That's nice, that's different, that's unusual...

This week's theme at My Place & Yours is "that's nice, that's different, that's unusual", with a focus on quirky features in our homes. I picked a couple of things - the first one being what looks like an unassuming cupboard door in the kitchen:


But is actually a meat safe....a ventilated cupboard originally intended for storing meat (ie before fridges existed).


It lets in a lovely freezing draft in winter, and is currently residence to an extended family of spiders.

Our second quirky feature is one which we use all the time and I personally think is brilliant - it was made by the farmer who built the house for himself and his family. It's a wall mounted dish rack:



It is so strong and frees up bench space (important when bench space is at a premium)....

Trip down memory lane...

Does anyone remember Tatties? They were little hard potato things, that when deep fried turned into light, crisp, crunchy yumminess. I have been looking for them for ages, and thought they were gone, never to be seen again. .....until, I found them in Rangiora - at Bin Inn of all places!


Anyway, my afternoons are now often blessed with a bowl of salt-sprinkled Tatties. Yummo.


p.s. we lost the house so it's back to the drawing board. We were so close.....grrrr.

Monday funk

Monday again. So soon...it was muggy and hot today so I took Boo to Waikuku where it was hazy and warm.



We are anxiously awaiting news regarding a house which we desperately want but are so close to not getting.... and we may not know for sure until Wednesday. Until then, fingers crossed.

The quilt begins....

I sat down this afternoon and cut out the pieces for my quilt. There's always a bit of trepidation with the first cut, and I am definitely a little worried the whole concept will fall through, as I made up the pattern and layout myself. Not being a seasoned quilter, I'm sure this is unwise. But we'll see.


Unfortunately I need to get my sewing machine serviced before I can start the sewing process, but I still have plenty of other projects to keep my little hands busy.

Through the front door

When I get home, on a good day, this is what greets me. It's generally not this tidy, often Pot has dragged something woollen from our bedroom and deposited it on the floor in front of the door.

Although I try to have fresh flowers on the table as much as possible, it gets a bit hard in winter. The glass case mounted on the wall is our fuse-box and has our meters in there. So when the meter reader comes, he has to knock on the door and come in to check our readings.

The chalk board has a list of houses we would love to buy. Most of them have been crossed of as the owners have made it very clear they will not sell.

And that's it - my submission for this week's My Place and Yours....not very exciting I'm afraid.

Garden goodness - update

I went on a cleaning frenzy over the weekend - washed all the windows inside and out - the first time it's been done in the 3 years we've been living here.

While I was clambering around outside the windows of our spare room, I found this wee gem hiding in the corner. I've never noticed it in previous years - that's one very cool thing about where we live - the garden just does it's own thing, and every year new things seem to appear.

And another find yesterday - my strawberries have started to fruit.


My wild imagination made me think that home-grown strawberries would be giant and glossy and red and perfect, but then I remembered that store-bought ones are so genetically modified that nothing in real life can compare.


So mine are small and uneven, but they taste oh so delicious!

Introducing...Sefton

I have finished a project! This is Sefton the bear. He is a present for Arthur Brown, age approximately 14 days. I hope he likes.

You may recognise the yarn from this post - I figure so long as I finish about 1 project per week, I should keep ahead of my buying....

My secret weapon?

So this week's them for My Place & Yours is your secret weapon. Quite a tough one as I have never really considered anything I have to be a secret weapon in any sense. But after some thought, I decided that the closest thing I have is the Goddess.


She's not really a secret, but it's hard to drive her without smiling, especially if you look around and realise everyone else is smiling at you. Especially little kids aged between three and seven
- they like to point and grab their parent's sleeves and say "look at that car!"...

And she has been an essential weapon in the search for our perfect home - many of the possible houses have been found while driving the streets of Christchurch...

The possibilities...

I bought 2 skeins of homespun wool this week, on some sort of whim (a pretty crazy whim actually, given that I already have one knitting project on the go, and the temperature outdoors is now reaching up into the twenties some days).

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, except that some will go towards a little teddy bear for a friend's new baby (welcome to this world Arthur)...I can't believe how hard it is keeping up with all these newborns!

And I am getting myself in more of a pickle with regards to crafty projects as tomorrow is stash-rehash which I have had circled in my diary for weeks - bring on the new fabric!

Craft craziness!

Blog HQ

Meet Me At Mikes has a game going at the moment, with a weekly theme. This week's theme is blog HQ. To see where lots of other other peeps blog, then check out My Place & Yours. As for me:

For the most part, I write all my blogs (and read all the blogs I follow) here, ensconced on our sofa. It also happens to be where the bulk of my knitting gets done..

And for those of you waiting with excitement for this week's Lamb Wednesday dish, it was a lamb curried pot pie, and it was delicious. So delicious, that we ate it before I had taken a photo. Doh!

Otama

This is where we stayed in the Coromanel. It was so amazing, the weather was perfect and we were able to just sit around, enjoy the view and eat like pigs. It was even warm enough for a dip in the ocean.