Haiti Still Remembered

Finally, a couple of new hearts to go up on Etsy over the weekend.

I've not been slacking on this project by any means. But somehow I did slip into a comfort zone of laziness, beguiled by how easy it was just to supply the Cafe..& not have to stress over photographing, listing, packing & sending.

Comfort zone's can be dangerous. I'm doing Haiti a disservice by not appealing to a far larger audience than just the local one ;)

Two Days of Rain

...and I do mean rain!! We got 152mm (6inches), which is quite a lot for this part of the country in a 48 hour period. Still it is winter & to be expected.


Even the cats were pleased to see the sun again this morning. Pleased enough that they were oblivious of how near to each other they were...

You know the sun still has some heat in it when the fence steams as it dries!

The Fire Within

Sometimes you make a bead that you are inordinately pleased with. Something about it just calls you & for whatever reason, you dont want to put a price on it & list it.

This is one such bead.

If I didn't know better I'd call it a happy accident. But it wasn't, not really.
I'd been trialling the corals & reds of some new to me 104coe glasses I'd recently received.
Having worked with 96 coe for so long I'd forgotten just how shocky 104 can be. I'll be honest, I work hot & forget to pre-warm the canes ;)
At the end of the torch session I had a whole lot of 'bit's all over my work area & decided to utilise them along with the short ends I had left.
A clear base, three shades of red/coral, some silvered ivory stringer, a bit of intense black & a lot of intense heat & there you have it.

It looked good going into the kiln - it blew me away when it came out. I love mornings like that.

Undomestic Godess

That's me.
I'd rather mow the lawns than vacuum the house or get pricked pruning roses than dusting the furniture, I rather undergo torture than take a trip to the supermarket....& I'd far rather melt glass than cook!

It's not that I don't like to cook, I just don't enjoy it as some people do. It's not that I dont like food either, believe me I do, I simply get more of a buzz using my hands & my time to create a slightly more lasting eye candy over something that will disappear minutes after everyone sits at the table. I always have & I always will.

I'm cool with that though as it give certain family members something to tease me about every time there is a gathering of the extended family.

I've always had rather a warped theory on some things. I like to see something 'lasting' for my money & time. Yet there was a time when I'd far rather spend my money at a plant nursery than at a clothes store.

These days I'd rather spend money anywhere other than at a supermarket though.

The strange thing is that I haven't always felt this ambivalent towards supermarket shopping & cooking. I suspect it has happened over time & to some extent has been influenced by the fussiness & bland tastes of those that I have resided with in the past.
I was fortunate enough to be brought up by parents who had diverse tastes in food, & a mother who was way ahead of her time in testing out exotic dishes & recipes in an era where most families here were busy living on the bland meat & three vege fare.

I grew up developing a taste for the exotic which, in turn, developed into a love of chilli's so hot they would leave me eye's streaming & almost speechless & wasabi intense enough to cause a nasal orgasm.....

I like my food to be a taste sensation.

Suffice to say that if I could afford to have a pantry full of fresh spices & such on hand so that I could cook whatever I felt like on any given day, without having to make a trip to the supermarket or some speciality store or other, I'd no doubt enjoy cooking.

The again sometimes I surprise myself. Last Friday a trip to the fresh vege stall up the road yielded not only the 3kg's of banana's I purchased for general consumption, but almost as much again of slightly over ripe banana's given to me by the people who run the stall.

Some banana recycling was in order! The first night I made some caramel banana's for dessert then, on Sunday, I had a banana bake-a-thon.

Wonders will never cease! I call this little lot 'Banana by products'
There's a banana cake, banana bread, a banana & walnut loaf & choco banana muffins.
Because I dont particularly like baking done with banana's personally I splurged & made myself some apple cinnamon & walnut muffins.
This lot was supposed to last to do some of the school lunches this week. I think there is enough cake left for the lunches tomorrow & a few pieces of one of the loaves.

Humph - I should have made beads instead!

A Very Clever Glass

A year down the track & Gaffers Chalcedony still has me firmly in her grasp.

Exactly where she wants me I suspect, calling me back every time I attempt to ignore her & play with something else.

I try to play with all of the lovely colours in my glass stash, honest I do. While I'm playing with the other glasses I am sure that I hear her (& Chalcedony is indeed a she) muttering words of mutiny in the corner.

I reluctantly pull out a rod just to convince myself that she isn't about to do anything different from the last time I teased her with the flame - & she does. The siren sings her song & weaves her magic again.

Kieran is Home

My baby boy returned from his first deployment last Friday evening. Yep, I dont give a rats patootie if he turned 25 while he was away - he is my baby boy.

Five minutes, 5 years or 5 decades he will ALWAYS be my baby boy.

I can't believe how fast the last 6 months have gone, a Christmas & his birthday without him just weren't the same. But as you can imagine I was pretty darn exited about him finally coming home. So excited that I teared up more than once in the time before we went to the airport to meet him....or perhaps that was relief.

I didn't cry when he left. I didn't want him to leave with the image of a tearful Mum imprinted on his mind. He is living the life that he was destined to live, doing what he wants to do & serving his country by doing so. I have faith in that & I wanted him to leave with the knowledge that I am proud of him, not the message of fear & worry that tears would have portrayed.

Watching those boys arrive home, & some of them do seem so very young, I couldn't help but feel for those that had no one there to greet them, & those with babies that didn't recognize their Daddys any more because of the long separation.

Yet between those boys there is a camaraderie, a connection that is special - you can see it, you can feel it. It's not defined by age, race or rank. It is defined by what they have seen & experienced together. I don't expect that there is anything else quite like it in other 'work' environments, but it is a wonderful thing to see.

Fortunately Kieran has the most supportive wonderful fiancée, who seems to be of the same mind as myself. She is also patient & generous, not minding his Mum & family hanging around when I am sure they would rather have been alone. We had a wonderful dinner out at Kerry's parents place & spent a warm relaxed evening catching up.

There were a couple of moments when I felt a bit of a lump in my throat, when I thought back to all that had happened while he had been away. Knowing how the deaths resulting from the Iroquois Helicopter accident here on ANZAC Day & a motorcycle accident that took the life of a solider the next day had impacted on him. Lives lost on home soil - it seems so senseless somehow.

So the baby boy who was born on ANZAC Day (NZ's equivalent to the USA's Memorial Day) has returned safely home. I know I'm as grateful as all get out!

Kitty Convert #2

'nuff said!
(well, apart from the fact that the wine box in the background in no way reflects my tastes in wine! Lindauer has to be the worlds worst excuse for sparkly stuff - blagh!)

All Over the Show

But I don't mind too much. One day I will find my style.

In the mean time my efforts appear to be happily finding new places to go.

Some Beads Along The Way

When time permitted I got to the torch & managed to put together a few sets of beads.

Thinking myself a clever little person for having created stock enough to last me a while, I was somewhat surprised...no, make that stunned, when my first lot of listings sold within hours of listing them. My remaining stock didn't get the chance to be listed as a visiting designer saw it & purchased the lot.

The best laid plans of mice and men......

IN...& Loving it #9

So that is us. The move is complete, we are all settled in & loving it.

Some things have come at a cost as there are a few things that aren't quite as convenient as they were before. It's further to the Post Office, takes a lot longer to get to work...& there isn't a decent cafe anywhere near!!

I'll never like blue carpet, off white walls, down lights (who invented those things anyway....obviously someone that had no interest in art or crafts of any sort!!) or vertical blinds, but for now I can live with them. I don't expect that I will ever enjoy the rules that come with renting either, that inability to put your own stamp on a house or garden & make it feel truly a 'home'. But once again I can live with it.

It's warm, it's tidy & it's PEACEFUL!

It's conducive to living... & creating :)

This batch of Haiti Hearts was taken around to Ris'tretto recently... they'd sold all the rest just after I moved.

IN...& Loving it #8

The neighbourhood.
Call me a snob, but it is so nice to live in a neighbourhood where people actually care about their homes enough to keep them looking tidy again.

It is an absolute delight to walk around here. We are only 5 minutes walk from being out of a built up area & into a green space. Even though this area was developed at the same time the houses aren't all the same, so one isn't faced with a street full of replicas, almost clones of each other, each only having a couple of features that might make it different to the next. I often wonder about that & why people would be happy to appear not to have any individuality, or anything that distinguishes them from their neighbours.


There is a small park with a pond just up the road & over the back is a Home Centre with a huge builders & home handyman store. It also has rather a substantial garden department. Oh dear.


The funniest thing is that I have almost come a full circle. My very first home when my eldest son was a baby was not so very far from here. It bordered on open grazing land & the only building you could see from it was a small plant nursery. That small plant nursery has since become a rather large plant nursery, possibly the largest in this city.

IN...& Loving it #7

Rules aside, sometimes one just cant help themselves. There is such a thing as too much grassy leafy flaxy stuff.....especially when it is so congested & overgrown that it is sending runners under the driveway.

We are required to maintain the garden & lawns, but it's not specific as to whether that is just keeping it weed free or not. Darn that 'grey area' ;)

I felt a bit of judicious thinning was in order...

Before

After

Then there was the small matter of the garden edging that ran directly into the end of the patio. It somehow just looked 'wrong'.

Before - with evidence of more 'judicious thinning'...

After - with some of the evidence (very little) replanted....

IN...& Loving it #6

The wonderful weather has also allowed for some late in the season garden purchases.

Initially I was somewhat disappointed as it was quickly discovered that due to the way the garden is laid out & the rather stringent rules surrounding what tenants can & can't do, seemed somewhat prohibitive.
The 'garden' is primarily grasses, which I could normally work around. However these uninspiring specimens have been firmly embedded in weed mat & then covered by a rather thick layer of bark.

I love colour. I love variety & texture in both leaves & flowers.
Something had to be done....

Pots it was. Just as well I had loads of terracotta pots! Even better that it was sale time at a lot of the local plant nurseries.

Just a little bit scary that over the last 8 weeks I have filled in excess of 20 terracotta pots with plants, & have even snuck in a couple of purchases of more pots....

Woke up to a slight 'oopsy' one morning. I hadn't properly checked the rope holding my hanging pots & didn't realise that one in particular had perished almost all the way through whilst unused over the last few years.

It had speared itself nicely into the lawn...no harm done to either pot or plant.

This strip of fence would be the perfect place for a garden....it doesn't get much sun apart from in the mornings, & I can imagine a few tree ferns underplanted with hostas, solomons seal & astrantias & bleeding hearts. Yep, I see a blank space & my wee mind goes right into planning mode. But for now the pots will have to do.

IN...& Loving it #5

We've been blessed with days so bright & clear, full of the gentle warmth usually associated with early autumn rather than late, that it has been difficult to stay inside. Most days start with a coffee on the patio & me just absorbing the expanse of blue sky & the feel of fresh air & sunshine on my face. Bliss.

Discovering that this house is pretty much on an inbound flight path in certain weather/wind conditions has been a bonus. I love watching planes & on the days that this flight path is used they fly so low that I can tell which airline each plane belongs to.

Air New Zealand

Pacific Blue (why are the planes red?)

IN...& Loving it #4

I haven't met the neighbours yet, but I've made heaps of new friends...

Praying mantis are busy laying their eggs everywhere, the females at least!

There are loads of spiders around, I have never seen such a variety of decent sized spiders. When one is spotted the reaction varies... the girls run squealing & calling for me to remove them from wherever they have been spotted. I run for the camera.

The markings on this beauty are wonderful!

This is Siris, my eldest son Jeremy's new baby. He's such a honey, & has visited a couple of times since we have been here. Funny, we don't see the cats around when he visits ;)

Not quite as pretty as the spider above, but still interesting.

I haven't seen any lizards or geckos, but my lovely copper gecko has finally found a place that he can hang outside.

IN...& Loving it #3

New house, new garden, new obsessions.....

I spent some time watching the artichoke progress from immature flower 'bud' into full bloom. Fascination & my love of watching plants I have never grown before develop through to maturity easily outruled any desire to cut the flower heads that were still immature enough to harvest & eat when we moved in.

Then there is 'that' Palm tree. What an absolute joy to look out at it every time I pass through the lounge or go out the front door.

In...& Loving it #2

A few of the house & outdoor living.

Pretty ordinary from the street, but that's ok because I dont have to look at it ;)

This was what appealed to me - a decent size patio & NO fence right in my face!!

I'm sure that some people gasp when I say that the house is right on a small 'round-about', but I have to say that this is a view that I never get tired of!

An unexpected bonus was discovered in the vege garden.

IN...& Loving it

I've been remiss! We moved in & so much has happened since that it would be impossible to even try & catch up here.

Life can sure get eventful, especially when you have things you need to get done it seems. How about I catch up in pictures....

Everyone is happier!

Happy kids, who it seems can never be too old for a cardboard carton & a small slope....

The Loner cat

The Stoner cat...