New Zealand...

First up, here is a photo of the land! Doesn't it look great?! I don't like to sound like I'm bragging too much but we have been working and waiting years for this so part of me feels I'm allowed to brag a little bit :) Pretty much this is the view from where the deck of the house is going to be. This tiny photo does not do it justice.



On a clear day you can see the white sand on the beach. And in the middle of this image is a kind of yellowy bush area that is full of evil GORSE (boooo). Its a prickly weed that we need to get rid of. Luckily our brilliant neighbour, farmer Bruce, is going to arrange for his cow herd to get in there and eat around all the gorse so it is easier to destroy. We just have to put up an electric fence to keep them out of our tent... Which reminds me, this is where we are living at the moment! And that is the new car/van on the left. Bruce's house is the one behind on the far left of the photo.



The tent is great. We have a large double bedroom (hidden from view behind the car), a kitchen (complete with shelves and work surfaces), 2 old armchairs and a gas fire in the living area, and a front room which stores things like shoes and water etc. Its great! Mind you I'd say the novelty of living in a tent will wear off pretty soon, but hopefully shortly after that we will have our new barn up! Electricity and phone should follow that. I'm going to say out loud on my blog that we will have the barn up in 4 weeks complete with electricity and broadband internet. Hopefully that hasn't jinxed anything, it just means I can either come back and read this in 4 weeks and laugh at my naievity... or not even read it at all because I'm too busy lazing around our lovely new barn.

Here are some shots of the neighbouring farm animals who have discovered that we aren't farmers, and as a result have rubbish fences that they can crawl under. It seems we have the best grass in the valley because everyone wants in!



This was sooo cute. The tiny lamb had its eyes closed and was dreaming about suckling, and doing the actions in its sleep. I can't think of anything cuter!!! Thats our power pole by the way.



Tasty junior, Bruce's goat. He likes wholemeal bread.



One of the calves in the paddock next door.



They LOVE a good rub under the chin. Steven is making friends with this one so that when it is a massive bull, it will be big and scary but still want a tickle under the chin from him. That really is his plan. The only problem I can see is that when we are busy building the house there will be a bull getting in the way because it wants a chin rub.





A little bbq outside the tent one evening:



And here are just a few images from our trip down from Auckland with the new car (we didn't bother stopping in the end becuase it was raining). If it was up to me, we would have stopped every half a mile to take photos. Good job we didn't though because it took 2 full days to drive back down!








Coming next: a New Zealand Wedding Special Offer! Also some very cute photographs of the Barrett family (see below) and more photographs of our travels.

New baby Matthew

This is our new nephew Matthew at just 2 weeks old - isn't he gorgeous! We've been enjoying catching up with Alice and Bradley, his older brother and sister who we haven't seen for 3 years. They're great fun. Oh, and their parents too - Liana (Steven's sister) and Nigel, who are almost as much fun as their kids, ha ha. Although for some reason I didn't take any photos of them! Plenty of time for that though..









Steven has two children stuck to his arms:



Alice is such a character. Lush!



Bradley is soo cute. And already really good at art.



Alice showing me all the stuff in her little house in the garden.







We picked up the van by the way - I will take a couple of photos to put on here. It's so tall!

Off to the big smoke..

In about 15 minutes Steven and I are off to catch a plane to Auckland - the big smoke! It turns out the car we actually wanted to buy was up there, so we will buy it, then cruise down through the middle of the north island, to the west coast of the south, so that we can have a little two day holiday with it. Which means I'll be offline until Saturday.

Oh, and yesterday we bought a huge tent, so when we get back we are going to camp on the land! We'll also need to purchase a nice comfy mattress and a few other luxuries. Soon I'll be cooking our first tin of beans on Steven's old camping stove, listening to the birds :)

House news

This is the first installment of our house news. I'm sure there'll be many more... I'm sat in a trendy little internet cafe in central Dunedin, about 15 minutes drive away from our land (incidentally!). We are staying at Steven's mum's house at the moment, and trying to get lots of things sorted in a short space of time!

First things first, we need to get a barn up on the land, and convert one bay in it for us to live in whilst we build the house. We need planning permission to put the barn up, and apparently that can take up to 3 or 4 weeks - eek! What happens is, we submit the plans from the company that makes the barn, and the council give consent to build because it is a rural section of land and we are allowed to put a barn on there. Great. **EDITED** - we were under the impression that you couldn't live in a barn, whereas actually thats just a technicality - you can sleep in your barn, as long as you don't plumb a sink in.. (?!). How exciting! We are learning the dark ways of the council very quickly. So now we don't have to feel naughty when we put our bed in the barn, along with a couple of nice lamps... and all my clothes...

Before that happens, we need to buy a car. But not any old car, Steven wants a Mitsubishi Delica 4 wheel drive 7 seater van that converts into a campervan. Conveniently there are about 3 in the whole of the south island. So having driven a total of about 4 hours to see 2 of them (which we won't be buying) we are probably off to see the 3rd tomorrow. In Nelson, which is right at the top of the South Island! We will look at it as a bit of a road trip holiday though, and go camping on the way. I'm hoping this van is worth it but apparently it will be.

This week we are also going to start planting trees on the land! We need a wind break from one direction, and want to plant in the general area around the house so it doesn't stick out so much when its built.

Oh, and we are thinking about putting up some alternative power generators - wind, water and solar. To get the energy company to put a transformer on the power pole, and for us to run a cable to the property will be $10,000NZ. Which is sickeningly expensive! And also we want to have our own power sources eventually anyway. We could do quite a lot with $10,000 in terms of alternative energy stuff so need to do some research. If anyone has some time you could email me ideas!!

Here is a photo of the land I took the other day. I love it. When I see it I feel like lying down and rolling around in the grass!

Due to the direction of the sun, where I'm standing and the wide angle lens you can't really see the sea in this one, but rest assured it is there! We are going to build at the far right of the grass bit in this picture. See all those trees bordering the field? They're mine, ah ha ha ha haaaa!!!!!

Here I am looking back up from where the barn is going to be.

And um, here is a photo of Steven ordering a giant pizza from Pizza Hut new zealand. He is happy here because pizzas are sooo cheap. We are going to be very fat.

Oh, just while I was uploading those photos, Steven came over and told me that you can buy a wind generator for about $1,400. How exciting! We are off now to visit some alternative building guru in Dunedin to get the lowdown on putting in our Strawbale application. I tell you what, there are some great characters over here. We've been given lots of advice and told where to seek out the alternative people (anyone with solar panels all over their roof and lots of chickens really).

More land photos soon. I'll have to take my camera down to the river, it is soo gorgeous.

xxx

Louise's afternoon tea party

Louise contacted me by email as we were making our way down to Dunedin. She was having a birthday afternoon tea and thought it would be fun to get some photographs of her and her friends before they finish their last year at university. It turned out the tea party was happening on my very first day in Dunedin! Luckily Steven was able to change the plugs over on my battery chargers(!!) in the morning, and that afternoon I headed off to Corstorphine House in Dunedin, an old country house hotel with fantastic views over the city. The hotel serve a huge range of lovely teas in old fashioned pots, with little sandwiches and cakes on silver cake stands. So cute! I will have to take my mum here when she comes to visit.

Louise and her friends were gorgeous, and we had loads of fun taking shots inside and in the grounds.

I'll try and post all the photos I prepared for my blog, but blogger is playing up at the moment so I'm not sure if they will render properly. Here goes!

I'm going to post some photos of the land next. How exciting!! xx

Arriving in New Zealand!

Well, after all that dreaming, planning, packing, travelling, and more dreaming we are finally here, in Dunedin, New Zealand. We've been here for a week already, travelling down from Christchurch and seeing some family and friends on the way. Its so great to see everyone and catch up.




Yesterday was the first time we saw the land we bought 3 and half years ago, just north of Dunedin outside a place called Waitati. Its even more beautiful than I remember: 35 acres of lush green grass and dense forest with a stream, a river and a pond. I tell you what, it just seems ridiculous to me! How can we possibly own all of that?! This morning we walked around the boundary, sat in Steven's future fire circle in the wood, lay in the grass under the sun, and hopped on stones through the river. I sat on a big rock in the middle of the water looking at the dappled light on the stones, the ferns and the trees and I felt like laughing it was all so good! Its spring here so things are blossoming, and the land has a sweet smell like honey and coconut. Seriously, thats what it smells like!

When you stand on the spot our house is going to be on you look down through the valley to the sea. Thats where the sun rises in the morning and its just stunning.

I would obviously upload photographs, but my laptop is out of action for a couple of days and the images straight out of my camera would take about 3 years to upload on a dial up internet connection. But I will definitely get some images up in a couple of days time.

This week we have lots to do. We need a car, and some kind of garage or enclosed barn to put on the land to store our things in and to live in until we build something else. I think tomorrow night we might pitch a tent there so that we can wake up in the morning on the same spot that next year will be our house. Maybe then it will seem real.

Oh, and yesterday (our first day in Dunedin) I had my first photography commission! Which I will blog about this week.

Here is an internet photo of Blueskin bay which is the bit of coast we can just about see from our land. We are somewhere up a hill to the right of this photo I believe:



Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.