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 […]
New Zealand
A place with no real weather | Prose for Thought
Dare I say, ‘I’m getting used to this place’? Where the weather barely changes – apart from the length of light in a day. Where clouds are cause for exclamation – and rain is a rare, yet welcome, distraction. I’ve come from a place that knows big weather, where a person learns to dress in […]
Feeling Festive | The Photo Gallery
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 […]
Burning some rubber with the kids on the Santa Barbara waterfront!
With three children constantly at home it’s not easy to fit in exercise (well, not in the way I’d like – though I do get plenty of movement cleaning up after them and running around playing crazy games… and moving the wine glass to my mouth…). This week, with friends visiting from New Zealand, we […]
Loving: A bunch of Kiwis doing Thanks Giving USA
With our NZ neighbours visiting us in our temporary home in the USA we had the perfect reason to celebrate and feast. So we spent a relaxed day at home, preparing the table, for a Thanks Giving feast. Young Miss 3 delighted in sticking cloves into oranges, Miss 10 made up some name-places for the […]
Things that have made me smile this week in Santa Barbara
Love the girl that wants to give her Mamma flowers, whenever she sees an opportunity to pick them… though in many a situation I have to urge her not to pick them! Love Autumn here in Santa Barbara (though it’s the warmest, sunniest one I have ever experienced in my lifetime!). The days are definitely […]
Missing our life in New Zealand
As beautiful as it is here in Santa Barbara, California, I’m missing so much of our home in New Zealand. People will say I’m ‘nuts’, since much of New Zealand is currently experiencing full on spring storms of destructive proportions, whilst the climate here is very easy to live with, but I love the ‘wild’ […]
First impressions | School life in America
School commenced for two of our three children yesterday. Our ten year old has been attending school in New Zealand for five years and, apart from a somewhat dissatisfying, unchallenging experience in her first three years, she has pretty much excelled. She thrived at a private girls school she attended for the past two years […]
Playing out the last weeks, Kiwi style.
The past few weeks have been filled with impromptu meet-ups and casually arranged gatherings with friends. It is very indicative of the way we’ve lived our lives here in New Zealand – a very relaxed, unstructured, casual, ‘go with the flow’, ‘she’ll be right, mate!’ kind of way. I still vividly remember having to adjust […]
Things I’m Loving this wintery week in Wellington
The countdown till we leave New Zealand is sadly on. We will fly out on 7 August, but as that time draws closer we are enjoying a close coming together with the people that have meant so much to us in our lives here. This past week, being the last week of term 2 here […]
Prose for Thought – The greenstone that seeded my love for New Zealand
Before I ever laid a foot in Aotearoa (New Zealand) I received the gift of a pounamu (greenstone) necklace, beautifully carved in the eternity symbol, from my boyfriend who had left England to take up a job in Aotearoa. The year was 1996 and I had planned to join him in February 1997, on a […]
The Photo Gallery | Green
I used to think blue was my favourite colour, like the ocean and a perfect summer’s sky, but more and more it is green that really rocks me. I love all the contrasting shades of green in nature, and the vibrancy of trees after a heavy rain. I love the inviting canopy of a lush, […]
Wardrobe Wednesday (posted the night before – Pinot Gris will do that!) – Working on it…
What a giggle this ‘Wardrobe Wednesday‘ thing is. When I ask Miss 7, ‘Please can you take my pic?’, she says, ‘It’s that time of the week, isn’t it?’ and then giggles as she takes a dozen shots and tells me how to pose… oh dear (but it IS such a laugh – and there’s […]
The Photo Gallery: The Letter C
These past hot months, of the most incredible summer New Zealand has seen in decades, has been intensely wonderful. We’ve enjoyed endless evenings of playing out till dark, and days with windows flung open to let air fill the house. We’ve not had to layer up in months, our skin has been free to breath, […]