Libby’s Place

I got to see a lovely friend of my parents (and mine) yesterday.

Here are a few snaps from her house from my phone.

Thanks for an unforgettable time Libby and great to meet you Terry.

She gave me some the green 1920′s plates in the photo and the 1930′s bowls with boats on them. I love boats. Aren’t I spoilt?!

Thank you Libby!!

Earthquakes and Cupcakes

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

Recently there was teacher’s strike so I stayed home with the kids for the day.

In the morning we went to the park where the eldest flew his flying car and the youngest climbed rocks, swung on the swing, and found an old ball to kick about. Sounds idyllic right?

It was lovely until they argued over the swing and the little one got hit in the mouth with the swing’s chain - there were tears and blood.

After he recovered we went to see if there were any tadpoles in the pools on top of the sandstone rocks.  We found lots of very small tadpoles.  Very exciting.

Then we came and made cupcakes for our visitors coming later in the afternoon.  The boys ones were decorated with spacemen and cars.  By then our guests arrived so I thought it would be rude to photograph the cupcakes then, maybe next time!  They definitely looked better than they tasted!  Cooking with children can be challenging!  They weren’t properly mixed and were over done.  Oh well – better luck next time.

I really appreciate my second cousin April and her husband David who live in Ashburton in NZ –  who visited us that day.

They told us all about the Christchurch people who have had thousands of aftershocks since the first two really big earthquakes.

How horrible to live with.  When I was growing up – the sound of the china rattling in the cupboards was a regular occurrence. But that would be so frightening to take on a daily basis.  At school we had fire drills and earthquake drills – we were taught to dive under our desk, or a door frame and cover our heads

What courage the people of Christchurch have, to stay and hang in there with so much uncertainty about the city’s future, the infrastructure, whether your insurer is going to pay out.  What if you didn’t have insurance?

It makes me grateful for my safe home.

Also it was lovely to just sit and talk and discuss  family history and maintain that connection to my roots in New Zealand.    Thanks for visiting April and David!

Little girls didn’t wear pink in the 70′s

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I have been thinking about the clothes I wore as a kid. Growing up in Wellington – there were many layers, lots of corduroy, skivvys and tights. Roman sandals and stubbies for the boys. Oh and another thing – there was very little pink. I had one dress – which was a mauvy/pink – I loved it. But I wore a lot of green, red and brown, and rust!

I bought mini sized pieces of the below fabrics – I think I thought I might make something for a friends child – any interest?

If not I might end up with a waistcoat in the corduroy – but I don’t really like sleeveless things – my arms get cold – isn’t that weird?

 

Navy Trees

 

The above owl print is genuine 70′s fabric – and indicative of the colour palette – very earthy. With owls again popular, this proves “There is nothing new under the sun”.

The “She’s got issues” Dress

I made this dress back in December, and wore it in January back home in Wellington New Zealand – when I met the lovely, lovely fellow tall girl Kat of  Modern Vintage Cupcakes.  You may have seen the photos on her blog of our meet up for coffee, sunshiny waterfront photo shoot with gelato, followed by the walk home to my folks place.

I apologise for the photos – while some are very beautiful – they don’t show the dress that well.

There’s the infamous Wellington wind blowing up our skirts!

FIRST ISSUE: Not enough fabric

I bought the last piece on the roll – I thought – great that will make a nice skirt.

Then I became obsessed by the above pattern – and would have loved to find a similar border print – nothing on eBay except swimwear fabrics and other uglies. So this stripe (is that what you would call it?) fabric had to do. It was really wide so I convinced myself there was a dress in there – waiting to get out!

I had to piece together bits of fabric to get the bodice out of the fabric I had left.

SECOND ISSUE: The pattern

The pattern was teeny tiny – I should have thrown it away and used something that fitted me.

THIRD ISSUE: The fit

It looks weird, like it’s creeping around my body. The side seams of course don’t match up either.

FOURTH ISSUE: The wrong undergarments.

I purchased a black strapless bra, not realizing at the time that it is some kind of super duper booster bra! Now, I don’t have nothing to start with, so that didn’t help!

I haven’t worn it again – I might give it another try sans push-up strapless stupidity – before it feels the wrath of my pink unpicker and is transformed into the skirt it should have always been.

And Kat, well she is a bit shy, surprising for a girl with hair as blue as Wellington’s sky on a good day! But by the end of our walk she told me that she was expecting! I felt so special that she shared her secret with me. It made me forget my dress issues immediately! She is going to be a wonderful Mum!

Here is my spring palette, I hope this dress falls into it – the oranges and brown are not exactly correct but I doubt anyone will notice!

By the way, I am standing in front of one of the remnant building of Wellington’s early China town – cute isn’t it!

 

Snowy Wellington!

This is insane, it never snows in Wellington, it’s excessively windy, a fact I was in denial about until I moved to Sydney!  But it did today

It is a harbour city, like Sydney, it’s not supposed to snow near the sea is it?  It snowed up in the hilly suburb of Karori once when I was growing up from memory.   But today it did in Cuba Street and even out in Island Bay – a beach side suburb, and Plimmerton – another one near the beach.

Freaky.

I have included a couple of shots from a rare sunny day spent in Welly, in January, below.

 

Take a look at this cute little video.

<iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/27709878?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&#8243; width=”400″ height=”225″ frameborder=”0″>

Snow on Cuba Mall in central Wellington (HD) from Ro Tierney on Vimeo.

Yellow buses, they used to be red but now they are in Wellington colours - I hate yellow.

Yellow buses, they used to be red. Wellington colours – hate yellow.

Dragging my poor husband to look at “pottery” Crown Lynn to be exact! Check out that sunshine!