Time is literally flying away on me and blog writing is very neglected these days, but we are all well here and can’t believe our lovely Christmas and New Year festivities were three months ago! Spring and summer has raced by and now we are on the cusp of autumn here in New Zealand. Since […]
Sunshine was gifted to us on Christmas Day this year in Wellington and we had the most wonderfully relaxed day together (well, almost all together, as our oldest currently lives in Melbourne and so we video chatted and were delighted to see them having an awesome time with a friend and their friend’s family). We […]
Here in New Zealand the holiday season dawns with the first blooms of the Pohutukawa and Northen Rata trees, their bold red blooms create a swathe of red alongside roads, along the beaches and in gardens and parks across the country. In Wellington the blooms are accompanied by festive flags, fluttering on flag poles throughout […]
It was always going to be a different Christmas, with me in the UK with my dear Dad, visiting Mum in the care home, and my family in New Zealand thousands of miles away. Leading up to Christmas Day we were planning how we’d spend the day. My Dad, sister and I all wanted to […]
After our epic holiday in Canada, enjoying plenty of snow action, we were definitely acclimatised to northern hemisphere temperatures by the time we landed in England on the 18th December. It was the first time – in nearly twenty years – that we’d be in England for Christmas and the first time, ever, for our […]
The suitcases are packed, filled for six weeks of travel in the northern hemisphere. We are forgoing a chunk of our southern hemisphere summer to journey north for a festive winter and time will be spent with family and friends. It’s the first time our three daughters will have experienced Christmas in England, like the […]
It’s been well over a month since I last blogged, but Instagram has been a constant online ‘fix’ and brought back a few memories from the year with the ‘Best of nine’! The end of 2015 came around so quickly, with our three daughters finishing a great school year in early December (in a flurry […]
It’s been a wonderful few weeks of holidaying in the countryside of the Wairarapa, enjoying the build up to Christmas, and our daughter Sophie’s Boxing Day Birthday, catching up with friends and enjoying the long light evening’s of summer. Our oldest daughter finished school for the year at the beginning of December and we’re loving […]
We’ve got the tree up and are feeling festive. The Christmas CD’s have been dusted off and we’ve had our first sing along around the piano. The weather (it’s supposed to be summer in New Zealand now) is very northern hemisphere… with a few days of sunshine to remind us that summer is ‘here’, it’s […]
Any expat will understand that Christmas (that is if it is a holiday that means something to you) is hard away from your home. This year, our first Christmas in Santa Barbara, California, USA, could have been twice as hard – particularly for my British husband and I. We spent our growing up years, till […]
Christmas in Santa Barbara is a wonderful place to be, with sunshine and blue sky by day, and a festive feel by nightfall at 5pm. Every tree trunk along State Street is snaked in white fairy lights, the shop windows and restaurants are decorated with class, style and an abundance of sparkles. There is nothing […]
It’s been many years since we’ve seen so many Christmas trees in the build up to Christmas. Visiting Disneyland in the festive season was, as you’d imagine, mind-blowing in a sensory overload of lights, baubles, ribbon, glitter and a touch of fake snow – even in sunny southern California – for good measure. It’s also […]
It’s been so many years since we’ve celebrated the festive season in the northern hemisphere. It took me well over a decade to adjust to celebrating in the southern hemisphere – and just when I thought I’d finally done it… I went and jinxed it! Spending Christmas in Santa Barbara is a wonderful ‘best of […]
A little bit of Christmas cheer has picked up our spirits and cast a light on the dark nights of winter. A little Christmas fairy fluttered into the house and sprinkled some magic on the Christmas tree, which will be covered in her little offerings of hand painted snowmen and snow flakes over the days […]
