Sunday, May 17, 2015

How to make a cutting table - a bit of upcycling

Take one really manky Rimu set of drawers that were cut off a wardrobe and good for nothing. Ask the second hand dealers to screw a top on that is 1/2 inch bigger than my cutting board. $60 later and we are ready to get started.




















Get stuck in with the sander, make sure you get dust all through the garage, all outside and over everything. Remove the handles of the drawers before you do the draw fronts. Grunty 60grit sandpaper is the way to get the varnish off. Then go down to smooth as a baby's bottom 180 or 200grit.
recycle rimu drawers
Use plain vegetable or canola oil and oil all sanded areas really well. Clean out all drawers etc.
Patchwork cutting table
Put a Scotty Dog oil cloth that you bought from HERE onto the top with a staple gun. Tuck it under well so that no one sees the work.


Put some gorgeous paper in each drawer to line it and then stand back and congratulate yourself. I am so thrilled with this it is not funny. Now it is time to sort out the mess that is my craft room to be.




Monday, May 11, 2015

Mother's Day Cruise and a Celebrity suprise

 For Mothers Day we took the parents-in-law on a cruise on Lyttleton Harbour. It was a great day and we saw many things including the endangered Hectors Dolphins.
We could not avoid doing some posing around the boat. At one stage we found the exhaust shafts we were sitting by were really warm. So I spent some time lying on them. It was like being on an outside electric blanket - fantastic. When the camera came out I had to do some poses. 

The need to take updated family photos back to Holland with them in July. So lots were taken

The three generations

The requisite selfie


Doing a bit of posing

Gary McCormick
Eli meeting Gary McCormick
At the end of the day we went to Freeman's Bar and Restaurant for live Jazz on the deck. A favourite thing of ours to do. Gary McCormick was there and Jakob and Eli did not believe me. They listen to their show on the radio in the morning. So I interrupted his Sunday after to introduce Eli. He was so amazing and very generous with Eli. Thanks so much Gary.

Monday, May 4, 2015

My freezer is a banana graveyard

There was one banana looking sad in the fruit bowl, so I thought Ah ha, I will make banana muffins for lunches this week. I know there are other bananas in the freezer waiting for some baking as whenever my bananas look sad, I chuck them in there to keep until there are enough for a cake.

Well today when I rifled through the freezer I felt that it should have R.I.P on some shelves. Yes there was a total of 11 old frozen bananas. Some in pairs and some by themselves!! So now there are a lot of muffins. I guess it will make the boys happy!!

Now where did that other one go?

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Karen "The Tool Woman" Schulz

There were many other names for the title of my post which I auditioned -
"This is how I relax before I go to sleep" (referring to me starting and completing this at 10.30pm in my PJ's).
"I normally start a DIY and then get my Father in law to fix it". A very common title for me to use but could not use that title as I did it all myself!!!
"How to make a fish smoker for $2.50".

So at 10pm (after a hectic day spending the price of a small car on various items for our new house) I had started making a fish smoker. And I finished making it 10 minutes later, which is just as well as all my family-in-law are over for lunch tomorrow as a thank you for helping us move. And I am making smoked salmon.
upcycle, recycle
And yes you read a title correctly. I made this for $2.50. The metal lunch box and the cooling rack coming from the same Thrift Store at this bargain price. Due to all but one latch being broken it would be hard to sell it at all. When I explained to the shop that I needed a metal cake tin or similar for smoking fish I think they thought I was mad.
Anyway referring to the title of the blog - I have to fake my amazing DIY skills as I have NO IDEA what the name of some tools I wanted to use were. But have since found out that it is a wire cutter (grr do you know how many years I cut chicken wire with  - not sure the tool name but they are like pliers but with a cutting edge - only to find out that we had a special tool for this that took seconds to do and not hours!! sigh) and a hacksaw.
smoking fish

Cut the cooling rack down to size, put it in the tin, add some manuka shavings and we will be on fire tomorrow.

I link to these places.


Monday, April 27, 2015

ANZAC 100 years

On ANZAC day at 2pm we attended the most personal ANZAC service I have ever been too. Reading of letters from family members who were in the service. Very moving. One of the best wreaths that I have ever seen - from the local spinners and knitters group. Local native plants, red knitted poppies and flax crosses. Stunning.

My family
Lest we forget,
WWI
Private John "Jack" Brown, Killed in Action at Havrincourt, France 30 September 1918
Private James Brown, his brother, Killed in Action at Le Cateau, France the day after his 21st Birthday, 23/10/1918
Private George Anderson Bayne, Killed in Action, Chunuk Bair Gallipoli 8/8/1915
Private James Lews Bayne, Rouen, France 10/10/1918
Trooper Kenneth Anderson Bayne, died nr Pitcairn Island trying to save a child who fell off a troopship, already wounded at Gallipoli, 25/11/1916
Lieutenant Ashley Aston Heyworth, died in France 1/2/1918
Private Oliver Pickering, died Doullens, France 26/7/1918
WWII
Private James Peevers, Italy 19/12/1943
Flight Sergeant Thomas Alexander Peevers, Plane crashed St Arnault, France 2/5/1944
Private Ernest John Pickering, Egypt, 17/7/1942
Kenneth Anderson Chittock, Greece 25/5/1941
John Patrick Arthur Giles, died in Air Operations, Svino, Denmark,

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

While we were in the relative tropics of 1 degree.....

My husband, older son and later (when the weather was better) my parents in law were in -8 degrees C!!! And loving it.   Routeburn Track in the winter. Yes I have done it like this before and it is amazing. Well done to them.




My little trouper!!!

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Getting some sewing done in the school holidays

Cutting mat, sewing machine and paraphernalia 

Concentration to avoid crashing
Tucked up in bed 


Very hard to turn corners on these bikes
In the middle of the school holidays Aaron took Jakob off to the Routeburn Track for 6 nights (and they walked in a blizzard, got snowed in, the track was officially closed etc etc.  In the meantime Eli and I had a few nights with Eli's best friend Spencer. We headed off to Hanmer Springs where it also snowed, hailed and was jolly cold. But we managed to squeeze in lots of activities. They boys favourite was these bikes.

We had a stringest safety chat before and we were clearly told that an adult over 16 had to be the driver due to the requirement to follow road rules. So we madly biked to the domain and then I let them have fun on the little bit of quiet sealed track. At night a pottered on with my pajama quilt I am doing at the moment.

Eli got so tired one day that at 7pm he put himself to bed. Spencer was amazed but popped into bed too and they both slept till 7am. Whew.

A gorgeous break in Rarotonga

Woo hoo, A holiday with no kids for 11 days. Bliss, relaxing and warm! BTW it was an early 20th wedding anniversary present to ourselves....