The Latest

Well the last couple of weeks have been pretty busy for us. Here's a rundown of the goings on:

Saturday 3 May we headed over to Tauranga for Chris and Ellie's engagement party. It was held at their place, outside, and it was freezing! Not like the warm weather we're use to in Hamilton. It was a good night, they had a good turn-out, and of course I drank too much. But it was the only way I could stay warm! Unfortunately our camera is absolute rubbish so the few photos I did take are all blurry. But here are a few anyway. Note the really cheesy one of Q and I with "L O V E" on the wall behind us.

Chris & Ellie

Q doing his Earl Hickey impression

Saturday 10 May was Cam's westie themed birthday party. It was so totally white trash - I loved it! I think that deep deep down inside I'm bit of a bogan. Perhaps it has something to do with the company my parent's kept when I was growing up! Anyway, we had a great time. I particularly enjoyed the drinking game - I don't think I can remember the last time I played drinking games!

Saturday 17 May our old flattie Sarah came to stay the night. It was sooooo good to see her again - it's been so many years since we've saw each other last I can't even remember when it was! Q being the good cook that he is cooked dinner and we sat around eating food and drinking wine. Had such a good time catching up on old times!

Friday 23 May we went to Palate for dinner with my work. It was a joint leaving/birthday dinner. One of our workmates was leaving (for a few months) to have a baby, and it was a belated birthday celebration of our practice being five years old. Originally we were supposed to go for a balloon ride (which would've been so cool!), but every time we were scheduled to go out the weather was not optimum ballooning weather. As we were getting tired of waiting and Nic was getting more and more pregnant we decided to scrap it and go out to dinner instead. The meal was fantastic, although apparently the service could have been better (I didn't notice).

The following day Chris and Ellie came over to stay the night. We spent Saturday afternoon shopping then came home to eat and drink. Once again Q cooked a yummy dinner, and sort of helped with dessert, although he got distracted so I helped Ellie finish it off. Well, kinda helped as I was quite a bit drunk so it got a bit messy. It still tasted damn good though! We also received confirmation that the next younger brother, Ben, is engaged too. To his girlfriend Keeley. Congratulations to them both.  

Well that's all I have time for.

Renovation Diary Part III

Easter weekend was a busy weekend on the home front. We did the gardens at the front of the house. I really don't need to give an explanation, it's all pretty straight forward.

Before

During

After

Well, that's it for now. The next job is to finish the lounge which we'll be starting very shortly.

Just one more thing. Big congratulations to Chris and Ellie (Q's brother) who got engaged the other week. Oh, it's so very exciting!

Renovation Diary Part II

Things have been moving pretty slowly on the renovation side of things.

Last week we sat down and (in true Quentin fashion) made up a spreadsheet listing every single thing to be done and bought for every single room. The purpose was so we can get a good idea how much things are going to cost so we can budget for it. We drew up a plan of the bathroom to decide the best layout, and Q made me draw a 3D model of it. I didn't know how to use the software so it looks like crap, otherwise I would put it on here. But at least now we have a good idea what we're going to do with the room.

Today we went to the Home and Garden show. I'd heard it wasn't that great, and it wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I'd like to say we walked away with some great ideas and inspiration, but we didn't. We did, however, join the NZ Wine Society, and will be receiving a case of wine every three months.

Anyway, back to the renovations. This afternoon we started to properly strip some of the wallpaper off in the lounge. It was pretty successful, however it's a very messy business. We managed to get most of one wall done. In some parts the wallpaper was really easy to remove, and in others quite difficult. In some places we were a bit rough and scraped some plaster and some of the outer layer of gib off. But apart from that I think we did a pretty good job of it.

My New Job

I had realised that my working environment was making me miserable. Alot of the time I was in the office alone, and even though my boss was there the rest of the time, he wasn't really the kind of person I could have a conversation with. I was really lonely. So I decided to leave. I felt bad as my boss's house is on the market (they want to move to Tauranga - god only knows why!), which meant he couldn't really hire anyone to replace me. There were a whole bunch of other reasons to leave, and when I realised there were more reasons to leave than to stay, I decided it was time to go.

So, I found myself another job, which I started yesterday (monday). It's at an architectural firm in Hamilton. It's so good not having to drive to Cambridge!!!!!! The directors (yes, there is more than one) are architects rather than architectural designers, so I will learn so much from them. Oh, and the biggest thing - there are 10 other people in the office!!!! Finally someone to talk to!!!

Well that's all the news to report.

Till next time.

Home Improvements

Toni has suggested that I do a "renovation diary", and as I don't really have anything much to write about, I may as well.

We have had three "tasks" we have assigned ourselves to complete in the next few months. The first one was installing a new toilet. The existing one was old and tired, the cistern leaked, and we just didn't like it. So we purchased a toilet, which came highly recommended from Q's work mate (he had just bought and installed it and raved about it). We were told it was a piece of cake to install, so we decided to do it ourselves. I did a bit of research about installing toilets, and realised that the standout of our existing toilet was probably further from the wall than what the new one required. We decided to put the toilet together and just see what happens. As it turns out, there was a 40mm difference. The workmate reckoned we could just fudge it and make it work. We realised it would be too difficult, so decided to get a plumber to move the pipes around. We installed the toilet (and when I say "we" I mean "Q"). It's fantastic, and I realise that I must sound like a loser getting so excited over a toilet, but the old one was just so horrible. So that's one item checked off our list.

Old toilet

New toilet

The second task is to remove the horrible pink wallpaper and wood panelling in the lounge and paint. We are well aware that this will probably not be simple, as the gib under the wall paper might not be good enough to paint over. But we'll have to wait and see till the wallpaper is off, and we might have to spend a bit of money stopping and prepping etc. We plan to have it done by the end of the year so we've got plenty of time to do a good job. Last weekend we bought ourselves a "paper tiger" each, which you roll over the walls and it puts holes in the wallpaper, which means the wallpaper remover solution can seep into the holes and make it easier to get off (hopefully). So we've started doing that, and well it looks pretty bad. But things are going to get worse before they get better, so we just have to deal with it!

Here's a pic of what the wallpaper looks like after being "tigered".

The third item on the list is to pull out all the gardens and demolish garden-related objects so we have a blank canvas. As the weather hasn't been very good, we haven't had much opportunity do do much, but as spring approached hopefully we can get out there and finish it.

Queen's Birthday Weekend

The weekend got off to a good start with my boss giving me a pay rise on Friday - woohoo. Kinda funny coz Toni was telling me that she got a pay rise and I realised that I hadn't had one in a while. She told me to ask for one but I was too chicken. Turned out I didn't need to anyway!

I decided that Q and I should go out for dinner to celebrate and because we never eat out just the two of us. I felt like something casual so we went to the Londoner. Food wasn't too bad but it was nice spending some "quality" time together.

Saturday we were up early to get the groceries and to tidy up a little before our guests (Chris and Ellie) arrived. They arrived mid-morning and we hung around for a bit then decided to head off to The Base. We wandered around there for a few hours, managed to spend a bit of money, had some lunch then went home.

Q and I had planned a fancy meal, so when we got home I proceeded to make dessert. Well what a fiasco. I had picked up a recipe sheet from the supermarket for Chocolate and Scorched Almond Decadence, and mistake #1 was I didn't read the instructions properly and put all the chocolate in the base when I should have saved some of it for the topping, and I neglected to see the bit about adding butter. Anyway Ellie managed to save it and we moved on to the next step. We followed the directions and made this egg and sugar concoction. We then realised that nowhere in the instructions did it say what to do with the egg and sugar mix. So we improvised and mixed it in with the base mixture. The recipe then gave us instructions to make the topping and stated to use the remaining butter, yet nowhere did it say how much of the butter we should have used in the first step so we used the whole lot. So we added a bit of butter and hoped for the best. As it turned out the dish was so incredibly delicious!! But the company that produced the recipe will be getting a very unpleasant letter from me and perhaps a demand for some sort of compensation!

It appears that this was the only photo I took of it. Think by the time we got round to eating it I was too drunk to care. And yeah, it's pretty much all chocolate.

Now moving on to Q's main - beef fillet with creamed spinach and truffle french fries (minus the truffle oil). The meal was sooooo damned good! I am so proud of my little Quentin. Turns out he has bit of a passion for cooking. Who would've thought!

On Sunday we headed off to the Hamilton Gardens. I haven't been there in many years. The highlight of the trip was seeing this group of people dressed up in helmets with homemade shields and weapons. We saw them hanging out in the carpark so we hung around waiting to see what they were doing. They walked, sorry marched, over to a field where some people who were dressed differently went to the top of the hill while the rest of them remained at the bottom. Then the guys at the bottom "attacked" the guys at the top and had bit of a battle. We were sitting there watching this just pissing ourselves laughing! What friggin weirdos!!!!! I'll get some photos from Ellie to put on here. It was VERY entertaining! From there we went into town, had bit of a look round then went home.

Today hasn't been very productive. I finally managed to get the firewood out of the rain and into a little shed thing. And thats about it.

I'm running out of title names...

How many different ways can you say "update"?

Last Friday night Hayley came over for dinner to have one final catch-up before she and Niki leave for their OE, and to check out our house. We had takeaway from Masala Club - I know I've said it before but their butter chicken is soooooo gooooood! We had a great time just sitting round the table talking, and did quite a bit of reminscing about the old days. It was a bit sad saying goodbye - I don't know when I'll see you again Hayley! I'll miss you!

Early Saturday morning (last Saturday) my dad came over and we went to my uncles farm to get some firewood. Dad and another uncle chopped the tree trunks into managable pieces and we all took turns at choppin them up. Sounds more impressive that it actually was. Dad had built a woodchopper with a hydraulic ram so all we had to do was put the wood underneath it and pull the lever. That's not to say it was easy work - there was still a lot of lifting and carrying to do. We had a good system going and filled three big trailers and a ute in a few hours. We unloaded our trailer in the driveway and it hasn't moved since. We really should get round to putting it away. Hopefully with this weekend being a long one we should get lots done around the house.

This past Saturday night 69 came over to have dinner and watch movies. We had home made pizza - very yum, and saw Children of Men and The Departed. Children of Men was alright - what made the film was Clive Owen (I think he's a dish). The Departed was WAY too long and kinda boring.

Well I had best get back to work.