Dreams of fame and fortune dashed

To close the link originated earlier in my blog, I thought I'd better start this missive by saying that Dad and I didn't make it onto The Block NZ...... this arrived in my inbox today:

I am definitely disappointed because I think it would have been such a great challenge, but knowing that the reality of doing the show would have been utterly stressful makes me feel OK about it.  Really. Mostly. 

In other news, Guest Blogger Steve went M.I.A!  He didn't do a post! What was he doing while I was away in Adelaide?  Well, to fill you in, he was stressing about floor board colours, organising sanders, shifting fridges, picking up baths and shifting 34kg concrete blocks.  Oh, and fitting in his actual paid job.  So he was doing a lot, but it didn't leave enough time to actually write about it. 

Meanwhile, I had a great time swanning about in Adelaide with my Mum and Frank (away from the realities Steve faced above) - Max was on fine form, except for in the middle of the night, where he cried out 'mummy, mummy' and kept walking the halls.  We did quite a bit of sight seeing, and wine drinking, and eating.  Here is a visual overview:

At McLaren Vale - Frank drove so Mum and I had a merry time! 
This vineyard was fantastic and even had a toybox for Max.

At Coriole vineyard - Frank and Mum with young Maxwell.

 

And here is a vineyard named after himself.  There were twin dogs there called 'Olive and Sofie', which if you don't know, are very close to Maxwell's twin sister's names.

 

Max with his banana in pyjamas, made by Frank's mum, Rowena.  It's very, very cute and the top even comes off.

You can see that Max was probably enjoying life as a singleton and once home he realised that things were not going to be quite so cushy!  One thing that has warmed the cockles of my heart is seeing his sisters give him bear hugs and helping him walk up hills - he's a lucky man.

Coming back from my break, I was really happy to see that the floors look amazing, and not orange as Steve feared.  They are more a burnt caramel.... I would show you a picture if I could, however I'm actually now in Pauanui, escaping the renos with the kids for a week.  Our fridge was on the porch outside and the BBQ in the front yard by the Portaloo, so it was decided I'd be better off at Steve's parents place on the Coromandel (how lucky are we?). 

Heating!

 

The 3 amigos, reunited

 

We dropped the car off to get a Warrant of Fitness this morning, and walked back.  It was a beautiful morning; the birds were singing, the sun was shining and the car passed its WOF.  Oh, whoops, no it didn't! Not to worry, it's not a major thing to fix it.

 

The Maxy Taxi

 

Sofia and Olivia enjoyed their time with Grandma and Grandad in Pauanui, and are thrilled to be back again so soon!

 

However, being off-site means there is very little I can tell you about the building, but here's what I know:

- The project manager/orderer/organiser guy is out of action, awaiting an operation on his back.  This means the guys onsite have been going and picking up timber and things themselves, so things have definitely slowed down.
- Steve's dad is at the ready with a paint brush.  We hope that some of the plastering is dry very soon so that Bruce can get on with it as he has limited time to do it.
- We are waiting for the timber for the floor - I think this will actually end up being the thing to hold us up.  Without this, the kitchen can't go in. 

Still so much to do, and it seems it is now dragging a bit - but probably because the finish is so tangible.

I will write once back in Auckland next week, unless I have any other very exciting news to impart in the meantime!

Anna x

 

BBQ Bonanza

Mostly I have written about house-y stuff, but this post is a little different.  I am going to show you, through pictures, what I have been up to for meal times. 

How do you cope without a kitchen?  The answer is that - in order to cope - you really do need to drink a lot of wine so that you don't mind going out into the cold to cook and into the bathroom to fill water jugs, and every time you want to wash your hands or rinse a cloth.  Also, a tip is to keep thinking about how pre-historic humans did it (with fire; AND they had to walk a bloody long way to catch anything for dinner) and you will feel that you have it much easier.

The problem is that I am now an alcoholic.  I shouldn't joke about things like that, but in the spirit of honesty, my wine consumption has definitely increased.

Now, onto matters less liquid-based.  You will recall in my last post how I said I would try baking biscuits on a BBQ.  Well, I did it, and the biscuits worked!  I gave four to the builders, who didn't really know what an achievement they held in their hot wee hands.  Here's the proof, blow-by-blow:

I didn't start from scratch so that if it didn't work, I wouldn't feel so bad.

Oh I do love ready-made mixes.  Just an egg and some butter and voila!

The temperature stayed at about 175C - perfect for baking.

In my BBQ oven.

Here they are!  Don't they look sweet?
 

You know, I did think I'd done something pretty original and was searching about how to enter my feat into the Guinness Book of World Records, but then I found this website: http://therenegadekitchen.com/renegade-cookies-easy-gluten-free/.  This lady has made cookies on an open fire in the Galapagos islands, and on a pizza stone in Nicaragua.  I still can't believe she'd just whip up cookies because her boyfriend was craving some in the middle of nowhere though. 

 

In more foodie news, I have started this thing - which I have chewed many people's ears off about already - called My Food Bag (www.myfoodbag.co.nz).  The basic premise is this:  They give you five recipes per week, and they give you all of the ingredients for those recipes.  The bags are delivered to your doorstep each week.  I was so excited last Sunday night when they arrived that Steve took the kids into another room so I could oooh and ahhhh to my heart's content without little 'helpers'!  I made Steve come and look sometimes, I was so excited.  We got a whole salmon.  And fresh nutmeg.  And beautiful chicken, beef, eggs, dressings and a myriad of other ingredients.  I could not wait to start, even on a BBQ.  So to date I have made:  Salmon and chicken on sushi rice with vegetables, chicken schnitzel with baby potatoes and salad, Italian sausage with penne pasta, teriyaki beef with soba noodles (more on that shortly) and tonight I made a leek, potato and cheese tart with pastry on the BBQ.  It sounds amazing, and it is!  I feel inspired, we are eating healthily and I have not had any of the 'oh my god, I have to use up that cabbage, I know I'll cook disgusting soup with hard rock dumplings moments'.

Here's a peek at what I have been making:

You get the recipes and the binder.  This is the Teriyaki beef I mentioned earlier.

 

See, it almost looks like the picture!

 

I marinated the beef most of the day, although it only asks for ten minutes of marinade love on the recipe.

 

And, a meal fit for a king. The kids have been eating these meals too (the recipes are made with families in mind).  The rule is that they try everything.  If they don't like it, that's fine but it is nice to get them tasting different stuff.  They didn't like the radishes.

 

As for what's happening down on the building site, well, have things been moving along or what!  We have architraves on our doors and windows, we have beautifully plastered walls and our kitchen is about ready to be signed off.  The sander is locked in for the 15th of May and we have bought a new bath off Trade Me.  I still need to convince Steve on the toilet (we have a very old, very genteel toilet called Bert, who is notoriously unreliable), but I hold on to hope. 

 

Disgustingly, the builders have found many rat droppings and dead rats.  There was one Steve stumbled upon the other night and called out to me to come and look.  I'm still not sure why he got me to look.  It was not pretty, however I got off lightly compared to one of the builders who found the rat in his tool belt thanks to a little builder's humour.

 

We also have cupboards.  I think they really work too as a place for time out (maybe for me too?).

 

 

 

 

 





Sofia has a war wound from falling off the bench at the park.  She was quite happy though because she got a lollipop.

I have to go now and put on my merino socks.  Auckland feels so cold tonight! 

This will probably be the last time you'll hear from me for a while because I'll be visiting Australia to see my Mum!  However, I have it on good authority that Guest Blogger Steve will pay you a visit.

Anna x

The view unwrapped

Here it is, the new view!

From our bedroom, looking through to the stacker doors.

 

Another picture, from further down the hallway

 

And another, even further towards the new bit.

 

Max offering the plasterer his muesli bar.

 

The builders opened up the house again on Monday so that the plasterer could work his magic on one of the new bedroom walls.  It was fantastic to see the view down the hallway and I had to take some pictures so Steve could see.  It made me appreciate the effort (cost!) we went to in order to have over-height stacker doors and the tall cavity sliders which will close off the hallway when required.

 

At the moment, it's all about gibbing and plastering.  The kitchen guy called yesterday and it's looking like the end of the month for installation (give or take a week I imagine).  Imagine having a real kitchen again!  I am becoming a BBQ chef extraordinaire - this is only because I am doing it every day - and can create any kind of dish using it.  The only thing I haven't tried is baking, but watch this space!!!!  It will be a science experiment and I am planning on making Chocolate chip biscuits in it.

 

We have a big job this coming weekend playing tetris with our furniture in order to clear the floors for the floor sander next week.  I absolutely cannot wait to see the end result. 

 

It feels like winter has hit Auckland, because on Monday it poured with rain, and today it is pouring with rain.  My nose is cold.  That might also be because we have no heating in our house at the moment (central heating is not yet operational)!  We haven't even got a heater, because I sold it on Trade Me.  What on earth was I thinking?  However, our power bill will look super low - but not that low according to the Mercury Energy door-to-door salesperson yesterday, because we are not with Mercury Energy and if we were to switch, we'd get a $150 credit. 

 

The girls are at kindy right now and it's amazing how much more 'free' time I have due to this.  Max potters about happily and still naps in the afternoon so it lends itself well to doing little jobs like picking up tiles and general organisation and planning.

 

Max has brightened up a rainy, cold, grey Wednesday with his dimply grin, and now we go and pick up his lovely sisters in the rain.  I am so glad kindy is just across the road! 

 

 

 

Anna x

 







The Longest Time

We made it! 

The School holidays are officially over, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 are back at kindy next week.  I don't remember what I actually did with the kids last week, so I can't write about it.  I do know there was a bit of The Wiggles and Lion King in there, plus a few trips to the park and to see friends, as well as seeing our new neighbours, The-Other-Auckland-Goughs (TOAGs).  It's such a blur.  I think I am going to look back on this phase of my life when I am 75 and draw a total blank.  I'll think such delusional thoughts as 'oh that was so idyllic'.  I know this, because I look back three years ago to when the twins were babies and I think that was lovely.  It was in many ways, but my brain has deleted the scenes of sleepless nights, feeding marathons, crying babies, illness - all times two.

This has been the longest time in between my posts - over a week - and I think it's because there's not that much happening on our house!  For the first time ever, Steve and I look at the new house each day and wonder what it is the builders actually did.

I am pretty sure that this patch of gib is all the builders did one day last week.

But they have been busy gibbing, and the photos I will show you today are actually out of date.  There are still pink batts showing in said pictures and not much at all showing as I write today.  I have been used to loads of noise as the builders work. The weird thing with the gibbing is that there isn't much noise produced while executing the work, so I then imagine that the builders are all sitting around drinking cups of tea (those cups of tea must be imaginary too though, because I haven't made them any since those halcyon days back in the summer when we had a kitchen and I had the energy to impress). 

 

We know we are nearing the end of the build, because builder numbers have dwindled.  Sometimes it's just Main Builder Guy and The Apprentice.   They are very patient and lovely boys, who don't mind if Max runs half naked onto the building site and turns up the volume on their speakers to EXTREMELY LOUD and then way down to whispery quiet.  They laugh because I spend the majority of my time at home chasing Max.  Sofia has taken to talking to the builders; telling them things such as:  Daddy is doing the washing, because the clothes are dirty and you need to wash clothes because otherwise they wouldn't be clean and we need them to be clean so we can wear them!  This is said while Main Builder Guy is trying to scratch around and shoot some levels (do you like my builder-speak?  I am nearly fluent).  He still manages to look up and say a few things back to her with a smile, which Sofia finds encouraging.  Plus, he was working on a Saturday and he still smiled.

We got rid of the last bit of our old kitchen today - the kitchen island.  So with our utensils in plastic boxes it really does feel like we are camping. 

But not for long.  We are organising the sanding of our existing floors beginning on the 15th May, while I am away in Adelaide visiting my mum with young Max (meanwhile, the girls are heading away with Grandma and Grandad for a mini break and they are very excited).  After that, it will be getting our new floor down, kitchen in and voila!  We will need to do quite a bit of painting and finishing but essentially we will be there.

Major highlight:  our skylights in the new living space - they are fantastic. GREAT call putting in extra windows; it will be one of those things we will always be grateful we did.  They let in so much more light and add a bit of a interest to a large, flat ceiling. 

Looking up at the skylights

 

You can just see the skylights at the top of the picture.  This is looking towards the new kitchen.

 

I must sign off now.  The washing machine is beeping at me and it contains Max's 'Alfie' - a blue elephant comforter which had turned putrid it was so slobbered on.  We lost our spares, and Max is very attached.  Now I need to dry it quickly, without a dryer, and put it back in his bed before he notices. 

 

It might be time for a new toy.  Max seems to like this broom.  But it's a bit big to take with him to bed.

 

 

 



 

Over and out,

Anna x


PS - I didn't take the job.  For a bit longer, I am CEO of Gough Enterprises.