Cushions!

When we put our furniture into the new house the old sofa didn't go at all. This surprised us as it's white and large, but it looks like someone has just dumped an unmade bed in the livingroom.  We were pretty sad about this, as we love that sofa!

Anyway, we ordered a new one. Went down to Auckland a few weeks ago to look at some, as we'd seen them online and the price seemed too good to be true, we were sure they would be totally rubbish! But no, they are lovely, and you can choose different fabrics and different legs etc. So we got one and it should be arriving in the next couple of weeks.

It's a very grown up sofa compared to the old one but it needs a couple of cushions, so I decided to go to Whangarei yesterday and get some not grown up fabric to make some. ( The old sofa will go downstairs into the new room once it gets built, so it won't be leaving us!)

I didn't want to make my usual easy peasy envelope cushions. I really wanted to go to town - piping, invisible zips... you name it! Only problem, I've never done piping or invisible zips before. I did a search and found a few tutorials - which I didn't really understand - but went for it anyway.

I can't give instructions, as the zips were a total trial and error! The piping was great though. Very simple.
Just make a bias binding and hide the cord inside it!

Here they are!

 A wee bit smooshy round the corners, but not too bad. 

Nice round the edges, though.

And the invisible zip! Quite invisible. (This was the second one! First one not so good!) 

They're pretty big, bigger than I planned, perhaps, so I really hope they go.

For now I've just put them on our bed! 

Have to say, I am missing the wee Pip. I really need somewhere to sew that's not the dining room table. The power socket nearest isn't really that near, so it's a total hazard! Almost garrotted Brodie and my machine was in danger of taking a flyer! 

It'll be lovely when the council give us the go ahead to start the building work. 

Things are much calmer now

We have really settled in beautifully. Lulah has assumed her position on top of her dad.

Banana has assumed his position on the most expensive piece of furniture we own, obviously!

And I have finally had some time in the kitchen. Friends of ours have just moved up from Auckland and something that makes this even more lovely is that they have a sweet chestnut tree in the garden. ( The one Lloyd and I planted at the farm didn't have time to give us even a single chestnut - so I hope the new owners like them!) I plundered their garden and within about 5 minutes had filled a carrier bag. I shared it with Simon and Ali and pretty much ate all my share at one sitting!

Sweet Chestnuts remind me of my childhood. Dad used to get them, boil them then roast them on a shovel over our coal fire. When they were done we tipped them onto newspaper on the floor, opened them ( burning our fingers!), sprinkled them with salt and scarfed them down. 

I couldn't quite replicate this, I just did them on the stove top in a pan! But they tasted almost as good. 

I've also attempted macarons again. I had lost the knack completely.  They still tasted lovely, but either cracked a bit, had no feet, were hollow, or all three!  I reckoned new house, new oven, give it a go again. First lot were fine; No cracks, but no feet. However they were blooming tasty. I made apple shells and filled them with blue cheese buttercream - do not knock this until you've tried it! And yeah, they had glitter on them.

Second batch I tried something completely new. I've always made them with the french recipe. This time I tried them by making an Italian meringue. Supposedly this is a more stable way of doing it. Meh! About half of them had feet and half of them were cracked. However there is one big difference - they are a much more fluffy texture inside - not hollow at all. Less sweet and very delicious. I'm definitely trying this way again, oven temp lower and let them dry out for a lot longer before putting in the oven. I'll keep you posted!

These were chocolate shells and strawberry buttercream filling. They were also lovely.

I've also been gardening! bahahahaa! It's a somewhat smaller scale here. I took white hydrangea cuttings and gardenia cuttings before we left the farm. I have plans to rip out some ugly ground cover stuff and put gardenias and some hibiscus down the side of the front garden. 

Finally,  woke up to this today. Whats not to love?

Goodbye Our Wee Farm, hello Spindrift

Officially we don't leave the farm until next Friday, but over the last few weeks we have moved everything out. It was absolutely exhausting. We have done about 15 tip trips, donated a van load of stuff to charity, sold furniture and given some away. Moving from a farm with the equivalent of three houses to one smallish house is no mean feat. And we did it all ourselves. No moving company, no moving truck, just us and our wee trailer!

We have just moved into the new house and are simply loving it. Waking up to the view every morning, being close to all our friends - its amazing.  We still have to go back to the farm every couple of days to weed, mow and make sure everything is safe, but because the move has been so drawn out I haven't felt the sadness I thought I would. Perhaps we're simply too exhausted to feel much right now!

We worked very hard on the new house for a few weeks. We painted, ripped carpets out, laid a new floor, redid the kitchen and lots of other bits and bobs. It was all very good fun.

So prepare yourselves for lots of photos!!


Here's our new view - gorgeous.

This was the first day of work. The carpets were all lifted, then the underlay, then about a million staples were removed from the floor.

The kitchen floor had cork tiles which had been glued down with the strongest substance known to man. It took hours of hard work to get them completely off.

Once that was done it was cleaned and swept in readiness for the new bamboo flooring being laid.

While that was going on inside, a fence was being put around part of the garden outside. We've moved to an area where there are a lot of kiwis and we need to keep them safe from the dogs. So, fence it is! 

Here it is all finished. Nice wee gate leading down through the native bush to the reserve at the water. 

Kitchen being hauled out. The design was good, so we kept it, but got it all resprayed. We also extended the island part, put in a new sink etc and new worktops.

By this stage it was all looking rather chaotic! But very surprisingly none of it was stressful at all.

We'd taken off all the skirting boards so that we could lay the new floor properly. I had to paint 120m worth of new skirting. It took a long time! We also repainted the whole inside of the house and new flooring in the bathroom.

The bamboo flooring had been held up, but finally arrived a couple of days late. This guy was a total star. This stuff weighed 1.5 tonnes!

We laid the whole floor over 2 days. We had a bit of hassle with the edging trim. When it arrived in NZ MAF found some weevils in the packaging, so the whole shipment had to be destroyed. Which was somewhat of a nightmare for us! But the company were able to send us up enough wee bits so that we could insert them where we needed so at least we had the right measurements to work from.  Lloyd and Ali look like they're praying to the floor gods for inspiration!

The bamboo flooring looking like it's almost finished.

The kitchen arrived back all beautifully painted. A new glass splash back was put in. New cooker and dishwasher. And this amazing new light!

 No idea why Lulah is tired - it's not like she helped or anything!

We look at this most evenings.

 So now we are in, and the inside is finished. We are waiting for the plans for the outside work to be approved by council. Once that's done that work will start. It's a biggie, but we're not doing this ourselves!!

We LOVE it more that we thought we could in such a short time. I think we've never been so bone tired in our lives. ( this might have something to do with the fact that we're sleeping on a mattress on the floor!)

More later!

Lloyd's mum and dad are here.

We have been enjoying the most amazing weather since they arrived, which somehow always makes things even more lovely.

Been doing a lot of exploring, wandering around and eating!

Lloyd, Alan and Penny up at Mangonui. A big favourite.

At Marsden Estate and Winery

 The view down Kerikeri inlet, Lloyd and Penny were off to do a 10km hike up to Rainbow Falls. Alan and I did not :)

A stunning trip out to the Hokianga - one of my favourite places in the world. The Copthorne did us proud, as usual.

There's been a bit of Whisky tasting...

And even I have had a drink!

Tomorrow we take possession of our new house! There is a lot to do over the next few weeks, lift all the carpets, paint the whole house, lay a new floor and re-do the whole kitchen. It's going to be a very, very busy time!

Well hello!

Big news Our Wee Farm has sold. So much for the "It'll probably take a year".   It sold  last month - in 6 weeks to be precise! We were, or perhaps I should say, I, was very surprised, and initially not at all ready!
But I've had time to get used to the idea now and am getting very excited.  The good thing is that we have bits and bobs to do to the new place so Lloyd and I have been making lists and organising painters, kitchen people, flooring and all sorts, and really can't wait now that it's all happening.

It will be the end of an era for us, but I reckon my back will be thankful for the lack of mowing to be done at the new house.

The people who have bought it are lovely. If we could have chosen the perfect people we would have chosen them. Also they didn't want to move in until towards the end of March which is perfect. We've got to spend a last Christmas and summer here. 

The timing is also perfect for us to get some of the big inside work done on the new house before we properly move in, which should make things a lot easier. 

That's all for now! But I will definitely keep this place going, and make an attempt to get back into the swing of it all. 

Gigantic birthday cakes...

I think this is the longest break I've ever taken from writing. There's no excuse and no reason, it's just sort of happened!
We are super busy right now. Our Wee Farm is up for sale. It went on the market 2 weeks ago. So far we've only had one viewing. It's just a waiting game - a waiting game where I feel that everything has to be immaculate all the time!

We had a long holiday in Rarotonga in September. It was absolutely wonderful, despite being incredibly sick for a few days near the beginning.


Here's a few holiday pics...

We spent hours in the water.

Hours on the beach...

and on the last day got a tattoo...

Last week it was Lloyd's birthday. We were invited over to NandS for a wee party with a few other friends. I made a birthday cake. Lloyd's only stipulation was could it please be an orange cake. So I ended up making the biggest orange cake in existence.

Here it is! It's always a bit nerve racking when you make a big cake like this, because you don't really get to taste it before!

I made TWO Sicilian Orange cakes ( so double these ingredients)

Ingredients
250 g lightly salted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
250 g caster sugar
4 medium eggs
1 1/2 tsp finely grated orange zest
250 g self raising flour (i used plain flour and add 1 tsp of baking powder) 
85 ml freshly squeezed orange juice

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease and line a 22-cm clip-sided round cake with non-stick baking paper.

Using the kitchen aid, cream the butter and sugar together for 4-5 minutes until very pale. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating very well between each one, if necessary adding a spoonful of flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture from curdling. Beat in the orange zest. Add the flour all at once and mix in well, then slowly mix in the orange juice.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer, inserted into the centre of the cake, comes out clean. If it starts to brown too quickly, cover loosely with a sheet of lightly buttered foil.

Leave the cake, in its tin, to cool on a wire rack, then carefully remove the sides and base of the tin and peel off the paper. Put it onto a serving plate.

I used a lot more orange zest - than the recipe cos we wanted it really orangy.  I mixed up a batch of buttercream ( adding in a little orange oil) then I put some marmalade and a bit of buttercream in the middle of the 2 cakes to form the sandwich. Then I covered the whole ( huge) cake in a thin layer of buttercream to seal it and keep it from getting crumbs in the main buttercream topping. I let this chill for a wee while then set to work covering the cake in buttercream roses. I only got half of one layer done when I ran out of buttercream. I ended up having to make 3 batches. There was almost a kilo of buttercream on the cake!!!

After that I decorated it with hand made fondant flowers.  Not totally manly, but very spring like!

I have to say, it was the most lovely, moist cake ever, so this is a recipe I will definitely use again.

A birthday snap - and see how huge the cake is!

We were also lucky enough to be invited to the World of Wearable Art down in Wellington, buy Lloyd's work. It was mind blowingly good and we loved every second of it. 

This is a fraction of what we've been up to!

Oh and if anyone wants a nosey, here's the link to the advert for the wee farm...

Trade me - Our Wee Farm

I have got some MAJOR news.

Lloyd and I have bought a new house!

It's still in this area, but it's over by the sea. It's got a very small actual garden, but has some lovely native bush with a bush walk right down to the water, with amazing views over the Bay.

We have plans for it - well, it wouldn't be us if we didn't!

It's a totally different style to Darroch Cottage. It's more modern and open plan with a lot of glass. It's not huge, though, so we will extend it a bit. New flooring, kitchen changes, bathroom cosmetics! bigger deck, fence the garden so that the dogs are safe and secure ( not that they are ever out without us anyway!). I'll probably put in a greenhouse - still want to grow our veggies! 

However, Our Wee Farm isn't even on the market yet, we're just not quite ready, so the actual move to the coast is quite a bit away. 

It's hard to explain why we want to move. I suppose it's a whole lot of different things. We want to travel more, or at least not have the ties, so that it's easier to get away when we want to. At the moment it's a huge feat of organisation to even go away for a long weekend! I know that in the not too distant future I'll tire of the vast amount of work keeping a farm and a huge garden under control and looking like I want it to look, in the sub tropics, where there is no rest season!  I want to leave loving this place. 

We've arrived here almost 10 years ago knowing nothing about having a garden, let alone running a small farm and we managed to create a beautiful place, but soon it'll be time for a change. We want to be near the water. 

We want to be closer to our friends. We spend a lot of time with each other so it will be lovely to be within walking distance rather than over an hour round trip in the car. Lloyd only has a couple of years left on his contract, and even though he'll most likely stay, he has ideas of what he'd like to do and this may involve a bit of travelling around the country. I'm all for this, but it's impossible if we live on a farm!

I know when the time comes for the move, and the day I drive down the drive for the last time my heart will break a little. And I know that I will never want to even drive past this lovely place and it not be ours.

I will miss our wonderful neighbours.

But for now, and perhaps the next year (or more!) this is still our wee piece of paradise and we will love it as we have done for the last ten years.