First Post

Happy New Year, dear readers!

The last few days have been gorgeous, with lots of lovely sun, gentle breezes and just generally summer-has-finally-arrived. However, today has near-gale force winds and cool drizzly rain - my sister and brother-in-law, up from Christchurch, were muttering about the terrible Wellington weather but I'm fairly convinced they brought it with them, as we've not had it like this for ages!

The mornings have generally been devoted to some kind of activity around our place, and the afternoons we've had a few trips, including walks in Percy's Reserve, swimming (in a vain attempt to wear out a small perpetual motion machine, otherwise known as a daughter!), shopping etc. We're planning a visit to the Pompeii exhibition at Te Papa, and probably the Zoo as well. I don't go back to work until the 18th so I'm loving this long break!

We are planning to paint the house this summer - we've been working on the prep of the area we're going to start in, the next bit of which is lightly sanding down the windowframes of the study, which is a fairly horrible job that definitely can't be done when it's raining! Then it will be time to break out the paintbrushes and rollers, and get some nice paint up there. We've picked a nice light grey, which will tone well with our roof and the red windowsills we're planning... we have pillarbox red doorframes, skirting and windowsills all through the inside of the house, and we're going to take that colour out as an accent outside too.