School's out for summer...

The last few weeks of school flew by. We had some great weather... One lovely evening I met Will after work in the rose gardens at the botanic gardens and we had a very nice wander.

During the last week I managed to pop out during lunchtime with a couple of colleagues to visit a friend of ours from school who had recently had a baby. For once I didn't make a baby cry! In fact, she managed to go to sleep in my arms, but my arms were killing me after about half an hour of holding her and jiggling her up and down!

Here's a random sunset taking from the deck off our dining room. There have been a few good ones lately.

Recently we hosted Merja and Jukka, a couple of very cool couch surfers from Finland. They stayed for a few nights and were absolutely lovely. We shared a lot of laughs and they are keen for us to go and stay with them in Finland one day. They bought us a gift of a a very nice pewter reindeer tea light holder.

A few weeks back I spotted a 'reduced to clear' orchid for $20 in a local supermarket which I nabbed. I don't know why it was on clearance as it seems perfectly healthy. It now resides in the guest bedroom.

 

The garden continues to flourish. This year I've grown the biggest cauliflower of my life to date. Will and I managed to amuse ourselves with 'Mrs Cauliflower Head' photos...

The broad beans have been very good. I pulled them up the other day as they were pretty much over and I wanted the room in the garden. I like the sequence below showing them in all their stages... They are very tasty and I've also frozen a few meals worth.

The tomato plants in the greenhouse are continuing to go mad. The photos below are a couple of weeks apart and the rate of growth is pretty scary! I really am cultivating a tomato jungle... A lot of plants now have flowers and we've got some green fruit formed.

It's a similar story with our cucumbers, they are growing like crazy! Again you can see the difference of just a couple of weeks.

The outside plants are also doing well. We have been enjoying the lettuce. I have now enjoyed my first week of holiday at home and have spent a lot of the sunny days out in the garden. It's nice being able to work on the tan while also doing productive stuff around the section.

 
I have one more week at home before we drive up to Hamilton next Friday. I have my friend Elvie's hen do in Auckland next Saturday, then we'll stay in the 'Tron for Christmas.

This weekend has been rather social, starting with date night on Thursday with Will. I managed to use up 3 separate vouchers which combined together for a lovely evening. We started with 2 for 1 teapot cocktails at Alice...

 

We then headed to Peking House where I had a voucher for half-price half a duck. We also ordered some sweet and sour pork to round out the meal and the food was superb. Some of the best Chinese I've had in NZ. It helped that it was BYO so we enjoyed washing the meal down with a civilised bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. By now we were totally stuffed (not to mention a tad merry) so the final event was the movies where we got to sit and relax for a couple of hours watching the latest instalment of The Hunger Games. It was very good, I'm glad that the movies are doing justice to the books. The voucher sites regularly have movie deals where you get any 2 movie tickets, plus a $20 food voucher to use at Electric Avenue for $25. It's a real bargain. We've still got the food voucher to use as we were far too full to use it on Thursday...

Last night I headed to the Cambridge pub for a few hours with a couple of my rugby friends to farewell another rugby friend of ours who is heading off on an adventure teaching at an international primary school in Singapore. Today Will and I were also out at a Christmas BBQ that a friend of mine from work was hosting. It has been a busy few days!

That is all for the moment. I'll leave you with a pic of my Christmas cakes which I baked a few days ago. The recipe I had made 3 decent sized cakes so I've been enjoying giving some of it away as gifts.