal visit surrounded by massive walls of clay with the gentle cooing of doves descending into the cool still air.

Where's Fran?

2007-12-27T19:10:00.001+13:00

making the most of it!

we've been making the most of the summer weather and went to lake hayes for a spot of swimming last weekend... or should I say flying through the air!

broken femur...?

we took advantage of some nice summer weather last weekend and finally went camping! moke lake is only 30 mins from our house and a conservations area.

a nice walk in some late evening sunshine - and we had a lot of fun making shadow art...

...and splashing!

before cooking some dinner

and having a campfire

with marshmallows

which burnt so well in the night breeze we had to extinguish it before going to bed

complete calm in the morning meant a swift getaway to avoid becoming breakfast for sandflies!

then the next day we had a walk up to the top of the remarkables (well, almost the top... after driving up to the skifield car park!) for a pretty good view!

2007-12-21T11:35:00.000+13:00

3 weeks til lift off!

well actually 3 weeks was yesterday... but it's still really soon!!! all our leaving preparations are going well - our expensive sale items all bought, some people who really want to rent the house, getting organized slowly but surely! summer is still with us - super sunny & hot most days... I think even a texan january is going to come as a bit of a shock to the system!

nice view after walking up to the gondola

fran and I have been trying to take advantage of all the loveliness that is queenstown before we go. last we night we had our christmas BBQ with small group at blair & christine's - the baptism place with the amazing views - and I started to think about not being in QT surrounded by the mountains and beauty here... hmm, what will sheffield feel like after this?! so we've been going for walks, I will finally get my camping trip, at least one, somewhere pretty and hopefully away from the sandflies, and fran will make the walk up Ben Lomond before we go.

I'm selling some art so here's a look for you - prices are in NZ$ at the moment but if you're interested send me an email and I'll translate with postage for your currency!

TEXTILES IN RED 1 - 8 x 10 inches, acrylic paint on raw canvas with fabrics and freehand machine embroidery. mounted stretched on board. (click to enlarge image) SOLD

TEXTILES IN RED 2 - 8.5 x 10 inches, acrylic paint on raw canvas with fabricss and freehand machine embroidery. mounted stretched on board. (click to enlarge image) $120

DAISIES - 12 inches square, acrylics on block canvas extends around the sides. $200

LAKE COLERIDGE AT DUSK - 8 inches square, water based oil paints on block canvas, image extends around sides. $100

DOORWAY - 8 inches square, acrylics on block canvas, image extends around the sides. $100

2007-12-08T22:28:00.000+13:00

splots & stripes

my legs are the most tanned they have ever been. not that you'd know it if it weren't for the birkenstock stripe. I still reflect the sunlight. I have the most freckles ever too. on the undersides of my arm even. I look like a cheetah. six out of seven days here are clear blue & sunny - when you're missing some ozone that's not such a good thing and daily I slather myself with factor 30, repeatedly, and still end up a little pink. this is my summer. I'm sure I'll miss it when I leave it, but right now I'd love a good old fashioned rainy day.

2007-12-06T08:34:00.000+13:00

5 weeks to go...

all change! 5 weeks today we get on a plane in sunny queenstown and arrive seemingly mere hours later in dallas, texas. it has been a super hectic few months, dealing with my monkey broken husband, working out where to go & what to do with ourselves, and my mum being sick back in the UK, visitors & lodgers.... I'm ready for a little simplicity in life! steve ward is now living with us til we go (hopefully we can make him stay on & pay the rent on our lease!) and rachel hall's just been to visit. frankly it's way too much to talk about so I'll just give you some nice pictures...

steve & rach about to kick ass on the luge

fran getting some face time with the cockatiel in invercargill aviary

summer!

2007-11-07T10:18:00.000+13:00

it's illegal to eat mince pies on christmas day

I just read this article on the BBC News site - people's votes on the most ridiculous laws in the UK and internationally - I think the one about being topless in a tropical fish store in liverpool is the best...

The UK's top 10 most ridiculous British laws were listed as:

# 1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament (27%)

# 2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British king or queen's image upside-down (7%)

# 3. It is illegal for a woman to be topless in Liverpool except as a clerk in a tropical fish store (6%)

# 4. Eating mince pies on Christmas Day is banned (5%)

# 5. If someone knocks on your door in Scotland and requires the use of your toilet, you are required to let them enter (4%)

# 6. In the UK a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet (4%)

# 7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the King, and the tail of the Queen (3.5%)

# 8. It is illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing (3%)

# 9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament wearing a suit of armour (3%)

# 10. It is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls of York, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow (2%)

Other bizarre foreign laws voted by those polled included:

# In Ohio, it is illegal to get a fish drunk (9%)

# In Indonesia, the penalty for masturbation is decapitation (8%)

# A male doctor in Bahrain can only examine the genitals of a woman in the reflection of a mirror (7%)

# In Switzerland, a man may not relieve himself standing up after 10pm (6%)

# It is illegal to be blindfolded while driving a vehicle in Alabama (6%)

# In Florida, unmarried women who parachute on a Sunday could be jailed (6%)

# Women in Vermont must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth (6%)

# In Milan, it is a legal requirement to smile at all times, except during funerals or hospital visits (5%)

# In France, it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon (4%)

2007-10-20T15:41:00.000+13:00

classic!

well, this week we went back down to invercargill for fran's 3 week check up. a 5 hour round trip for a 5 minute appointment where a doctor we didn't know asked fran how his leg felt, and had a look at his scar. . . and that was it! I tell you, if we weren't getting fuel expenses I'd have been blowing steam out my ears when a telephone call or GP appointment would have sufficed. to make the day more interesting, as we approached invercargill the car started acting up and got progressively worse as we went through town to the hospital, to the point where it felt like the wheels were about the fall off as we drove along. after dropping fran for his appointment I found a local mechanic whole told me one of the CV joints had gone, but not to worry - lulu (the car) would take us back to queenstown, only if the wheels started wobbling to stop and put her in reverse and full lock and drive a bit to dislodge the stuff making her wobble. on the way back I got to complete this maneuver a number of times, though it was a good excuse to raz through some gravel in a general wide-boy kind of a way ;)

so here are some pictures from my time in invercargill, and the day before fran's accident - his birthday! invercargill is near the SE coast of the south island and generally known for it's minging dreary weather, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was mild, sunny and spring-like most of the week I was down there. it's also where burt monro was from, from 'the world's fastest indian', which if you haven't watched is an excellent film with anthony hopkins, and gives you a flavour for the 'southern man' as folk down in otago and southland like to be known.

a cheeky kea (alpine parrot) at the birdlife centre we visited on fran's birthday, these guys are super inquisitive and will check out anything they can lay their beak on... they particularly like rubber seals on cars and will fight over them with their mates!

highly over priced indoor golf, but good for a laugh, including lifts, gondolas, space rockets and a zillion tubes your ball might disappear down.

bizarre jack-in-the box eskimo on the volcano hole.

magnolia in blossom outside the old nurses quarters at the hospital

tres cute parrots at the avairies in queen's park

walk in aviary with budgies, cockatiels, dove, turtle dove and peacocks. amazingly after spending 20mins in there, nothing had landed, or fallen, on me!

dusk one evening walking home from the hospital

and finally - some art! although this one went wrong I now have a set of three in this theme I'm working on. I'm also doing some textile/machine embroidery work which I'm loving, and now that fran's much more mobile you'll hopefully be seeing photos of here soon.

fran's recovery is going well - he walks on crutches with 50% weight on the broken leg and has a heap of exercises to do to retrain his leg muscles which were pretty unused for 2 weeks. we have great physios and they're arranging a gym & pool pass for him which will really help with the rehab. the exercises and massaging takes about 5 hrs a day at the moment so there's not much sitting around going on. I'm hanging out for when fran can drive himself around so I have more time and flexibility for my own work!

2007-10-13T22:07:00.000+13:00

in the words of a good friend, 'oy vey'!

man, blogging after such a long absence is a bit of a ... well, it just takes some getting round to. since last posting fran turned 32, broke his femur the next day, had a helicopter ride, had an operation, spent a week in hospital 2.5hrs from QT, experienced a couple of earthquakes, came home from hospital rather immobile on crutches while I did a lot of running round and care for the lower leg region, got more mobile, had dan & emma visit (ah, blessed relief) then got a heinous cold that left me in bed and taking fran's codine whilst still looking after fran, got better and lo and behold around 4 weeks have passed with me barely even thinking about the computer let alone getting a chance to go on it!

fran in a cage - traction

for gruesome pictures and video footage of fran's misdemeanors, check out his webpage. frankly we feel huuaaaagely blessed a broken femur was the only injury - you'll get the idea if you watch the video - and this little break in the schedule has been a chance for us to stop and assess what we're doing and think about our plans.

I've found the whole thing quite draining and a little overwhelming! our friends in QT were hugely supportive from driving me the 2.5hrs to the hospital the night of the accident, arranging accommodation for me there, cleaning my house and stocking up my woodpile to phonecalls and prayers a plenty to keep us going. a complete stranger (friend of friend of friend) put me up who was very caring and lovely. after missing sleep the first few nights, being with fran at the hospital was actually quite restful (specially after they brought me the recliner chair when they found me sleeping on the floor!) compared to coming home and then getting ill whilst looking after fran. having your spouse in a major accident is pretty scary, without that minor addition of the hospital being 100ks from home, but having a Faithful God gave both of us great peace and help in the midst of this. and I'd really like to thank you for your messages and prayers for both of us, we really appreciate them and I'm sorry if I didn't reply to you in the middle of the craziness!

things are definitely on the up though, fran's mobility is really improving so apart from driving and carrying things he's getting quite self sufficient and physio sessions have been going well - we return on tuesday to the hospital for a follow up x-ray and clinic and hope to find the bone is mending well. in the meantime we get to work out exactly how to do life in the house together for a while and fitting in exercise & physio without driving each other nuts!

I'll be back soon with pictures... in the midst of everything we're having a torrential spring but still punctuated with plenty of sunny days - right now the magnolia's are in flower and smell amazing! ooh, and that beautiful baptism spa is good therapy for fran's mobility so I'm cultivating my freckles too!

2007-08-27T12:41:00.000+13:00

useful info for england leavers

I just found out about this very useful website for anyone who has to call UK businesses from abroad and wants to avoid heinous calling costs to 08*** numbers - say not to 0870 allows you to enter the 08*** number you have to find the standard landline alternative, or you can search by business name and department. we've had banks swear blind they only have 08*** numbers but found landline alternatives through this website. happy dialing!

2007-08-25T13:16:00.000+13:00

the excess luggage blessing!

well, I can tell you now 4 weeks is a long time to be away from home, even if you're returning 'home' and visiting family & friends. I had a great, crazy, hectic, lovely trip - hence no blogging and not much emailing. now my feet are back on firm ground and the world around me has just about stopped spinning!

me & niece talia

my journey to the UK went fine, but did take 60hrs door to door - coach from queenstown to christchurch (so I didn't risk winter weather grounding me in QT), a night with the lovely dan & emma andrews, 11hrs to singapore, 6hrs layover and the final 13hrs20 to manchester. my flight didn't start too well, I was next to quite a large man whose arms were definitely in my space, then when I stretched and put my hands on my seat back behind me I was quite surprised to get slapped - apparently the lady behind me thought this the simplest way to communicate my hands had touched her TV screen! thankfully a couple of spare seats further back had me sitting with space to spare and my nearest passenger a friendly man who lives in wanaka, 1hr from home. at singapore airport I had a well needed swim in the roof top pool, lots of time on the free internet, a free crab meal and even changed my seats on the following flight to extra leg-room ones. the second flight was heinously long and I was a little worried to see my seat mates were about 5 and 7, but they behaved perfectly and it was a pretty chilled flight. at one point in the night I looked out of the window by the toilets to the rather sinister view of rocket launchers firing tens of kilometres below me - by the flight map we were somewhere over pakistan/afganistan. later on as we started to cross over the black sea I had a very awesome view of a totally different nature - the thinly curving golden red band of dawn on the horizon as mammoth cumulonimbus clouds towered up towards the plane, their dark brooding form being lit up from inside by frequent lightening flashes. landing in manchester and being picked up by mum & dad was lovely, apart from the journey home with cars so close and fast I mainly tried not to look at the road!

brighton

english summer

the strangest part of coming home on my first day was that I had some real alice-in-wonderland moments where I felt like a giant in the house and streets I grew up in. I guess I've gotten used to the spaciousness here, and I can totally sympathize with foreigners visiting england and freaking out on the tiny, narrow roads! my first day back I met my niece, talia, who'd just started walking and had a great day with family. in my first 6 days I had lots of family time interspersed with a crazy road trip around england - which saw me visit lisa in brighton, a quick coffee with fran's brother greg in surrey before a day with my granny and a stay in ann's stately home flat in shropshire. I had a classic moment having coffee with greg - we were sitting in the sunshine in the coffee shop garden when music started playing and I was looking around me for the source of the sound... only to realize a few minutes later mum lent me her phone in case she needed to call me - I felt tres phoebe buffet! one night we went for chinese in liverpool and I was so glad of the place my brother, dave, chose - not only was the food great but we sat next to huge picture windows overlooking the mersey at sunset and it was just beautiful - and my only chance to see that part of where I grew up.

view from a room - ann's stately home flat

all together...

...with a beautiful backdrop - sunset on the river mersey

now time to get a little amused at me... here starts my trip to france. on thursday, a week after I arrived, dad was kind enough to drive me over to east midlands airport where my flight to fran's parent's in france was. security airport restrictions made it easier for him to drop me off in the car park, I found my check-in, and got to the front of the queue only to be told I was meant to be flying the next day! (or I could buy a ticket for GBP177 today - thanks ryanair!). somewhat freaking out I found a payphone and called dad who was 25mins back to liverpool by this time - he came back and collected me and we called in on the off-chance mum's best friend from college, who lives 4 miles from the airport, would be home. meantime I phoned greg who called fran's parents just 5 minutes before they were going to leave to collect me at the airport! thankfully mum's friends were in, and I ended up with a really relaxing rest of the day finishing an art piece and spending some time in the traditional stone village church, which was a welcome sanctuary space as my QT church meets in a primary school hall. margaret & adrian kindly fed me, put me up and even took me to my flight the next day where I finally made it and got to fran's parents!

procession at the linen festival, brittany

france experienced sunny warm weather for the first time in months as I arrived and I had a lovely couple of days with pete & jane, doing some touristing and helping with a few jobs on the house. after my 2 days rest there, a 12hr journey (don't even ask) got me the incredibly short distance from brittany to saint-jean-du-gard in the south of france, the location of my 'meeting'! once again I got to see good friends (& their families) who I'd missed for the last 20 months, including hannah who'd got pregnant and had levi now 8months old since I saw her, and many friends from my international travels. the meeting was great - lots of time to get to know people I'd only met briefly, and very inspiring planning for the mangola event for austin next march (more on that another time). nectarines and melons were in decadent abundance and tasted divine, every night we sat at a long table having fresh salads and lovely bread and flame BBQ'd meat. I also had my 28th birthday while I was there. I don't really like my birthday that much and some of the daughters of our team picked up on this... on my birthday morning sat drinking cafe noir in the campground (thanks paul!) I was greeted every 20 minutes or so by one of the gorgeous teenage girlies who brought me jewellery and flowers and decorated stones like a wonderful birthday procession. after our morning meeting I spent a smushy girly afternoon with hannah and shannon, and then came dinner... the night before was andrew & debbie jones' 20th wedding anniversary for which I'd been cooking, and now andrew was cooking for my meal - themed 'sheffield pub meets kiwi BBQ'! we started with beers round beer garden tables, chips/crisps and a starter created in my honour - 'fig de jen', then came home made burgers and excellent BBQ fare, but really the crowning glory was dessert. my table was cleared in front of me and people stood round as a large wok with about 30 caramelized bananas with two tubs of icecream on top was placed in front of me, next came the brandy which if course was lit, then mini meringues were added and finally a saucepan full of chocolate sauce!!! thank you guys for the loveliest birthday ever - even in the absence of my wonderful hub!

narrow french streets

han & levi

coming back from france took another 12 long hours (again, just don't ask!) and gave me a day with family again before heading off to sheffield. sheffield time was planned out carefully in an attempt to see as many people as possible for quality time in the space of 3 days. with dinners and BBQs and totally soaking wet days in the peak district national park it was a great time seeing old friends and meeting new babies and feeling very comfortable and like I'd not been away at all! back from sheffield and I had just 3 days left with family before my return journey home. we had a total over indulgence of fine and fancy food and still not enough time to see everyone as much as I would have liked.

singapore

the return journey was blessedly an hour shorter on each leg, though arriving in singapore after a 12hr day flight and no sleep only for it to be 7am singapore time was quite challenging. I had a 12hr stopover but only managed about 4hrs in singapore before getting the train back to the airport trying desperately not to fall asleep on the way and miss my stop. singapore was lush and green and sunny and humid, and I felt like a complete alien being white, with freckles, taller than most men and wearing a summer dress in a crowd of asians quite comfy in trousers and shirts with very few other white people in sight. my flight back to christchurch was fantastic - the flight was about 2/3rds full and I was able to stretch out and sleep on 3 seats for 6hrs between dinner and breakfast so I felt pretty good on landing in NZ. then just a sort turn around to immigrate, get sniffed by the MAF fruit dog and get on the flight to queenstown. I couldn't wait to see fran after 4 weeks away - it was SO nice to get home and see him!

singapore washing!

and the excess baggage blessing? after 8 flights and being overweight for all of them I didn't get charged one penny! including christchurch to manchester, 27.5kg instead of 20; stingy ryanair 21kg instead of 15; and manchester back to queenstown 29kg instead of 20! now that is what I call a traveller's blessing!

2007-07-23T15:20:00.000+13:00

baptism!

on sunday night fran and I did something a little exciting... we got baptised! I guess this is where I take the plunge and talk about my faith on my blog, so here goes... I'm sure fran will say why he did it on his blog...

I've been a christian since I was 16, and from the moment I met God I knew I was never going to walk away from the amazing love I found. at the time I went to an anglican church and had seen friends get confirmed when it meant little personally to them, so I decided to stick with the commitment I knew I had made in my heart. I spent some time away from God at uni, but when I got back into church and God it was a renewed & passionate commitment and God did amazing things in my life. my first trip to austin, TX, in 2001, marked a radical change in my experience of God as I got the know his grace, love and freedom in a deeper and totally joyous way and meet people similar to me with refreshing faith. then God brought fran to sheffield and introduced Himself! we were married in 2003 and as part of what God was doing in our lives we felt that we would be going to New Zealand 2 years later. leaving the UK was easy in some ways because it felt so right, but being in a new country with no network of friends or church to start with was very hard and we've both become much more grounded in the last 2 years. just recently I've started to study the Old Testament book Song of Songs which has just been amazing - I'm learning about new stages in my christian walk which helps me to see where I am, what God's doing and how He wants me to be happier and freer and more in love with Him. Particularly the verse 'Dark I am, yet lovely' (Song of Songs 1:5) has struck a cord in me - I find it pretty easy to realize my sinful nature, but much harder to know that I am truly lovely. at small group a week ago we were reading through Colossians 2:12 'And when you were baptized, it was the same as being buried with Christ. Then you were raised to life because you had faith in the power of God, who raised Christ from death.' it just hit me fully - I want to know daily that I am raised to the fullness of life and freedom that Jesus brings, which means I can come boldly and gladly before the throne of God (Hebrews 4:16). and that's nowhere near as eloquent I'd like to be - I wish I could fully express in words how amazing and wonderful God makes my life... maybe no words exist to describe it.
it was also a wonderful thing to do together, and has rooted us deeper together in our faith.

our small group hosted the baptism at our members' blair & christine's house, who were the very first people to welcome us at Queenstown Baptist Church. their house is in the most beautiful location on top of a hill overlooking lake wakitipu and the remarkables mountains next to which fran jumps daily. blair had set up lanterns and a brazier so those out of the spa didn't freeze, and we got dipped at dusk with the stars coming out above us. I tell you, I felt like a queen at a five start resort, we were so blessed by our friends. it was a really special moment. after some star gazing from the steamy tub we had a meal all together cosy inside next to the wood burner and watching blair's birthday present - the eagles in concert dvd!

2007-07-22T14:08:00.000+13:00

winter freeze

we've just had a really cold snap that's lasted about 3 weeks and led to some amazing ice formations in the shady areas around town and in the woods. icicles as thick as my arm, freeze-thaw ice crystal growth in the ground and huge encrustings of ice on the creek I go for a walk by. check it out...

hoar frost ice crystals - each made up of perfect hexagonal ice tubes about 1mm wide

icicles - the biggest we saw were 15-20cm diameter

the old hydro pipe and dam

amazing ice formations on the edge of the waterfall

the icicles above this looked like organ pipes

curved ice crystals formed as the expanding crystals pushed earth sideways from the edge of a bank and gravity pulled them down as they formed

we also saw holes in the tracks where stones and boulders had melted the ice crystals under them and sunk into the expanded earth, by as much as 10-15cm. on the banks at the edge of roads there's ice floes over exposed rock inches thick where it's been accumulating for the past weeks, and in places the frost is so heavy & accumulated it looks like snow! makes the freezing temperatures a little more worthwhile :)

2007-07-21T12:45:00.000+13:00

sheffield reunion & birthday BBQ!

hey - I'm visiting the UK in august and having a BBQ on Tues 14th Aug if you'd like to come & say hi/catch up/eat a sausage... It's at Bea & Andy Marshall's House - 3 Freedom Road, Walkley (Sheffield) - come from 4.30 if you have kids, or 7.30 if you have jobs... Bring something to sizzle and something to drink, bread & salad provided.
LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE!!! xxx

2007-07-12T17:04:00.000+13:00

winter

winter did indeed arrive full force about 3 weeks ago with heavy snowfall that came down to lake level, caused mayhem on the roads and cut us off from the rest of the island. we were nice and cosy and warm with our log burner stacked to the top and throwing out heat :)

fran got to get out snowboarding a fair bit and start using his season pass. I'll be having a taster day later in august to try out snowboarding - I've only ever done english dry slope skiing and that was when I was 4!

on tuesday fran went off to phoenix, arizona, for 5 days for some wind-tunnel training at skydive arizona. travel got a little interesting when his flight from auckland was delayed 6 hours, but he still made phoenix by nightfall (1.30am) and changed accommodation options from the $8 a night bunkhouse (read: non-airconditioned wood shed with night temps averaging 27oC) to the dropzone motel which he got for half price with air-con, private bathroom, sky tv.... I probably shouldn't say too much else, but he's done 30 mins training so far and was absolutely loving it!

today I drove south to five rivers cafe to meet my friend sandy from methven for coffee & lunch. the southland has been having heavy frosts and freezing weather and the scenery was just breath-taking. the frost was so heavily crusted onto grasses, trees and fences that sheep glowed gold against the stunning white and cattle stood out like black polka dots. I've never seen trees completely white with frost... it was quite hard to concentrate on driving!

fran will be between 25 to 40oC warmer than me for the next 5 days - we're having hearty winter weather, and my wood ran out yesterday so this morning my bedroom was 3oC. I've just had 4m3 of wood delivered so now I get to stack it all!

2007-06-19T21:20:00.000+13:00

south island tour photo highlights

west coast - fox glacier half day walk: me in a big ice hole. nice.

classic west coast road signage.

fur seals and big surf, cape foulwind.

not a kiwi - a flightless NZ bush hen called a weka.

saturation point in typical west coast weather - torrential rain. perfect for touristing!

enkeldoovery corner: home to the wallabies and the crazy/hilarious lady who look after them - just think colleen from home and away but thinner...

another attraction at the wallaby place - a crippled pony! <:s

moeraki boulders at sunset

boulder gremlin

dunedin train station - one of the few classic 'old' buildings in NZ

truimphant summit of the world's steepest street!

new zealand's only castle. tick.

pre-penguin watching excitement

spot the penguin!

slightly blurry yellow eye penguins

post-penguin sunset

lulu's air conditioning refit. bless.

2007-06-17T02:58:00.000+13:00

the big clap

I'm styling myself after a section in our local ads mag tonight - you see it's 2am and I've just been out to see my neighbours... I went to sleep to the gentle baseline of a local party - 10 minutes ago I got woken up by a ridiculousy *fat* baseline shaking through my bed. perhaps foolishly, I thought in a small town like this I might be able to phone into the police station direct and tell them my problem, being half of fernhill would now be awake, but alas my nice local telephone number took me through to a central phone room where I was told I would have to call the council on monday - not too handy at that moment! so, being a girl of directness and action who doesn't deal with offending night time noise too well I got out of bed, put on a jacket, and followed my ears to the party on the basic assumption most people are nice and when asked to do something reasonable normally respond in a nice way... although I walked away to people calling after me what drugs was I on, the baseline has gone entirely and as soon as my poorly-acclimatised-to-such-late-night-actions english heart has subsided from shaking my ribcage, I will be going back to bed :)

2007-06-12T12:09:00.000+13:00

broken glass

sunrise from our lounge last week

hello from the world of daytime infomercials! I'm back, but it's been a pretty busy time and might take me a while to blog my latest pics & news so I thought I'd post a quickie. it's trying very hard to be winter here - temperatures have dropped so much our bedroom was 5oC yesterday and long johns are a must most days, though the skifield looks decidedly patchy at the moment. my south island trip with ann was great - the weather wasn't as kind as the previous week and one day we finished tourising with our trousers sucking onto our legs they were so wet! we had a few amusing calamities on the way, one being our dodgy rent-a-dent car whose battery went flat after the first hour and performed accordingly thereafter, and my prescription sunnies breaking as we left QT, meaning I had to drive all week with my other one-armed glasses looking decidedly lopsided on my face! (I now have no in-tact glasses to wear!) we saw glaciers, pancake rocks, a LOT of rain!, fine buildings, art, a few cafe's here & there, wallabies, penguins and a petrified forest. ann's plane *just* managed to take off through the snow clouds after a final day of holiday pampering. the day after we got back a stone went through lulu's windscreen and thankfully the glass people could get a second hand one, meaning it was quarter rather than half the value of the car to replace! a day after ann's departure we met a lovely danish family, the dyhr's, who are travelling the world for a year and have a few days in queenstown - right about now peter & charlotte are skydiving and fran will be filming them! ...so come back soon for the photo highlights!

oh, and can I just say how amused I am to visit friend's blogs and see that facebook has reeled them in but still left them scratching their heads! right now I'm off to bite the bullet and put some details on my profile! see y'all soon - xxx.

2007-05-29T15:34:00.000+13:00

north island holiday!

I got back from my north island trip with ann yesterday, and tomorrow we go off on our south island tour, so here are the edited highlights from our trip. we flew from queenstown to christchurch for our connection and went to the antarctic centre while we waited. this is me and ann in a simulated antarctic storm - very cold & windy! inside the giant chiller room there was also an igloo, snow bike, tent and ice slide on which I got a very chilly bum!

penguin alert - this is a little blue penguin zipping past the aquarium window - they're only 30cm high and all at the centre were disabled in some way - maimed flipper, blind in one eye, or in the case of 'elvis', blind in both eyes... we got to see them being fed and snuggling together in their burrow boxes and being generally very cute.

our connection flew us in to wellington, the capital city at the southern end of the north island. this is the view of the city from botanical gardens on one of the many hills that surrounds wellington - we just took that trolley car to the top.

this is parliament - the round building - known to most here as the beehive. it was great to be around buildings that are old and made of stone after so long in queenstown. however, I did also discover I'm now a small-town-girl and didn't really like the busyness and impersonalness of the city - I like people who make sure they don't walk into you and smile and say 'hi'.

view from breakfast the day we left wellington as we dined at the chocolate fish cafe.

driving north we got to napier - this city was almost completely destroyed in an earthquake in 1929 and a lot was rebuilt in the art deco style. there are some really impressive buildings along the sea front and in the main town, but we got quite frustrated as nearly all had modern signs and solid awnings that took away a lot of the character. making up for that were the palm tress that are everywhere, rising into the sky with poofs of green at the top.

art deco with an art nouveau twist - one of the few unadulterated buildings left in napier!

beautiful sunset on the pacific coast with pohutakawa tree in the foreground - the kiwi christmas tree that's covered in red pompom flowers in december.

and on to rotorua - in the active volcanic zone. we visited a maori thermal village - where food is cooked in boxes over steam vents, veges boiled in the hot springs, baths filled with geothermally heated water and these geysers going off in the background.

this is the champagne lake at wai-o-tapu, south of rotorua - another active zone with bubbling mud pools, sulphur vents, hot lakes, amazing mineral colours and steam rising from the ground.

when we left rotorua it felt like it was time - our taxi didn't arrive to take us to the airport, our coffees were watery and we were made to pay for extra shots, and worse of all we were charged a $5 our-aiport-is-rubbish-and-we-need-to-improve-it-so-we're-making-you-pay-thanks-very-much tax!

2007-05-21T23:04:00.000+13:00

friend!

look - I have a friend... all the way from england! this is ann, who I met at school in 'a'level chemistry class. she flew all the way out here to see us (I think our lovely country had something to do with it too). we've had 4 days enjoying touristy things in queenstown - a ride on the steamer ship, trip up the gondola and luge, wildlife park inc. nocturnal kiwi house, beautiful walks and this afternoon the shotover jet - high speed boating through a canyon going VERY close to the walls! tomorrow we're off to the north island to get cultured up in the capital, wellington, and then head to the thermal/volcanic & maori attractions around rotorua, a.k.a. roto-vegas!
check in soon for some holiday pics... and check fran's site for some great skydiving photos!

2007-05-15T12:33:00.000+13:00

facewhat?

ok, so I finally succumbed to the pressure of thousands and signed up to facebook. and all I can say is - huh?

I'm completely baffled! I've not been a big online community girl, apart from the whole blogosphere, and pretty much everything about this is alien to me. don't get me wrong, I like the communication part - being on the other side of the world you learn that different forms of communication work with different people - some like letters, some like phone calls, some like emails, some like texting, some like online messaging... so now I can add 'some like facebook', but I'm going to have to learn how it all works. at first I thought it was just some wierd canadian thing - networks, walls, groups, and tabs and pages that make NO sense to me at all! I logged on this morning to discover I'd been 'poked' and ended up in fits of giggles - a cyberspace poke foreign lands! can I edit my full name down to the name I use - no! can I find out how to feed in my blog posts - no!

I have a new language to learn. I need 'facebook for dummies'. someone tell me what it's all about, please...

2007-05-12T12:58:00.000+13:00

answer time

question: what's worse than flooding your washing machine in your new place?...
answer: flooding it whilst dying some clothes black!
yep, I really did manage it, I flooded our bathroom with inky black water and didn't realise til the machine started some odd beeping noises. amazingly, there are now no signs of damage, thanks to the more rustic state of our house and carpets, though it did take me 3 hours to get rid of the water, bleach the marks out of many different surfaces, and recover the clothes that were in the rattan washing basket which was nicely soaking up the murky waters. let's just say I won't be doing that again any time soon!

2007-05-04T23:19:00.000+13:00

night beauty

I've just had the most wonderful walk back home from town. it's nightime, and the air is autumn chill and fresh with woodsmoke and wild pine scents. the moon is full and stars bright with luminous clouds scudding over the mountain tops. walking fills me with so much peace and joy, I almost want to go back down to town so I can walk back again - it wasn't long enough! I could soak up that peaceful night time beauty for hours.

2007-05-03T12:50:00.000+13:00

autumn glory

it's been a while since I posted and I'm going to deluge you with a flurry of photos much like the leaves cascading from the trees right now. the autumn colours are just glorious - especially cherry trees glowing in peachy oranges and rowan trees laden with bright red berries and leaves turning from golden yellow through orange and red to a deep burgundy mauve at the crown.

this is my walk into town, taken on a wet day - you can see the peaks of the remarkables in the clouds in the background. I walked this way back from town earlier in the week and had a bolshy little fantail bird come and display at me from about 6 inches away. they're the size of blue-tits with a white tail that fans out bigger than their body size, and they're not afraid to let you know you're in their territory. I'd love to have them in my garden, but they hang around in more natural environments hunting for bugs.

this is the creek I walk past, that powered the first hydro scheme in queenstown. the hydro plant started operating in 1924, although the mayor had been trying to get it started sooner the explosion of the acetylene gas power plant gave the plans a kick start! it operated 'til 1966 and the power building is now restored and you can walk up the creek next to the ruined old pipes.

after a record breaking busy april we had the weekend booked off for fran to get some well deserved rest, although bad weather around those days means he had a week off in total. on saturday we walked the 'fernhill loop track', which starts near our house and takes you into those mountains you could see on the photo behind our house. it was a stunning walk, through a mixture native deciduous beach forest with tropical looking ferns, encroaching still dark wilding pine forest, and open grassland with tussocks and flaxes laden with moisture from the low clouds.

I still find it really strange living somewhere where bright sunlight doesn't mean it's warm enough to remove layers... walking along with thermals and fleeces and a warm hat in the sunlight just doesn't compute in my english brain! in england when it's cold 95% of the time it definately isn't sunny!

we packed far more food than we needed, and a hot thermos of tea, and had a really nice time. at our lunch stop half way round we sat at a high point with a view down lake wakitipu and watched the plane at the dropzone 12km away taking off and landing and the skydivers under canopy spiralling to the ground, caught in bright sunlight against the remarkables shrouded in clouds.

the way up was a gentle uphill all the way - the way down took us along a ridge and then dropped off steeply into more wilding pine forest. (these non-native tress are rapidly taking over native forest and grassland and removing habitat for many native species). at the moment the floor of the pine forests are littered with fly agaric mushrooms as far as the eye can see - it was quite surreal to look through the trees along the floor and see thousands and thousands of red caps pushing up through the leaf litter. it's my hope that somehow this mushroom edipemic is the start of nature's cunning reclamation of lands taken by the pines!

and finally, proof that I have at least one friend...

friday night was 'girl's night out' in celebration of rachel's birthday, so along with my friend lizzy we went out for cwoffees and dessert at a funky new cafe in town, and then, after wandering round town and stepping into crowded noisy bars, inspiration hit and we went to 12bar - a funky, classy bar with cool wall paper, little booth rooms and comfy sofas for relaxing next to the wall of flickering yellow flames. definately a place to return to. and to make my night the barman called me 'luv' - made me feel all homey and english, if only he'd called a bloke 'luv' I could have been in sheffield...

2007-04-20T17:36:00.000+13:00

competition time!

question: what's worse than flooding your washing machine in your new place?...

2007-04-19T11:20:00.000+13:00

a little monkey monkey

well after last week's snow things have got quite warm & sunny here again. life is pootling along. the dropzone has had record numbers for april this year which means fran's being doing lots of camera work, but working almost summer length days - swings & roundabouts. on tuesday night I broke the car - by managing to pull the key out of the ignition in the on (but not running) position. we tried, to no avail, to get the key barrel to turn again, so out came the locksmith the following morning who took all of 30 seconds or so to get the key in, turn in back to off and the whole thing was working again after a jump start. I've made/fixed up curtains for our bare windows here, and it's looking pretty homely. last week I forgot about bin day. the first one was the day after we moved in, so we missed that and I had a couple of big bags of rubbish sitting outside our door... thursday morning comes and I hear the sound of the bin lorry so I dashed outside, as fast as you can in slippers, grabbed the bags and then had to run about 100m down the road in my slippers with a huge bag of rubbish in each hand before I got close enough for them to notice me! kept me amused for a while that one, and made me remember the bins this week!

2007-04-13T18:21:00.000+13:00

snow!

yep, it's been snowing down to lake level today, though not sticking. fran and I have enjoyed a nice day together and now the log burner's roaring and warming up our place. colours are changing with the seasons and the gorgeous purpley-blues of the mountains with contrasting golden-rusty tussock grasses are gracing our presence - I much prefer them to the summer colours.

I've been developing my DIY skills this week, firstly by taking apart one of our bed bases for under our giant mattress to salvage (without damaging) the gorgeous covering material (see below) and remove the springs before re-upholstering the base so our bed is now level! I also extended my art desk (below below) and have been putting up hooks etc round the house. now I can drill, screw, nail, saw and jigsaw, not to mention prizing out about a zillion staples from the aforementioned bed base!

they had the art of mattress covering sorted in the 70's

spacious & well light, and next to the log burner!

I'm loving the location of our place. to get in to town is a 30 minute walk through native bush, down (or up) next to a steep gorge/creek bed and then along the lake shore. I get to pick blackberries, have bolshy fantail birds display at me and take in the beauty of the forest & water. here's a photo of where we are in relation to the lake - queenstown and our old place would be to the left in this photo.

2007-04-03T20:41:00.000+13:00

He knows what He's doing

a week ago we moved into our house, and it's grrrreat! here are some photos...

it's on the back half of a section, so we have a long drive down the side of the front house. it's an L-shape, with our 2 bedrooms backing onto the drive and the living space sticking into the middle of the garden, which is really nicely paved with climbing plants around the house. the living space is really airy with a log burner and lots of floor to ceiling windows and 3 sets of double doors which open onto the front porch and back veranda, where the monster gas BBQ is!

the only downside is that we're now the opposite side of town to the dropzone so fran has a 20-25 min drive to work instead of 10-15, but it does mean 5 mins walk from our house are trails into gorgeous native beach forest in the hills you can see behind the house (top photo). we're also surrounded by birds, including the bellbird which has a beautiful tropical sounding song which is a very new zealand sound to me. oh yes, and we have masses of sun! you can sit on our veranda sofa and soak up the rays even in winter :) I have to say God really knew what He was doing with this one, so thanks for your prayers. and the icing on the cake, this afternoon we went to the salvation army shop and got a super-kingsize bed & base with delivery for the bargain price of $200... finally fran and I get to sleep on the same bed, and in peace! the mattress had been in the shop for about 2 1/2 hours and someone came in 15 mins after us wanting it - nice timing God!

whilst it was all change I decided to lop off my locks and get rid of all my damaged hair... I'm not as mardy as I look in this picture, I like it - honest! actually, my mum had this hair cut at the same age and we look really similar! and for those of you who've known me long enough you'll notice my natural hair colour's now lighter and at the age of 27 my eyebrows finally match my hair!

and just to finish off, a few pics from an evening trip fran and I did out to moke lake to cook dinner camp-stove stylee, have a walk and soak up the atmosphere.

the scenery is quintessential new zealand to me!

2007-03-26T16:32:00.000+13:00

new address

hola. as of wednesday 28th march our new address will be:

165b Fernhill Road, Queenstown, 9300, NZ

our telephone number stays the same - +64 (0)3 441 3291 - and we'll be off t'internet for 24hrs while we wait to get connected up. we have free mail forwarding for 2 months just in case you have something mid-transit.

2007-03-22T20:00:00.000+13:00

all a bit kiwi to me

so we might have a house. seems quite nice. we put our application in on tuesday morning. we move out here next wednesday. I called the agent today to find out why we'd not heard yet, being the sole applicants for the house, and it turns out the owner's an aussie who travels a fair bit so may take a while to reply and he's a ski instructor so whilst the agent thinks it's free over winter she's not sure... and I'm thinking why advertise a house for rent when it might be in use in a months time?

the ways of the kiwis might always remain a mystery to me.

UPDATE - friday 23rd - we got the house! so I'll tell you a little about it... old stylee one level house with 2 bedrooms, big living space with wood burner (oh yes!) and 3 walls with floor to ceiling windows looking into the lovely courtyard gardens. furnished. located in fernhill, up a big hill the other side to town we're at now, a stones throw from some really nice church people including the small group we tried last night & liked. oh, and a dairy (corner shop) just down the road in case we run outta milk. pictures will follow once we've moved in and jazzed up the place! thanks for praying :)

2007-03-16T11:04:00.000+13:00

a little plain & simple please

well autum has arrived - we've had 3 days of southerlies bringing cold air up from the antartic and the first snow on our mountains. to me the mountains here need snow on them, they become so much more beautiful. so, autumn's here and we have less than 2 weeks to find a place to live... we fell in love with a little place in the sunshine this week, but there were 4 applicants and we weren't succesful which was really hard. so far we've not found anywhere else right for us so right now we're wondering what god's up to and having our faith stretched...!

here are my belated pictures & post from heading north to visit methven and christchurch to see old friends and go shopping for art supplies. I had 2 days in methven and managed to see all my friends which was so lovely. on to christchurch and I stayed with pol & evelien who live in a cute country house with chickens and cows to look after - they have 2 tame chooks they incubated & reared who like chilling out in the lounge and do a good job of clearing up crumbs on the floor!

in christchurch I checked out all the free galleries and the arts centre. the arts centre is in a traditional stone built ex-school and artists are housed in buildings named 'chemistry' and the like. they've recently added an art installation on the pillars and I loved the colours and pattern - it's a really nice way of adding colour and texture but without clashing with the feel of the buildings and courtyards. I got carried away taking photos in the rain...

in one gallery/shop there was some gorgeous pottery with amazing colours which I took some pictures of... only for one of the assistants to come and berate me for taking photos for about 5 minutes, shouting at me from across the shop about foreigners and (the not) obvious signs they had banning photography... I refused to be chased out by the mean woman's words but nether the less it was a relief to leave the shop, and even more of a relief to enter a weaving and pottery gallery upstairs where one of the artists warmly welcomed me and invited me to 'please touch' the items on display... that's my kind of gallery!

my ideal gallery - "please touch!"

2007-03-08T16:37:00.000+13:00

oh, sweet music

as fran and I sat for a 'pat on the back' coffee in our favorite funky queenstown restaurant, vudu, 'come pick me up' by ryan adams started playing in the background and my soul was transported to a beautiful achey place as I remembered music loved and lost. lost thanks to trying to move our i-tunes music onto a different drive. a fair while ago. but just recently I've been remembering all the beauty of those tunes we lost. ryan adams. kate rusby. ed harcourt. and many more, not to mention a veritable collection of praise music and randomly downloaded songs that just make my heart sing. alas, no more!

in my loss I have turned to youtube. it lets me hear a full version of a song, allbeit sometimes a wobbly out of tune live version. I get to be fascinated by music videos. it also however breaks my sweet illusion that the red hot chili peppers are my personal discovery, making music just for me.

music just picks me up, spins me round a zillion degrees and puts me back down in an amazing and different place. and I'm silly enough to forget that sometimes.

anyone want to make me a disc of (mp3) music that will cheer my soul? offers kindly accepted at 2/507 frankton road, queenstown 9300. and in return I shall recommend you some NZ beauties: goldenhorse - to make your soul a little lighter and maybe make you want to dance; bic runga - nice female vocalist who wears a dress full of light; and evermore - they probably made it off the island, j'aime 'running'.

2007-03-06T09:31:00.000+13:00

back soon

my husband's gorgeous. just thought you should know. my blogging silence will end soon - I had a week away in methven and christchurch and a busy week when I got back, but I do have photos & news to post. tomorrow we're looking at a house which may just be the one for us, so please pray everything goes OK, and it's with the same rental agents so we're also praying the whole moving in to this place debacle was just an erroneous incident seeing as our agents won NZ Rental Agents of the Year last year! bring on a house that gets sunshine all day long through winter!

2007-02-12T12:29:00.000+13:00

something your relationship needs to know

thanks to a friend I've had a little discovery recently - the 5 languages of apology, by gary chapman. the one and same gary chapman who wrote the 5 love languages which if you haven't read I also really recommend (it helps you work out how you express and recieve love to help you communicate better with your partner, family & friends). so anyway, the languages of apology came up for fran and I and it made so much sense... if fran and I have a 'to do' and he needs to say sorry to me I have generally found his expression of apology lacking in intention and feeling and don't really feel like he understands how much he's hurt me or that he's really sorry and wants to make it up to me. then I read the language of apology thing and realised I really like him to show me he's sorry by making it up to me/doing something proactive to change. and it's so nice to know that his expression of apology is genuine but just a different form of communication to mine, which is a big verbal profuse gushing of apology! anyway, I thought I'd blog about it because I've mentioned it to a few friends and got the same reaction everytime... a pause of realisation ... and then 'oh yer, I hadn't thought of that' and it just made me think - how many times do issues not get resolved especially in marriages/partnerships because one person doesn't feel properly understood or their hurt made up for by an apology that is meanigful to them?

we got a message today from our rental agent that we have to be out of our place by march 28th - we kind of expected it after all the hassle with the mouldy rooms etc and I'm a bit suspicious they might try to screw us for every penny of the bond to make up for the work they had to do... how to be wise as serpents but innocent as doves with our rental agents...? unfortunately they have by far the most properties in town so there's a good chance the next place will be with them too... prayer appreciated for another place to rent - we'd like a house (not unit/apartment) with 2+ bedrooms, a bath and garage in a sunny location on the frankton side of town and not at the top of a mahussive hill for $350 a week or less, which is quite a tall order!

I fancy coffee all the time at the moment. I'm not sure if it's just a change in taste or the slow start of an addiction, but I find myself daydreaming about having a coffee machine that makes cappucinos at home. maybe one day...

2007-02-08T09:15:00.000+13:00

day of firsts

yesterday was a day of firsts. I got up to take fran to work and have the car for the day, and morning haze made a gorgeous light effect as the sun rose over the remarkables with the sharp rock edges cutting through the hazy light. and it was while trying to take pictures of this I had my first first - a 10,000+ volt shock from an electric deer fence! not only did it hurt a fair bit, but left me wibbling for about 30 mins and made a couple of nice red lines along my arm where I had unknowingly been touching the offending wire! won't be making that mistake again... my other first was far more pleasant - my first swim in the lake. I've been avoiding this because lake wakatipu is freezing and varies by 2 degrees centigrade winter to summer, fluctating around the 6 degree mark I believe. fran went with some guys after work and I'm glad to say they found a warm bit! I did not do the crazy huge rope swing or jump off the 20ft platform but did manage a nice 10 mins floating around in the 'warm' top layer before permanent goose bumps occured! might have to try and find a warmer swimming option for next time :)

2007-02-06T09:51:00.000+13:00

summer sun

we're having a nice englishy mix of summer weather, with some days hot, sunny & gorgeous like this one in queenstown botanical gardens, and some cold, chilly & wet. fran's still working pretty hard, so on yesterday's quiet afternoon he took the chance to get home early and participate in his favorite afternoon activity - snooozing!

our lease on our unit runs out on march 18th and we don't know if we're able to renew, though we would really love to move to a house with bath and garage in frankton - where the sun shines all winter long! your prayers would be appreciated there as a house with 2/3 bedrooms for the money we want to be spending will be hard to find and would need to tie in with the expiry on this place.

2007-01-30T15:53:00.000+13:00

escape from queenstown!

we took advantage of a bad weather day recently to escape from queenstown and get out into our surrounding countryside. we drove north through the cardrona mountains which look stunning in their summer grasses. mountains here aren't grazed so they're covered in beautiful long tussock grasses - the countryside is literally blushing with meadow grasses in golden yellows, rusty oranges, earthy red and pinks against the blue-green of the hills. the drive was wonderful both ways and I had to stop with this one picture or we'd have been pulling over every 5 minutes!

what else would you expect in a small winter ski village but a monster truck collection - including a candy pink cadillac and yellow school bus. made me chuckle for quite a ways afterwards I can tell you!

in wanaka we had a wander and found these gorgeous artworks filling a gallery - amazing colour compositions with printed elements, canvas cut out and pasted on, and thick thick thick layers of what looked like household oil based paints. interested me as I've been wanting to use household paints since someone gave me some to make them a painting which I did in methven. we chilled over chips & kebab, and coffee taking in the breeze, then a quick trip to puzzling world to tax our brains before driving leisurely back and stopping for a walk and grass seed fight on the way home (very itchy with grass seeds in your clothes I can tell you!!). visit my art blog for more and enlargenable versions of the above picture.

2007-01-18T09:28:00.000+13:00

believe it or not...

...prayer works! I think I tend to forget just how much sometimes. 2 weeks ago I started to pray every morning 'god, please get fran on camera today' (as in paid cameraman jumps) and a whole little sequence of events happened which got him onto stand-by camera and has kept him getting jumps when logic or the prior system says he wouldn't be jumping. actually, he's getting so much blessing at work I feel almost bad that we have the power of prayer on our side!

apart from the cameraman thing we've not had anything startling happen. my art's going ok - still working out my schedule, a new element of which is I get the car wednesdays, meaning I take fran to work in the morning and his collegues get to see I'm not some mythical creature they hear of but never meet, do the groceries (yey!), and then drive wherever I fancy for the day. yesterday I drove out into the hills north-east of queenstown. recently, the natural beauty of this area has really started to hit me - I think the hard start to living here stopped me seeing it. the colours here are so rich and deep and vibrant. I ended up buying some pastels while I was out and sketching some hills at the paragliders' 'flightpark' which backs onto a beautiful wooded ridge with a big jaggedy cliffed hill part way along. at the moment the meadow grasses are long and a really rich orangy-red colour. just gorgeous!

I've also been learning about colour. I didn't know how much I didn't know! pretty much all my art I do in the 'pure' colour scale which is mixed solely from primary colours and apparently means I have a 'gregarious, extroverted personality' and like the 'drama and excitement' the colours convey. but there is also a tint scale - with white added, a tone scale - with grey added, and shade scale - with black added. even simple stuff I've never purposely thought about - like the visual effect of yellow or red on a canvas is very strong so you have to be careful how you use it, or blue - a colour I've never been that keen on by itself - is a very peaceful colour because it's such a large element of the natural landscape. it's pretty interesting and is definately making me think about my use of colour and how to construct colours more.

2007-01-05T09:38:00.000+13:00

he 'da man!

time to do my proud wifey bit... yesterday fran had a 12 hr day and did 49 packs, which is a superhuman effort. in his first month packing his entire month's total was 250! not only that, but the operations manager wanted him to do proper stand-by camerman jumps too! he didn't get to, because the other head honcho wants to see 2 more sets of stills, but he's basically been flagged as good enough to be on camera and ready to go right now. I'm so proud of him :)

2007-01-02T11:17:00.000+13:00

my head is exploding

last week I 'upgraded' to blogger beta, and for some reason blogger's doing a merry little dance with me when I try to log in. I have to find sneaky ways onto my dashboard... I managed to get here by logging in and commenting on a friend's page then cutting & pasting part of the blogger address into my nav bar. blogger beta - I am in NO way impressed.

2007-01-01T12:10:00.000+13:00

christmas & new year!

christmas eve didn't quite turn out as expected - our first campsite was plagued by sandflies (bites itch & swell for about 3 weeks, 10 times worse than mossie bites - the only real native pest in this country) and the second was stunningly gorgeous (we'll be going back) but plagued by groups of 'young folk' with loud music getting pissed, so we woke up in the comfort of our beds on christmas day! tea in bed, open pressies and then we went up the lake to find a stunning BBQ spot...

it was the calmest I've ever seen the lake. we had a little grassy off road park and lovely shingle beach all to ourselves, sitting under the gum trees listening to the exotic calls of the tui bird. it was gorgeous. then we made it back in time for roast wild turkey at jimmy & lizzy's house - they made a fabulous feast and we ended up staying 10 hrs, watched 'bad santa', me & lizzy chatting and fran & jimmy spending hours trying to hit eachother with the styrofoam plane mum put in our stocking!

a delightful patch of bad weather meant fran almost had an entire week off, which was lovely, then we had new years... we went to our neighbours, matt & terri's (who got engaged after a helicopter flight to the top of the remarkables the day before) for a chilled BBQ, indoors due to the chilly, windy weather, and brought the new year in watching the sky channel navigation page! ...we needed an accurate time cause there's no countdown on NZ tv, how wierd is that? being very old & sensible people we then tootled off the bed, but not before taking some pictures of ourselves, and this one very nearly had me wetting my pants with laughter...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2006-12-24T15:39:00.000+13:00

christmas cooking

after having tasty christmassy fruit cake at church this morning, I decided to do a little christmas baking of my own, so my mum's recipe light fuity spice cake is in the oven and my afghans are lined up on the tray ready to go next. afghans are one of the staple kiwi biccies you're guarenteed to find in cafes, along with yo-yos (2 shortbread cookies with fruity butter icing between), anzac cookies (made for Aussie-and-New-Zealand-Allied-Corps in WWII) and traybakes like tan slice. afghans are dreamy chocolatey cookies topped with chocolate icing and a walnut... here's the recipe from my favorite cafe in methven if you'd like to try them - they're really quick & easy:

afghan cookies - makes 16 approx.

200g butter/margerine
1/2 cup /100g white sugar
1/4 cup/4tbsp cocoa
1+1/2 cups/225g plain flour
2 cups/50g cornflakes
icing sugar, cocoa & walnut pieces/halves for the topping

cream butter and sugar, add cocoa, then flour then fold in cornflakes. makes a pretty stiff mixture. roll into golf sized balls, flatten to 2cm thick approx (they don't really spread) and bake at 180C for 15mins. top with chocolate icing and a half walnut. eat. mmmm.

tonight we're off to wild camp (I'm hoping fran gets sent home early!) up the lake and have some BBQ sausages for breakfast, pop home for some presents, then jimmy & lizzy are having us round for traditional roast turkey dinner - a real wild turkey given to them by some friends!

have a great christmas y'all! xxx

2006-12-22T16:07:00.000+13:00

feeling...

well, a little lonely to be honest. we've made some lovely friends here, but I still have a gap. it's mainly having someone who shares my faith that I can talk to about more personal stuff. people here feel pretty busy and like they don't have time or need a new friend, which may or may not be true but puts me off the pursuit a little. people often seem to first encounter me as a very confident and assured person, but I have to say it's a pretty good act as that's not how I normally feel at the time! I'm also feeling a bit like the longer we're away from our older friends the less I can call or rely on them - I should be getting on with things here... I was quite comforted to read natalie's blog about feeling homesick at christmas - this will be their 3rd(?) christmas in new zealand and makes me feel better about my miffiness. it's not all doom and gloom, but sometimes jetting off to the other side of the world isn't quite as glamorous as it seems from the comfort of 'home'.

and to change the subject completey, last week I read 100 things we didn't know this time last year on the bbc news website. the highlights which stuck with me:

there are more CCTV cameras in Croydon than New York (sorry stoneys!)
you are 176 times more likely to be murdered than win the national lottery
1 in 18 people has a 3rd nipple...

strange, but apparently true.

2006-12-21T14:58:00.000+13:00

freckle fobia

a birdy drying itself on one of the many flooded jetties

I'm really glad lake wakatipu is starting to go back down. it was quite exciting to have a lake on the verge of flooding and my first stop in town was always the lake front to check the water level (we got about 50cm away from floating shops), but there are definate benefits to the water receding. yesterday I walked back from town along the lake track and for the first time in ages the rocky shoreline was exposed. even though it's only a couple of metres from the track in places, stepping off onto the shore is like entering a different world. not many people do it, and I love turning over stones and exploring the secret little places down there. in the winter you could walk all the way from our place into town right next to the lake (if you don't mind going through a few trees!) so here's to more wanderings and the lake going down further.

fran and I stopped for coffee today and I read an article in australian vogue that quite literally had me holding my head in my hands to stop it exploding... freckles again! this one was an article about light treatment to get rid of your freckles. I quote: 'there's nothing more depressing than a plunging neckline when your cleavage is as speckled as a wren's egg'. WHAT??? words literally fail me. in the dove campaign for real beauty, with ads like a photo of a woman in her 40's and a caption saying '40 and hot or 40 and not?', there's a freckley one with a really freckley young woman and the options are 'freckled or flawless?' - that's right, freckled apparently is a derogatory term here! CRAZY CRAZY WORLD!!

what's wrong with this picture?

and finally, we had a little faux christmas today as we got snow on the mountains. so we stuck on the amelie CD (the best festive music we could manage) and opened a present each... very nice. monday's meant to be fine and sunny so I'm glad we got one chilly faux-white-christmas present each!

2006-12-18T11:42:00.000+13:00

a real weekend off

fran actually had saturday and sunday off this weekend, and made great use of it by finalising the sale of rose on saturday when our buyer flew down from auckland. on sunday I went to church while fran had some time to himself, then we met for celebratory rose selling/it's christmas brunch at our favorite place - vudu. this was the view from our table, not quite capturing the funkiness and chilled vibe of the teeny outdoor courtyard. we had a really nice time together followed by a sit by the stream in the gardens and then some bouldering out by the remarkables with some people from church - which was fun for fran and frustrating for me as I didn't want to chance hurting my knee, so I was spectating :(

I have a few paintings on the go at the moment, the latest is up on my art site... other than that there's not much news, we're just pootling along doing our thing and working out what it is we need to be doing now to be the people in the places we want to be in the future!

2006-12-11T15:05:00.000+13:00

giraffes

I love this picture I found on the web yesterday. gorgeous.

so we've sold rose, one way or another, we think. we've taken a retaining deposit from some aucklanders, one of whom is flying down on friday to make 100% sure it's the van they want. if they change their minds, we had a phone call from the netherlands this morning from a couple who're emigrating in april and also want to buy it. so that's good news.

I've had a helicopter buzzing around on the other side of the lake for a couple of hours now, looking like he's doing monsoon bucket practice over farmland. I'm quite glad I'm going out & getting away from the choppy noise now.

2006-12-07T17:53:00.000+13:00

finished at last

at last I've finished my quilt, and with it the lose ends of previous art projects. I can now embark upon the journey of discovering my art and style with a clean slate. wonder what it's going to look like...

2006-12-03T12:53:00.000+13:00

where'd everyone go?

I'm lonely today. for the past 6 weeks I've had the fun of adventures and seeing my 'new' (but close) friends from methven, old university friends, friends who've walked in key parts of my journey and me growing into myself, friends who inspire me and challenge me and close family members. then last week, after mum & dad went to the north island, it rained and rained so fran was home, driving me a little potty. but now it's sunny, fran's at work and I'm back on my own again, realising that I still have deeper & closer friendships to make here, and feeling a little alone. we have some lovely friends here, it's just the difference of having been with people who know you intimately and you can be completely yourself with. I still need to get to that level of friendship here. ho hum.

2006-12-01T14:38:00.000+13:00

environmental impact?

it's the first day of summer and we have fresh snow on the mountains and Lake Wakitipu is 30cm away from flooding Queenstown. oh yes, and there's the icebergs floating along the coast of the South Island. now I'm not an avid global warming believer, it's hard to know what's just natural variation and what's human caused effects, but combining the above events with watching 'the day after tomorrow' and the publicity Al Gore's making have made me consider how fran and I are living and what impact we have on our world a little more seriously. I figure if we could actually see the impact we'd have on future generations right now we'd change our ways sooner. this is my little effort:

I already recycle (NZ is generally good for this as recycling is free but you have to pay about $1.30 for each official council rubbish bags - so who wouldn't want to recycle?) ...though I could put more effort in to recycling all bathroom and bedroom waste.
once we've sold rose we'll have 1 car and I'll mainly cycle - if fran fulfills his motorbike dream that will cut our fuel consumption a lot.
I figure change my bulbs to energy saving ones - costly in the short term but great for electric bills.
try harder to remember my cloth shopping bags not bring home lots of plastic ones.
I have no idea if it's better to put veggie waste in the landfill or through the waste disposal in the sink?
can't insulate my house better 'til I get one, or install a solar panel or wind turbine, but the one we're in is pretty good and we have a storage heater for winter.

any more ideas?

I'd quite like to write to Mr Bush and suggest instead of following oil around the globe they put some of that war money into alternative energy research so that they can lead the world in excellent technology when the oil does run out/become economically unviable. and I found out recently australia won't sign CO2 emissions agreements - in a country with so much 'desert' and sunshine hours why on earth aren't they using solar power like you see in mediterranean countries where every roof has a solar panel? by 'eck, I know I have no idea about the world of politics and country running, but surely some of these things are obvious to the powers that be?

2006-11-29T16:37:00.000+13:00

ghost readers

since going on my travels around NZ I've discovered I have a number of ghost readers - people who I had no idea read my blog as they'd never mentioned it or commented. so I have installed a map at the bottom of my sidebar which makes little red dots wherever someone is reading my blog from. no idea how that works, but I'll have a little more idea who's watching from where...

2006-11-28T17:24:00.000+13:00

holiday!

so after my return from texas and mum & dad having 2 weeks on the road in rose, we had a little family break to Fiordland. 5 days total with 3 days in Te Anau and 2 days at/going to Milford Sound (below).

in Milford we went sea kayaking which was really fun and pretty knackering as mum and I shared a kayak while dad opted for the stability of experienced fran to keep him dry. it was pretty windy & rough, though our return to base was made under sail power. I saw my first wild penguin which was very very cool.

mum & the abominable snowman sea kayaking on some quieter waters

we got to see some cool bird life including this endangered old doddery takahe (150 pairs left) and the alpine parakeets that I love (they look like vibrant forest green budgies) in gorgeous mossy forest, not to mention the cheeky alpine parrot - the kea, which I had an up close & personal chat to... I'm pretty sure he would have gone for my nose if I let him!

mmm, mossy forest

I also discovered the macro setting on my camera (d'oh!) so I'm ridiculously happy as I love close ups of leaves, lichens, bark & moss... my blog will be inundated with them from now on!

mum on 'cilla' and me on 'nipper' showing signs he might be about to lose his mind...

in Te Anau mum and I went horseriding while fran and dad went quad biking. the boys definately got the best deal being the only ones booked on and gots to do lots of fun stuff. mum and I, on the other hand, were with 5 inexperienced riders so got to plod along at a leisurely walk for most of the ride - until we persuaded the girls to have a bit of a canter... nipper (my horse) had been a bit fed up with the slow pace for a while and decided a flat out gallop was much more fun - towards a barbed wire fence! pulling on the reins would NOT stop him and I was preparing for my first jump in about 12 years when he finally decided to grind to a halt, and so I did 'the perfect fall', tucking over my shoulder and landing flat out against the fence posts! the poor young instructors were more freaked out than me, worrying I was going to go through the fence or off into the distance if I made the next field. I banged my legs a bit, and the beauty of new zealand is free accident medical & physio for everyone (residents to tourists) so now Al is getting my knee fixed and solving the problem of my weak glutes at the same time! incidently, this accident scheme means there's no sueing people for silly amounts of money for falling over curbs or slipping on a wet floor as ACC even takes care of income loss. good eh?

fern trees. nice.

2006-11-16T14:10:00.000+13:00

quick prayer request - we'd really like to sell our van by december 1st which is when the insurance is up for renewal and it would be great not to have pay that as you don't get much money back on a partial year and wee rosie's not a cheap one to insure!

2006-11-15T14:37:00.000+13:00

clearing the way

having had some belated rest time after my 3 hectic weeks going overseas and hosting people, I'm doing a little spring cleaning. not of my house, but of my art life. I'm getting round to finishing my partly done projects - cushion covers, half-done paintings, funky bag embroidery... in short tying off creative ends which got started and have been fluttering around my creative space. it feels really good. my biggest challenge will be my rather large quilt but that mainly requires a little planning and organisation.

sunset from the balcony this week

on an entirely different note I have a practical reccomendation to make... I got quite bad skin/spots while I was in methven and tried quite a few remedies but the thing that really helped was tea tree oil (applied on a damp cotton wool pad) and has really speeded up the healing process which is really nice for me!

2006-11-09T15:52:00.000+13:00

a little more spangle

so what happened in austin? most significantly I got really affirmed as an artist - as someone meant to be creating art. since I can remember I wanted to be an artist, but that desire always came with a bunch of issues why it shouldn't/wouldn't/couldn't work. not so anymore. I really feel like I'm meant to be making art, and fran is 110% behind me doing that - even if it means living on a small budget for a while. so that's what I'm going to be doing.

one thing I felt coming back was that we really needed a bigger place - a better place for me to create in and a real spare room for our soon to be guests. without moving or paying more rent that's happening - by moving my art space upstairs, which leaves much more room in our 2nd bedroom for fran to sew (and leave threads all over the floor without driving me nutty!) and for guest's space including a little side table and comfy armchair. it also means I'm in a more sociable space and have the great views from our balcony next to me. I'm really chuffed as our place is great in many ways and moving/finding tenants to take over our contract would have been demanding.

check out oddshapedhouse art for updates...

2006-11-06T15:39:00.000+13:00

27 and just got my first mix tape...

phew, finally landed, home, and on my own. a 26 hour journey and quite a few coffees got me from austin to christchurch, a bus to dan & emma's new (fab) place and a nice hot bath and a cup of tea and being back in the same timezone as fran felt great. not having slept on the journey, nine episodes of the O.C. kept me awake for the rest of wednesday and then my parents arrived on thursday from england. flukey timing had my parking rose up next to the runway as mum and dad's plane taxied in to the gate and a wildly waving hand in one of the windows confirmed they'd seen me! then a 2 day drive back to queenstown in rose, a couple of easy days getting over jetlag and having some family time, and mum & dad are now off in rose for a week and a half and fran and I will actually get to catch up on what was an amazing trip!

vintage funk south of the river

not sure how much I can tell you as my head's still spinning and needing to process lots of different things. it was great to see much loved and missed friends, and get to spend more time with people I've met briefly and meet new people. we had a great mixture of visual/fine/graphic artists, writers/poets, musicians, vj's, sculpters. here are the photo highlights...

brain(spirit)storm photocall

larrrrrge art stores

one of my most favorite people in the world

coffee house art installations

inescapably funky cars

birthday dessert at the table of the stars @ four seasons

and reminders of home...

and whilst I was away fran made me a CD - my first ever compilation from a boyfriend(husband!). remember guys - it's ALL about the little things ;)

back soon with words...

2006-10-24T13:48:00.000+13:00

hello texas!

I have arrived! well I arrived 2 days ago to be more accurate. my flights out went fine - christchurch to auckland 1 hour 20, auckland to LA 11 hours 30 and then LA to austin 2 hours 20 - 20 hours total travelling time! I was meant to get 2 connecting flights from LA because I didn't want the pressure of a short changover, but I took my time getting through customs, security and changing my clothes to find the austin flight still available and they just switched my tickets at check in meaning I landed 4 hours earlier than expected - at 6pm on saturday, barely ' 2 hours after' leaving new zealand, phew!

austin diner.

on sunday night after some food at home we went out for coffee/dessert in amy's convertible VW beatle - I felt arrived in balmy austin. on sunday morning we went for breakfast at austin diner and met teresa there. there was way too much choice, but I got well fed!

derek & amy with the beautiful old volvo.

later on we had a planning meeting with shannon and teresa which ended up at a BBQ place out in the hills. I so love BBQ - such nice flavours and tasty meat. after putting at least half of my meal in a doggy bag (!) we sat outside and chatted. amy & teresa did a little dancing on the boardwalk...

amy & teresa practise some moves

today is amy's birthday so we had a day off, having coffee, going shopping in funky boutiques, eating amy's ice cream (a texas instition - choose your ice cream, your fillings, your toppings and your sauce) and later we're out for desserts with shannon & teresa and maybe some austin others.

you may have noticed so far activities have involved quite a lot of eating out... this will change from tomorrowe as we get busy preparing things for the weekend - food, art supplies, accomodation etc. we gonna be busy, and mainly eating in, although cakes/cookies/brownies will be supplied!

it's balmy and nice to be here. strange to be so far away from fran but that feels like a good thing for both of us and we'll both learn new things through time apart. besides which, technology rocks now so keeping in touch isn't nearly so hard. god's gonna do stuff.

2006-10-20T21:54:00.000+13:00

cheerio queenstown!

so on wednesday I left queenstown on the start of a 2 and a half week trip. 7 hours of driving got me up to methven where I saw all the lovely ladies I used to hang out with for thai curry on weds night and coffe at the funky 2nd hand shop/cafe primo on thursday morning.

coffee at primo with a zebra stripe bike on a windy day

I've decided to do a blogathon on my travels and see how many blogs I can get onto - first start is pol & evelien's blog. I met them the last night we were in methven and have kept in contact since, and tonight they had me round for tea - luvley mate!

pol & evelien

tomorrow I start flying at 4pm and land in austin at 10pm the 'same' day... wierd. anyhoo, I'll update you with photos and blogs soon. xxx

2006-10-09T17:35:00.000+13:00

all change

in the last few days we've gone from this...

enjoying some sun in the park

and this...

tss earnslaw cruises into queenstown quay

to this...

brand new white stuff!

we had a week of wet at the start of spring, but since then the sun's been out most days encouraging the freckles and making afternoons pretty balmy. locals assured us there's always a late snowfall, but we didn't really believe them. then on sunday we went for coffee in one of our favorite cafe's, vudu, which serves the best french toast, bacon & grilled banana breakfast ever...

cafe vudu complete with fairy lights and local artworks

we parked our car in town, and came back to a small pond...

lulu gets a bit soppy

then I open the curtains this morning to sleet and zero visibility, and all this snow! almost all of winter's snow had melted and I'm quite happy to have some more around. the mountains here are starting to perk up with spring colour but they still have an overall dull brownness to them and the new snow's a good facelift. more snow again tonight and the snow fields will be wishing they didn't just close on sunday!

I've been doing as much temping as possible so I have at least a few bucks to buy a coffee on my trip to texas, which is swiftly approaching. it's a little worrying that I'll be so far away from fran for almost 2 weeks, but with the wonders of skype we'll be able to talk & see each other which will be great.

so still pootling along, getting a little more sorted and I've made a few more friends recently which is really nice - tomorrow we're going for coffee together so they can meet each other. getting settled into a new place is a trick I think I'll be learning as this town, whilst great in many ways, just doesn't feel like home.

2006-09-22T22:53:00.000+13:00

only in new zealand

here's this week's local paper.... ah, new zealand media is great! this article's about the bush fire we had in the last week (see post below). regularly on the main news do we hear reporters saying 'bugger' and once we even had 'ugly bastards'. being PC just isn't a much of an issue here. on a kind of 'if you can't take it, don't watch it' basis. also quite nice is that cause there's only 4 million people here, the news just isn't that bad all too often. last week on the headline bulletin between programmes the 4th item was that someone who got shipwrecked's collie dog had made it safe to dry land too. aaaah. then there was the fish farm that broke free of it's moorings disrupting the inter-islander ferry - worthy of a 20 minute expose apparently. makes you smile.

pampas grass haloed in setting sunlight

so we need skype people. if you want to talk to us, or use instant messaging, get skype. it's free to call other skype users. I was just in the middle of a call to pol in christchurch when bea and andy in sheffield called and then we made a conference call with ant too. flippin fantastic. skype church has started! I like it.

cotton wool bud blossom

2006-09-21T11:47:00.000+13:00

huh?

my computer just started ringing like a telephone and I have no idea why!!! it's like being on the crystal maze. <:s

2006-09-20T13:32:00.000+13:00

tra la la!

he he! I've just had the best morning... I'm sure to coffee's helping but I'm buzzing quite a lot! I met up with a guy called david who runs the rungway - a QT based company that does via ferrata and other rope based activities. they're going to take me for a trial session and if they like me sign me up as a casual instructor or posibbly more permanent. I'm so excited at the thought of instructing - being in the glorious outdoors and helping people do fun and exhilarating stuff. doing other jobs for a while has helped me realise how much I love instructing, so I'm pretty stoked about the possibilities here!
I'm also excited as I have some upcoming trips. one is to texas at the end of october, which will also allow me to see friends in methven and christchurch we've not seen since coming down here 3 and a bit months ago. then my parents arrive in NZ for a visit and we're planing a holiday in fiordland with them where we'll get to go kayaking on milford sound, horseriding/quad biking and see/walk round lots of beautiful wilderness.
right - got to go and finish fran's birthday presents now... bad weather has kept him at home and in the way of me making things! I wonder when the coffee and this buzzing feeling is going to wear off....? xx

2006-09-18T13:29:00.000+13:00

fire!

last week we had a scrub fire on the remarkables. my first view of it was a large cloud of smoke rising from behind deer park heights - the hill opposite our balcony and directly between our unit and the dropzone... but I figured drop zone fires would be thick black smoke so fran was probably ok! I was on my way to the airport to drop some friends off for their hols and had a good view of the fire, including when the helicopters started taking off to do water drops. that evening we went to our first small group (or PCG - pastoral care group) meeting, which was up in fernhill and gave us great views of the fire at night. it had been a small controlled burn off when the winds picked up and whisked it up the mountainside. the view was amazing at night with the lights of queenstown nestled down by the lake and the fiery mountainside towering up above it. here's my pretty naff version...

we've been along to church again - fran was able to come due to poor weather, and are hopefully having blair and christine round for tea this week. it was blair and christine's I went to for the BBQ and blair who ran the explosive boy's night out last week which fran went along to and enjoyed. they've been extremely friendly and welcoming and we've felt very blessed by them.

lulu - latest edition to our fleet of aged motor vehicles!

other big news is that we were in court this morning! nothing too major - it was a hearing to settle our dispute over compensation for the 8 weeks we couldn't use our bedroom. we've been awarded about a quarter of our rent back which is great. the tenancy service here is amazing - everything is free, funded by the interest from bonds which are held by the same agency, and all landlords have to use the tenancy agreements provided by the national body so you can't get screwed over by someone dodgy. we were a little miffed with our landlord's sidestepping & creative presentation of facts, but at least it's sorted and out of the way now.

2006-09-13T13:49:00.000+13:00

my desk has wings!

see, it really does! I finally have my art space sorted - a 2nd hand desk which fran put extensions on either side so I have lots of work room. now you may expect a little more to be happening on my art blog...

and just to show you how gorgeous the colours are here at the moment - this is the lakefront in town. look at all those colours in the trees - orange, green, mauve, blue - with no digital enhancement! sorry if you think my blog's become rather like a coffee table picture book, I can't help myself, especially now my camera is so handy all the time!

2006-09-11T10:37:00.000+13:00

sunday strolling

went to church yesterday and then walked home along the lake track. took quite a while and I got to see different stuff than when I go on my bike. it was nice. the sun's really warming things up here and it's quite summery if you can find a spot out of the wind!

stopped in the park to watch a canine-bullet do ball fetching

tropical look war memorial on the lake front

aaaaaaah, peaceful. there's a little boatshed area next to the park and with people sanding & painting boats I almost felt like I was at the seaside

splash of colour - bright green willows

lakeside track smelling of pines and blossom

blossom pooofs in the sunlight

so do you like my new-look website?

2006-09-06T20:21:00.000+13:00

why I love americans

rainbow from the lakeside track

so not everyone's perfect, but there are some things I really really love about americans. there's so much generosity and freedom of spirit. we just watched 'extreme makeover home edition', definately not to be confused with 'extreme makeover' where a person with low self-esteem is given masses of cosmetic surgery to feel better and ends up a fouffy lipglossed clone - happy, but not in the best way by far.

so what they do on this programme is find a family in really hard circumstances eg, single father of three on low in come adopts 2 kids when their parents die so they don't get institutionalised & split up or family of 8 siblings lose mother suddenly, and they give their home an extreme makeover which normally involves demolishing the existing home and building a new one (in a week, whilst the family holiday!) and because of the publicity the public donate lots of nice stuff like the rest of the mortgage. the one we just watched was a family of four - both parents deaf, 1 healthly 14yr old son and 1 blind & autistic 11yr old son. the deaf parents have a really hard time communicating with their blind son and the 14yr old has lots of responsibility taking care of him and helping the family run smoothly. dad works on a car production line so doesn't earn masses. so the makeover included visual communications in each room, door keys pads to prevent the younger son leaving the home at night (when he hears interesting noises), smoke alarms that strobe and vibrate the parents bed, educational development toys for a blind/autistic boy, and a college fund so their elder son will be able to go to college. the family was so so so blessed, the autistic sone will develop masses more and communicate with his parents through a computer to brail system, and the father completely overwhelmed that the things he wasn't able to afford for his sons were provided. it's a totally over the top and totally amazing program. that blew me away today.

the orange trees have lime green buddies now

and my other big up goes to tyra banks. don't know if you get the tyra show wherever you are, but I've seen it a few times and I have big respect for her. first of all because she really does care for her guests and does things for them, and secondly because she's honest in a way not often seen. she shares her intimate vulnerability. and most favorite of mine, she showed herself on national tv without a bra - to be exact whilst wearing a t-shirt took off her push up bra to show where her boobs really were at. amen! we recieve so many images of completely unrealistic breasts. I think there should be a real boob guide every woman can see to put things like extreme makeover plastic surgery edition in whopping perspective.

2006-09-03T18:49:00.000+13:00

suncream season starts

today I may have finally made progress on finding friends in queenstown! I felt like I was meant to go to the bapitsist church today, so plucked up the courage to go on my own (necessary on pmt day!) and I really liked the church. first impression was lots of young adults - always a good sign. actual welcome wasn't so great, I had to introduce myself and was just feeling a bit wibbly, but I met some nice people and christine & blair invited me back to their's for a BBQ. the weather was beeauuutiful - sunny and warm, hence the suncream - and the location stunning, by far the beast I've seen around here. I got to chat to lots of nice people, I think it may be the church for us. also a good sign is blair's 'testosterone ministry' which in a fortnight's time involves and fire/BBQ and 'blowing stuff up'. I like men doing their thing. so that all looks promising.

cartwheel at millbrook resort - holiday village for the rich and famous

and on more of a what we're doing in life level, that feel like we're finding our way too. fran getting the packing job at NZONE means he'll be earning enough to support us both with a wee bit spare. when I finished at the real estate place I was asking god what I was meant to be doing and really felt that it was art. now don't get all clever with me and say you always knew that(!) ...it just clicked for me in a new way and I felt really able to embrace it and extremely endorsed by my fabulous husband to follow that path. so that's what I'm going to be doing, whatever that looks like! I'd like a part time job too, and as previously mentioned options include a local fashion designer and a local outdoors place, the latter of which I'm favouring more at the moment. it felt like finding people was an important part of deciding to do art as it's an unsocial job and I'm an extrovert girl, so I'm really glad for today's development.

2006-09-01T17:06:00.000+13:00

spring is in the air

it's september 1st and and officially spring - the last 3 days have been really sunny, mild and warm, and very blustery, it feels so nice. I may actually be adjusting to southern hemisphere seasons now!

hotel mickelborough is now officially open! and here are a few pics now that the work on our place has been finished and we've properly moved in.

the lounge with views out to the remarkables mountains

our living space - top floor

and another sunrise one morning this week

I've also finally experienced my first 'morning tea' - tradition new zealand wide comparable to elevenses. most work places have morning tea everyday or on special days like birthdays, but today was my very first time after 9 and a half months here! we sat in the sun drinking tea and eating baked goods. nice idea, so long as you do an active job!

I'm now just about recovered from my cold and no longer have to carry toilet roll wherever I go, so thanks for your prayers. I'm now assessing job options - I have an application in with a local fashion designer which would be interesting and take me in one direction, and there's also a local outdoors company which I'm quite interested in which would get me back outdoors.

but most excitingly, I'm going for a flight in a 4 seater plane tomorrow! my friend fabricio has a friend who flies and has invited me along. I'm so thrilled, fran's shown me footage of the ascent before jumping out of perfectly good planes and the scenery is stunning, so hopefully I'll have some good pics and some fun stories to show you in the near future.

and news literally in (5 seconds ago) ...fran has a contract with NZONE as a packer which is just fantastic - onto the 2nd rung of the ladder with a better paid (and more introvert suited) job for my man. halleliuah!

hope you're all well out there, lots of love from lil' ole me, jen xxx

2006-08-20T17:33:00.000+13:00

ginger trees

but first a quick prayer request - for my health. I got a bit of the flu last week and a cold to go with it this weekend and I'm just shattered and really don't want to get sick the way I was back in the UK again. thanks :)

now let me show you my trees...

for me one of the most striking things about being here in the winter has been the trees - I think they're willow - they have the most beautiful and amazing rusty orange glow in the sunlight, often offset against bluey purple mountains. it's so stunning, and really widening my appreciation of winter colour palettes.

blossom that's just come out next to the lake on my way to work. remarkables mountains in background.

pink trees. what else is there to say?

the bathhouse restaurant by the lakeshore, coffee with an amazing view! I also loved how the spotty black and white silver birch trunks lined up. I love my new camera.

2006-08-13T19:13:00.000+13:00

birthday hi-jinks!

as promised a photo montage with my lovely new camera... (2 exceptions as marked!)

my new geeeeorgeous scarf, bought in methven from the funky 2nd hand shop/cafe - primo

glenorchy - chilled respite from the hubub of queenstown

external prelude to the internal funk of cafe GVC

aaaah, disco earl grey tea!

my kind of lighting

suddenly hand-wobble doesn't seem so bad (exception 1 - inspired by my own dear hands)

we saw little green chirpy forest budgies, but they were too darn quick!

did meet the nz robin though - a little bit freaky as he's twice as big as the british type (exception 2 - also due to wobbly hands and no zoooooom lens)

scenic freedom camping!

and my lovely birthday fleurs literally bespattered with magnetic butterflies which are now flying around my kitchen - hooray!

2006-08-11T20:20:00.000+13:00

well hello there!

my first self portrait with my new camera!

I had a really nice birthday... fran got up (early) with me in the morning and we had brekkie together and opened some cards, then terri (my only female friend here) took me our for a speedy 30 min lunch, then I got home and opened more pressies and cards and we had JP round for dinner and played cluedo. it was quite nice that no-one else made it as we know each other well so it was relaxed and easy. I've just opened my last present - a slimline camera from my family which I'm looking forward to slipping in my back pocket and being able to take pics wherever takes my fancy. photo montage coming after our weekend away...

so I have some prayer requests if you like praying or fancy giving it a try:

fran's job - it would be FANTASTIC if fran could get onto camera asap. he is good enough and has all the right kit but it would mean jumping the queue a bit. that's not unheard of but he just needs to get noticed. currently there are 6 cameramen and they need 9 in the summer so it's definately possible, with a little favour...

my job - I've been given 2 weeks notice at the real estate place. was a little suprising but not too upsetting as I'm not very into the job. thing is there isn't much work about so a good job for me would be fab. I'm thinking about instructing again, and I'd quite like to do 4 days a week so I have time to create.

this weekend's weather - it's supposed to ming for our weekend away - rain/sleet/snow/winds - which is not cool! at least passable weather and the chance to get out for a walk without taking a wet weather shower would be nice!

our unit - 6 weeks in and we still don't have a 2nd bedroom meaning no creative space, boxes still unpacked etc. we're now going to the tenancy tribunal to get a work order and compensation but it's a drag and just getting the place fixed would be much quicker and easier.

well thanks!!! anything you'd like us to pray for?

and finally - thanks for my birthday cards/messages/presents/flowers - I did not feel one little bit like a loner with no mates, I felt very special. sorry if I've not emailed you yet, been a bit swamped but it's on my list!

2006-08-07T23:00:00.000+13:00

I'm lonely

it's so hard to meet people in this town! we know 8 people here, and 4 of those I've had a total of about 20 minutes conversation with when I was temping doing house keeping. I invited them all to my birthday dinner, and at least 4 of them can't come. poo. I have to work on some new ways of meeting people. not having friends here sucks. I'm starting to contemplate going and sitting with srangers whilst they're having their coffee just to meet them. would that be wierd?

miff.

2006-08-05T17:06:00.000+13:00

the lastest...

I made thai green curry for dinner last night with a shop bought paste, man was it way too hot for us - we had to drain all the sauce off our dinner and add milk and sugar, twice, and it was still too hot! now I have a lot of extra thai green curry sauce...
work are considering hiring me permanently and I'm considering whether that's a good idea. it's a good job on all levels except the enviroment being real estate not something more creative and that I'm in front of people all the time so I can't stop and stare at the ceiling for 5 mins if I want to.
winter does not feel like winter here. it's way too sunny! funny what defines things for us.
I'm enjoying music. I made a cd for my friend ann and it got my creative juices flowing.
it's my birthday next week. on weds evening we're having john paul (from the course) celine & jerome (french) fabricio & christine (brazilian) and maybe helen (from my work) round for dinner. then fran's booked the weekend off and we're taking rose up the lake to glenorchy for a chilled weekend together.
I love my bike ride to/from work. it's great. I love my bike. I booked it in for a service and got scoffed at for not knowing her make (its a she-bike). it amuses me how men know make/model almost without thinking and it doesn't even register on my radar.
we bought a zebra print furry throw for our sofa. I love my zebra print throw.
if you come and stay with us I will make you pancakes/french toast with bacon and grilled banana and maple syrup for breakfast. it might just be the best thing about new zealand.
time for a walk by the lake before the sun goes down. bye!

2006-08-01T13:17:00.000+13:00

went to work without my trousers...

I really did! I cycle in to work in a pair of rather attractive leggings and forgot to take my work trousers to change into. luckily it was raining, so fran was home and able to drop some in for me. I really need to take a spare pair in in case I repeat these somewhat amusing actions on a fair weather day!

other than keeping ourselves amused in a variety of ways, we're just pootling along getting used to fran working dropzone hours and me working a 9-5. I had a great weekend when saturday morning coffee with terri turned into a whole days chatting and shopping (not much on my part, just some red & white tops!) and sunday was raining so fran and I got the day together.

last week I had an interview for a new company in QT called loving life which will be launching alternative wellness products onto the NZ market later this year. the lady who interviewed me would be an amazing boss, very into investing in her workers, and the job would be interesting & challenging. I should hear by weds whether I have a 2nd interview...

2006-07-20T19:12:00.000+13:00

beautiful bookshelves

finally we got some bookshelves this week, I got quite excited to actually have our stuff out and not in boxes for the first time in a long time. our house is getting less chaotic and more peaceful. we're just waiting to have the mouldy carpet in our main bedroom replaced and we'll be able to move in fully. it's quite a hassle going back & forth between rental agents and landlords but I think we're just about there on having a well-ventilated non-mildewed home! the last tenants did not take care of this place.

so I have a job! the real deal, mon-fri 8.30-5 office job. it's at a propety agents as reception & admin and looks pretty friendly. it's on a long-term temping basis but if they like me it may turn permanent... office colours are black, white & red which I can cope with and amusingly are the same as NZONE colours so fran and I will be a cute matching couple when we're both working!

you may be getting a lot of balcony pics now that we're not travelling round much! I'll get some pics of inside our place up as soon as we're moved in fully. hopefully soon I'll have a weeny little camera I can carry around and snap anything that takes my fancy.

hmm, that wasn't very exciting was it? I have some art & musings to post soon... cheerybye!

2006-07-17T23:48:00.000+13:00

working girl...

aaah, just had such a funny letter come through the door that my cheeks actually hurt I was so amused. my energy bill came addressed to Mrs Lickelborough! ...which means that when I spelt my name starting with 'M for mother' they must have thought I said 'L for lover'. strange. and amusing. let's hope that mistake doesn't happen too often, or publically!

I finally have some temp work - house keeping. man, my appreciation of the service professions is going way up. all I can say is, people, leave your hotel rooms tidy. don't vomit in sinks, make confetti out of your leaflets or pee all over the floor. it is interesting to see life from a pretty different viewpoint. hopefully I'm going to get an on-going temp job in an office mon-fri 9-5 stylee starting next week, which has potential to become a permanent job or if not really aid my applications by having current clerical work on my cv.

so I'm pooped. earning money, although not a lot. and meeting some nice people. and developing my skills of understanding heavily accented english. oh, and I get free cooked lunch and free part-used toilet rolls and left over groceries from self-catered units. we had pancakes last night with maple syrup...

2006-07-08T14:43:00.000+13:00

happy and sad news

so, my great news is that I've just become an aunty for the first time. my eldest brother dave and his wife win had a gorgeous little girl on thurday, 2 weeks earlier than expected. she's called talia josephine. I'm so excited for them, and so gutted to be on the other side of the world. it's likely to be a year before we see them, but we'll definately be getting ourselves sorted with skype and a camera so we can do video calling!

my parents were away in wales out of reception when win went into labour and didn't find out talia was born til they drove up a hill and got a text message! how many newborns have such a cool hairstyle as my little niece, eh?

and here's the other view to the west and the remarkables as promised. I love sitting on my balcony and taking in the stillness and calm. I'm also becoming a crazy bird lady as I'm trying to get birds to feed on my balcony. a neighbours' cat likes sitting on our balcony for some reason, so I go and collect it and eject it through the front door to try to encourage it to find a different spot to hang out at. there are some sweet birds called silvereye which are about the same size as a robin but feed in groups and they have gorgeous colouring that I particularly like. here's one chirpy little chappy...

the sad news is that one of the instructors I worked with at FMA, damien, died last week ice climbing in the french alps. we worked together really regularly most of the time, but when I left the UK we had some unresolved issues, and it makes me a little more sad we didn't manage to sort them out. at times like this it's not so cool being on the other side of the world.

2006-07-05T15:40:00.000+13:00

refreshing view

here's the view west from our balcony at sunrise towards cecil peak and queenstown. to the east we look at the remarkables which is a range of very craggy, jagged mountains, but I don't have a pic doing them justice yet. we're getting sorted in our place and it's quite a haven to me. great to have our own space back again after living in a shared house for a while. so, our address and contact details now are:

address: unit 2, 507 frankton road, queenstown, 9300
home tel: +64 (0) 3 441 3291

flukey timing on this pic, taken at the top of the gondola station above queenstown, captured a tandem paraglider on it's way past - something I'd really love to do but it's a tad expensive at the moment. we spent a short day walking up the gondola hill via a stream that was used for the first hydro-electric power in queenstown in the 1920's (I think). the old water pipes ran beside the path all the way up through pines and deciduous forest, it was a gorgeous walk. this pic was taken at the old dam that supplied the hydro pipes with bent and broken bits of pipes sticking out of the ground at strange angles.

so I'm looking for work, and finding the application process of seeing an ad, applying, waiting to hear about an interview, interview, to hopefully job offer a little slow and frustrating so I'd really appreciate your prayers on that front, and also on selling our lovely rose as she doesn't really fit in our teeny parking space and our drive is incredibly steep and not rose-friendly on frosty/snowy days!

anyone feeling in the mood, I'd love some snail mail at my new address!!
jen xxx

2006-06-28T10:29:00.000+13:00

no news means...

...there's not much happpening, and no pics means we're back in internet cafes. we sign for our place on thurs and might move in then, we're not really sure how it works! fran's line manager lives 9 doors down from us, so we'll know some neighbours, and he's not actually a skydivder - hoorah! I had one job interview yesterday but didn't really like the place :( I'm still waiting to hear from the job I'd really like to get. other than that it's freezing - all the water taps outside at the campsite are frozen and we have our wee fan heater on all the time keeping us warm. I'd really like to get my job sorted now...

2006-06-23T21:24:00.000+13:00

heavenly welcome to queenstown!

we just watched the opening night of queenstown's winter festival - amazing fireworks over the water while we sat on the beach. there were some real stunners including giant dandelion sparkleys and springtime tree blossom poweder puffs. and it gets better... I just fulfilled one of my life wishes by having real hot chocolate (with chillis - if only juliette binoche had served me...). well actually it was supposed to be real hot chocolate in vienna, but I'm not going to be fussy about the details! and to top that all off... we've found a place to live! after a week of trawling round an ever increasingly depressing number of units and shared houses, we've found as near to perfect as you can get the week before all the ski-fields open. actually, this place was on the list all week, but dreary pictures put us off. it's a 2 level unit right next to the lake up a little slope. the panorama of the surrounding mountains are stunning. it's 3kms from QT and there's a cycling track along the lake edge into town. it has a balcony & little terrace and comes fully furnished which is a big bonus cause there isn't much in the way of 2nd hand furniture to be found around here. we still have to have our application accepted by the landlord, but we should be sweet. we'll get pics and an address up as soon as it's confirmed. and the last spot of news, I've just gone ginger again after 4-inch highlights roots weren't really looking cool anymore. now I look classy for my job interviews. will get a pic up asap.
finally, its almost feeling like we'll be at home here...

2006-06-18T12:17:00.000+13:00

safe arrival...

so we're here, in queenstown. I love god - we had an amazing journey - left methven mid-morning, had time to stop & play on a gorgeous beach on our way down the east coast, and arrived in queenstown about 6pm. we ran the gauntlet of storms with snow still at the road edges and falling on the hills around us but not where we were. last night it snowed on the hills here so I'm huessing the roads are pretty icy right now. we stayed in a backpackers last night with a really steep driveway which rose valiantly powered out of this morning, only to discover snow had fallen up to 20m away giving us a safe exit! the journey was great, really quick & easy and rose did well seeing as she's full of boxes, bags, bedding.

now we're staying in a motor park (as long as we can find somewhere to store our boxes today!) so are off to buy a fan heater to keep us warm and dry. outside it's snowing...

2006-06-16T19:47:00.001+13:00

goodbye, farewell...

so we leave methevn tomorrow, and have to make quenstown in one day as sunday has more snow forecast and the mountain passes will become impassable. last night we went to fran's leaving do, and as fate would have it met a couple who we really clicked with... 2 nights before we move 6 hrs away! it did remarkably cheer up my evening to have a non sky diving friend to talk to though - I suddenly felt human again after having an interesting conversation with someone my age! today I had my curry lunch leaving do with all the great women I met here, so it was a good farewll in all. now we just need to get packed and find somewhere to stay tomorrow night when we arrive in QT - we need a place to put our boxes whilst we find a house, so that we can stay in our camper and drive it round to view houses easily. prayers highly appreciated.

ah, and if anyone has some pics from fran and my's sheffield leaving do I'd really appreciate some in emails as we seem to have none. thanks peeps!

2006-06-14T15:40:00.001+13:00

it's a white-out!

so here, as promised, are the pics from our recent snowfall. there was so much snow, loss of electricity & communications that yesterday some farmsteads still hadn't been reached and the rescue helicopters were going out to make contact. it's been a bit of a farce actually as much of auckland also had long power cuts - when one wire snapped cutting of the whole city's electric supply. tourists in methven have been getting a bit antsy being able to see the mountain with it's 90cm fresh snow but not get up there with the road being blocked and it also having an electricity cut due to a snapped wire.

these first pics were taken in the morning while it was still snowing. rose is still sporting a fluffy white afro and snowed into the driveway. we went out again in the afternoon and had fun playing in the deep snow...

everything with any kind of flat surface was deep in snow and some porches were buckling under the weight of it.

there was quite a lot of fun to be had relieving snowy trees of their load. the huge snow piles at the edge of the road are currently being cleared and taken in big trucks to get dumped outside of town!

fran and I went learning circle crazy yesterday over coffee and assessed both of our lives and the thing we want to happen which aren't or just need some adjusting. (the learning circle is a tool from st thomas' church to help you learn from events & make constructive plans). fran's stuff was mainly involving extreme sports and mine mainly time with god and time doing art. it was really useful and will help us when we get to queenstown and are doing new & different things with our time.

sunset over the hills.

2006-06-12T23:19:00.000+13:00

merry christmas! ... or at least that's how it feels

we've just had a huge half metre dump of snow today, and a power cut all day long. we woke this morning to about 40cm of snow which continued all day til 4pm. of course we made the most of it and went out to play in the snow. the huge drifts were excellent for power tackles with soft landings ;) fran however managed to miss his target with a snowball that smacked me right in the face and now I have a sore nose and some idea of what it's like a get punched! we're lucky to have bottled gas where we're staying for hot water & heating as many NZ homes just have electric power. hopefully my pics will turn out well, but it'll be a while til you see them as we have the slowest dial up in the world where we're currently residing.

on the housing front, we moved out of the lodge ok and are staying with ian (instructor on the course) and seb (his fiancee) in their great house. they're welsh and my accent's already going a bit odd, so who know what I'll sound like by the end of the week. I thought I might have picked up a kiwi accent by now, but I'm still trying to figure out what it is! we're hoping the snow will clear by saturday or we might have to drive the long way round to get to queenstown. when we get there we'll still have to find a place to live and a job for me so it's still a little unsettling not knowing exactly where we'll be living or what I'll be doing, but I'm sure god does so I'm happy.

2006-06-06T23:19:00.000+13:00

I hate packing :(

2006-06-06T20:25:00.000+13:00

au revoir redwoods

we leave our lodge tomorrow to spend the last 10 days staying in a spare room - rent went up 250% because of ski season, so we all decided it was time to go! the guys have their exam tomorrow so it's a bit hectic, and I hate packing so haven't done very much yet, but hey-ho! good news - we have 2 people interested in our van which we didn't think we were going to get to sell before leaving but now it looks possible. we go to queenstown on sat 17/sun 18 june and hope to find somewhere to live in the first week! should be an adventure anyway. I'm really excited about going to QT, but sad to leave the friends I've made here. not sure when we'll be able to get on the internet so it might be quiet for a while.

big changes... kind of exciting and daunting and a whole bunch of other things at the same time. we'd really appreciate your prayers, esp for the right house, the right job for me and selling our van. thanks! missing you great people out there... xxx

2006-06-02T12:27:00.000+13:00

I'm trying out new title fonts - can you comment & tell me if this looks like funky hand-writing. it's called 'jenkins V2.0' and I have no idea if most computers have it or not. my original, 'chiller', is not that common and I've had boring 'times new roman' on my screen since being in NZ. if this doesn't work I'll have to try another! thanks.

2006-06-01T12:48:00.000+13:00

my restorer

I went for a walk on my way back from bible study on monday morning. it was the same walk fran and I did soon after we arrived and I realised how much fitter, healthier and more robust I was feeling. walking at a good pace, clambering over rocks cause the river was flooded. felt great. I've also had coldy/sore throat syptoms but they've not developed into tonsilitis or fatigue which is real progress. thank you god.

I'm reading a great book at the moment called For Women Only by Shaunti Feldahn. it's about the stuff about men we as women normally don't intuitively understand, like what sex means to a man, what being 'visual' means and how a man needs respect (it communicates love...) it's really interesting as a man or woman to read. fran's going to read it after me. there's also a For Men Only book by the author's husband. there's lots of information from an extensive questionnaire she did and you can read more at www.4-womenonly.com. I'd definatley reccomend it, even if your aren't a stereotypical man there's illuminating things in each chapter.

2006-05-23T20:26:00.000+13:00

weekend blues

this weekend dan and emma andrews stayed with us. we had home cooked indian, now I can do aloo saag, and a great brunch at our favorite cafe in methven. dan, emma and I all had french toast with bacon, grilled banana and maple syrup - a real kiwiana dish. we went for a walk on the edge of the mountains and when we finished the sky was doing amazing moody & light things with a golden glow from the setting sun. this is us walking back to the car (this time I've not done any cheeky colour editing, it's the real deal). I'm also enjoying going through our old photos and editing the ones I like the most. I'm going to make sure our pics go to good use and get them printed up when we move into our new place in queenstown. this is fran feeling happy at the moeraki boulders on the west coast of the south island. they're spheres of stone around crystalline deposits that get eroded out of the coastal cliffs and sit on the beach looking pretty.

I've also put some more up on my art site so check it out...

2006-05-22T19:58:00.001+13:00

and the winner is...

so the rose 4x4 competition was for the most creative reason for rose's repose:

and the winner is greg mickelborough (fran's bro) with this explanation - 'Despite missing the drop zone, Rose felt she'd finally silenced Fran's constant questioning of her off-road ability.' rose is a pretty gutsy girl, so I like the image of her skydiving to show fran up, even if it she didn't quite land in the right place! now, in reality our mirrors were very condensed up and fran's reversing didn't go quite to plan but by the time we were on the wrong track there was no going back and rose got stranded on her bottom. plenty of people driving past thought this was pretty amusing and stopped to take pictures (nice!) but a 4x4 pulled us out of our predicament with as much ease as it'd take a pony to pick up a polo. quick solution and no damage to rose or the bike, thanks to her rear bars.

2006-05-19T17:52:00.002+13:00

winter's snowy touch

the hills are white and crispy here, ready for the ski season which officially starts in 3 weeks time. when the sun's out the days are gorgeous and pretty mild, but the inside of our lodge remains a freezer regardless and we now have the fire stoked up every day. this week I went to a craft workshop and made butterflies, angels and even a miniature sheep out of wool!! I was younger than everone else there by at least 20 years but I haven't laughed so much in ages, aided not in the least by Sigrid, who ran the workshop, and her creative translation of bavarain german into kiwi. I have now been requested to make more miniature sheep for Ian (skydiving instructor) and Seb's wedding in August - they're Welsh...

2006-05-12T14:00:00.000+13:00

CAPTION COMPETITION!

our rose got a bit excited on the way to fox glacier, but before we reveal what actually happened, I open the rose 4x4 caption competition. most creative explanation for rose's repose get's an exciting kiwi prize airmailed from new zealand. please comment...

closing date sunday 21st may

2006-05-12T13:12:00.000+13:00

HOLIDAY!!!

ok, so it's been a few weeks since we were away, but finally I bring you the pictures...

avalanche peak waterfall, arthurs pass

we decided for our week off we'd head to the west coast and go south past the glaciers, through the mighty haast pass and have a day in queenstown checking out the rental situation for when we move in june. above: this gorgoeus little waterfall had a track up next to it to more pools and falls. great place to stop and get a coffee as we headed over the pass on our first day.

arthurs pass summit

I snapped this piccie while stopped at roadworks. I love road signs in pictures, they really add national identity. we freedom camped at kumara junction (kumara means sweet potato) on the coast for our first night at a spot on a beach we'd used before. unfortunately there was a huge storm and we didn't sleep at all as it pretty much felt the van might blow over at any moment all night long! by morning the 2 other vans camped there for the night had dissapeared and the river next to us was in flood. in the rain we headed south and in hokitika we found rodney...

rodney needs love

...and it rained some more so we kept on south til we got to franz josef, the first of 2 toursity glaciers which end only 300m above sea level and are pretty accessible. you can go glacier walking & climing or go for helicopter/airplane sightseeing tours over them.

franz josef glacier

we tried to walk to the terminal face of franz josef glacier but the huge storm the night before had changed the course of the outwash river literally removing the path in places. in fact, that ice in the pic above was the path at that point. in some places 20ft wide and 10ft deep of earth forming the path was just gone & replaced by an iceberg laden river. it was pretty amazing to see. we camped in luxury with hot showers in franz josef for the night.

sunset as we walked back from the glacier

now here are a couple of pics of the sort of thing I really really really love - colour and texture in nature just... well, there aren't words to describe how much beauty I find in them. normally it's small stuff, small scale, like the contrast of a leaf on lichen or the glow of a tree with all it's leaves turned yellow blanketing the floor. I'm hoping to get a teeny camera so I can always have one with me cause there are so many times I see something as I go about daily life that I want to capture.

these gorgeous leaves were on the walk up to the glacier, people thought I was a bit odd with my camera 20cm from wet foliage, but there you go.

rock & leaves, haast pass

fran was hoping to do a few jumps at the next glacier along, fox glacier, but the rain persisted so we had a walk in the chilly rain up to the glacier then kept driving south for another day. this was also where rose went off roading (see post above). in the morning we stopped for a walk by the sea and found a stunning lagoon. it was very still and misty and the deep brown river waters snaked along the back of the beach before emptying into the sea. our pictures failed to capture the beauty of the reflections and stillness of the lagoon, but did manage one along the coast. the west coast is incredibly moody and stormy and there are beautiful wild beaches you could spend hours exploring. however, there are also sandflies whose bites swell up and itch for literally weeks, so I had my trousers tucked in my socks and my clothes pulled tight around me as we checked out this beauty spot.

west coast beach

we headed on up haast pass back inland and stopped at all the trail walks along the way. new zealand is great for 5min-1hour signed & boardwalked trails to little beauty spots and it's a great way of getting a taste of the envirnment you're driving through. this pic was taken on a very bouncy bridge walking to see the blue pools.

fran goes to the blue pools

we had a day in wanaka before heading to queenstown to check it out again before our move in june. I had the tastiest bacon of my entire life with french toast at cafe vudu in town which at the moment is the best cafe we've come across in QT. we brunched and check out the rental listings (encouraging, and we're SO ready to be living on our own again!!) then went for a walk in the park - a penisula sticking into the lake looking back at queentown and out to the surrounding mountains.

queenstown from the park

on our walk we discovered, to my absolute delight, an ice skating rink in the park. I've always loved skating, so it may have to be my new hobby. who needs snowboarding??!!

view up the lake from the park in QT

so that's pretty much it. we headed home early due to wet rainy weather and to do up our van which we're hoping to replace before we go to queenstown. our subaru estate died a few weeks ago, so I've been keeping my eye out for a new car, and this one caught my attention. a 1977 datsun 120Y ... now that's the kind of car I'd like! we also saw a 1970's canary yellow ford cortina estate in queenstown, so maybe it'll still be available when we go back in a months time...

the 1977 datsun 120Y. how can you say no to a car like this?

check out the space rocket rear end. I want one...

2006-05-12T11:14:00.000+13:00

check out this news article, it's amazing - the French made a national apology for their part in slavery and yesterday celebrated their first Slavery Remembrance Day with President Chirac saying slavery was an indelible stain on history and that facing their colonial past was key to national cohesion. imagine Britain doing something as profound and giving up the guilt of the British Empire...

2006-05-06T19:40:00.000+13:00

this gorgeous picture was taken outside our lodge on a sunny day and was a complete fluke as I got 3 pictures taken before the batteries died. enjoy the view whilst I get my blog & pics from out trip away last week sorted...

2006-04-20T20:02:00.000+13:00

double car trouble

so our vehicular relations have taken a turn for the worse recently. on wednesday night our car died. muchos kaputos. it had a dodgy 'big end' (I so didn't know cars had those) but we were told it might keep going as much as 10,000kms... in this case it managed about 100 and rattled to a limping death in the middle of the country side 20 minutes from methven. so that's a complete loss. I wasn't too attached to it, it was navy blue afterall, but a change of luck buying 2nd hand cars would be nice!

my other wee predicament came in the form of a letter from bromley county court saying I owed GBP1,800 for damages in the accident I had last may when my car got written off. I happened to phone my useless insurance company and profoundly useless lawyers the previous night, who'd told me the case had been closed in january. so it turms out as I was not in the uk and there were no witnesses, my lawyers decided to accept responsibility for the accident on my behalf meaning my insurers had to pay the other persons above expenses, which they did, only the courts haven't been informed so in about 2 weeks time if it's not sorted out I get a county court judgement in my name!! my mum's on the case, and mrs A. doesn't settle for any nonsense, but this whole thing is ridiculous as the other driver didn't even include the lights on her accident diagram she reckoned were green when she went through them and hit me! this is my first brush with lawyers, but I don't think they could have been more useless, in fact they might has well have been working for the other side!

on the up side we get to try and find a funky old car for me, cars are quite cheap here and I don't think I have to tell NZ insurers about UK insurance claims, so it could be a lot worse :)

2006-04-16T22:20:00.000+13:00

public holiday strangeness...

no adverts on tele on public holidays. wierd. it's only been 6 months since the BBC, but I never realised quite how much I did in the adverts til now.

2006-04-13T23:59:00.000+13:00

check out my art site which I've finally managed to get some pics onto...