Our trip down south coincided with the Waimate Strawberry Fare, a celebration of the local crop that has become a well known event. We parked at the home of Waimate legendary teacher Mary Firth (also fantastic Aunty) and headed inside for a chat. Mary produced a suitcase full of interesting things for Alayna to play […]
Steampunk Oamaru
Oamaru was on the list of places to visit while we were down south so one morning we drove south to check out the steampunk capital of New Zealand. Our first stop, naturally enough, was at Steampunk HQ. It was simple enough to recognise where we were going, there aren’t many buildings with a strange […]
Timaru for a few days
From Hanmer Springs we continued on towards Timaru with a couple of stops in Christchurch, one to pick up some duplo we’d bid for on TradeMe and a second stop at Riccarton Mall to stretch the legs. We were looking for some new shoes for Alayna and found a pair on big discount at Rebel […]
The kiwifruit incident
We left St Arnaud in the morning with a plan to do a morning walk before lunch. This worked out quite well other than a couple of incidents, one during the walk and one afterwards. Lake Rotoroa was the first stop and we had lovely views from the pier and got to watch a swan […]
St Arnaud, Lake Rotoiti, Mount Robert and a fire alarm
Day two of our holiday and more walking in store. We again took the Black Valley walk and had a look around the lake shore. This morning’s destination was the Brunner Peninsula Nature Walk and as we neared the start point we could see a group of people congregated at the lake side taking in […]
A big boat, driving and a forest walk
Our December family holiday saw us take an early morning ferry from Wellington heading to the South Island. Earlier in the year I had won a return sailing with Bluebridge and our first journey across Cook Strait was taken on the Strait Feronia. We spent a lot of time in the family room which we […]
A photowalk and Bird of the Year
With longer days and the promise of warmer weather we’ve been getting out and about making the most of the opportunities outdoors. Earlier this month was the latest Scott Kelby worldwide photowalk and the Wellington event took place in Petone. This was the first time Keryn and Alayna have joined in and we set off […]
Supermoon and Mark Gee
Facebook has certaintly helped increase my knowledge of all things astrophotography, largely through membership of different groups and seeing the photos others share and their stories about how the images were captured. One of the stars of the New Zealand (and world) astrophotography scene is Mark Gee and as luck would have it he’s a […]
And now 2
Alayna is now 2 years old which meant a party and lots of celebrating. Alayna recieved lots of cool presents including loads of clothes, many great books and games (the fishing game from Aunty Bridget and the clan Burdett is fantastic). There were a number of gifts that were made rather than bought such as […]
Re:Lux
We’ve now visited the Lux festival three times this week. On Wednesday evening there was some rain about so I headed into the city to try and get some photos of lights and reflections. Unfortunately (for me anyway) the rain was light and didn’t hang around so there wasn’t much in the way of pools […]
Lux is back
A beautiful and calm winters evening last Friday saw the return of the Wellington Lux festival for 2015. I’d read about a free workshop for creating fairies in a jar so while Keryn went and signed us up Alayna and I took a quick trip to Moore Wilsons to buy a suitable jar. The workshop […]
Swimming and Ballet
Weekends at the moment are organised around activities for Alayna. On Saturday we attend swimming classes in Whitby, we’ve tried a few different swimming classes now and while they’ve all been good the Ally Todd swim school is probably our favourite. Alayna still loves the water and her favourite parts are jumping into and being […]