A year in photos

Every year I make a DVD slideshow of photos from the year, set to a carefully chosen song. This year I used two songs as it's been a big year! I usually only choose photos with our family in them but this year I included photos of friends we left behind (I'm a bit sad that I don't have photos of my cousin and I together so I could include one or two.)

I finally figured out how to get the slideshow from ProShow Gold (the editing programme I use) onto YouTube, so here it is.



Here is an add-on that was included in our DVD slideshow - I had to split the video and post it separately as the entire thing was longer than 10 minutes so I couldn't upload it to YouTube. Just imagine it tacked onto the video above.

Shoe and wetsuit organisation

I wasn't overly thrilled with the shoes piled up by the door from the garage to the house. Let's just say they didn't always look this neat:





I decided to make a shoe rack to stand there, which would also provide more storage.

I started by pulling apart some pallets that we had. It was in the midst of this exercise that I stepped on this nail and it went pretty much through my foot. All building activities ceased for a couple of days.



But pretty soon I was back to finishing up the project.



I got as far as this before I ran out of planks for the shelves. But that sparked a better idea.





See how I notched the back feet to go around the skirting board so it would stand flush with the wall?



It stood like that for a little while until I got down to Mitre 10 Mega to buy a pole of some sort. The cheapest one I could find was a wooden pole for about $7. I got Grant to haul down a hanging shelf unit we had stored in the garage loft, and this is the final result - storage not only for shoes but for wetsuits too! And in winter we can hang wet raincoats on it when we need to.





I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out and the fact that it only cost me $7 (for the pole)!

Christmas jars

As token gifts for friends I gave out jars of joy - or rather hot fudge sauce, which sometimes is the same thing.



I just used jars that I've been saving, and added some ribbon on a label I made in Photoshop.





Here's the front and back of the label:





They were well received and I hope the recipients enjoy the sauce.

Franklin Zoo

On Christmas Eve we went to Franklin Zoo Wildlife Sanctuary. It is quite small but we enjoyed it. The boys had fun feeding the ducks and birds and Grant and I enjoyed hearing about and seeing the elephant.























When we came home Daniel drew pictures of the animals and birds we'd seen.

Christmas

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We have had a lovely few days. On the 23rd we were invited down to the park by Nic and her family. They brought a freshly caught and smoked snapper and we bought some chips from the fish-and-chips shop. We enjoyed eating and chatting and playing and it was just what I needed.





On Christmas Eve we went to the zoo (I'll do a separate post) and Grant's brother arrived. Since then we've been hanging out at home and going to Karioitahi, Kaiaua and Sunset Beach:





Christmas present - we bought a trampoline (got a great deal on it too!)





(Karioitahi)

































(Sunset Beach)







(Kaiaua)









The path down to the beach from where we park at the side of the road is very steep - we had to pass / throw things to each other to get them down to the beach and then back up again afterwards.