magnolia

i'm reading 'the elegance of the hedgehog' by muriel barbery at the moment, here is just one quote from the book i related to & am still thinking about.
'those who feel inspired, as i do, by the greatness of small things will pursue them to the very heart of the essential where, cloaked in everyday attire, this greatness will emerge from within a certain ordering of ordinary things and from the certainty that all is as it should be, the conviction that it is fine this way'.
i made this little bundle of spring flowers for a friend of my grandmother's, she is 90 years old so i think & hope it is appropriate for someone of her age.
we have been waiting & anticipating the blossoming of the magnolia flowers, i am sure this is the first in our neighbourhood to show it's face.

sweet winter sweet

o bliss is the scent of winter sweet. this massive keruru was feasting itself on the kowhai tree on our neighbour's property today. i was wondering what it was devouring so hungrily at this time of year, berries or new growth perhaps?

wintery ole days

celeste, eliza & i stayed out at ruby bay again this weekend as tom & louis went to wellington to visit g & geoffery, tom's mum & her husband. we ate lots of yummy food & generally mooched around, although i did manage to put in a bit of effort at one point & went for a walk along pomona road, it is very picturesque with green valleys & vineyards dotting the landscape. on my way i managed to make a little bouquet from what i found growing on the roadside, the banana passionfruit flowers are from a vine which is classified as a noxious weed needless to say i didn't feeling too guilty tugging away at the vines to pick the flowers.

native greens

we had a going away party for the head teacher of te pouahi last night, she is a truly inspirational woman & much respected so she will be greatly missed. i made a few bits & bobs for the venue, in this arrangement the box is covered with bark that was laying around our woodpile & filled with harakeke & manuka. some of the girls made some flax flowers & we shoved them into pots of beech, taken from the mountain of winter trimmings piled up in our garden. i also made these lemon tartlets to take for shared kai, they were supposed to be mini lemon meringue pies but we won't go into that - suffice to say i am a lucky girl to have a granny in town.
i've corrected the spelling mistake & reprinted my business cards, originally i wanted to do them on recycled brown card but there wasn't any in the whole town of nelsonnyjim, in the end i printed them on watercolour paper so each card can be hand painted individually. wallah

frazzled

i have just discovered a spelling mistake on my business card which i have spent every spare moment(& of those there are very few!) designing this week, most unfortunate, infact unbelievable grrrrr. o well it's back to the printers for me asap. i made this vase today with my newly acquired glue gun & some wooden lacquer i found in the nelson intermediate rubbish pile, we were there to take eliza to her after school gym class. the lacquer is stuck onto a cardboard box with a recycled glass jar inside. 10 points to myself for resourcefulness if i do say so myself. the flowers are for a friend of my ma's.

introducing

celeste.
this blog is not going to be about children but i do want to include them occasionally, as of course they are my life. i realised yesterday one of the problems with modern parenting is the lack of independence kids have, which conversely means they are too dependent on their caregiver. so after school yesterday i sent my 2 oldest children eliza & louis to the dairy without me for a dollar mixture each, just like the good old days. it meant they had to cross 4 roads but when i went out to meet them as they wandered back down our street they were glowing with confidence & pleasure as they gobbled their loot & i felt a whole lot less stressed.
this is celeste enjoying her 50c mixture.

a day of gray

until i found these roses.
aarrrgh i'm just longing to get my business up & running...