Picamping

Adrian and I went camping on the weekend, just for Saturday night. We stayed at Dickson Park near Thames. It was a pretty neat camping ground. They had a really nice new-ish swimming pool and an aviary with finches, canaries, budgies and (my favourite) quails. Of course it came with the prerequisite annoying drunk and loud middle-agers but most places have those on a Saturday night I'd think. This was our first camping trip together. We bought the tent last year a couple of weeks before moving to Auckland and this was our first chance to use it.

Yesterday we drove back to Auckland the scenic way, around the coast (passing through Kawakawa Bay) on the Pacific Coast highway and into Auckland through Howick. We also went past Miranda where they have thousands of migratory birds at the moment (yearly) and stopped in at the information centre. (Which doubles as a very impressive bookshop - I felt like I wanted to buy about half of the books there). Adrian uniquely dubbed our experience as "Picamping" (Picanto+camping). I like it!

The photo with our hands is meant to show our view for the night. Though, unfortunately, clouds came over before nightfall, and we couldn't see many stars at all. The bottom two photos are from the bird hide at Miranda.

Also, this week is my last week as a lady of leisure - next week I am starting my job at Teltherm. I was hired by Anne (who owns the business with her husband Mark), who is lovely and I am looking forward to working with them. Also they are currently working on a new and improved website so hopefully that will be up soon. Teltherm was one of my clients when I worked at MSL in Lower Hutt. They are a second-tier (MSL being first) calibration laboratory and their main business is manufacture and sale of temperature and pressure measurement equipment.

In Friday night I got to see my friend Jess who I haven't seen for a couple of years, while they were on OE in Europe and Canada. She is getting married to the lovely Nigel in a few weeks time so we will be going down to the wedding in Raglan. It was great to see her again; the gorgeous flowers and pinot gris were an extra special bonus!

Recently I have had time to satisfy my creative urge and have been making more softies. Here are some of my favs:

I was inspired by Adrian to write and illustrate my first 'book'. It was Adrian's Valentine's Day present for this year. He really loved it, which makes me feel so good because I was really excited about giving it to him and the fact that he thinks it's great makes me feel like an artist! ;)

Here are a couple of pages from it, though the photos don't make it look that great.

The last one is a close up because I was in love with my raccoons! It looks a little better now, because I added eyes to the boy and girl after I took these photos.

Love xxx