Happy New Year...

Happy New Year readers!!

I hope you all had a lovely break over Christmas! This is one of the pieces I got on my little holiday and I'm betting you're sure I bagged a lot of loot while on it, but lo and behold I didn't actually buy all that much. I got a cute little teapot in Akaroa and this cute little vintage 70's halterneck and a pair of navy blue vintage gloves (which I've wanted for a long time!!) and that's it.









Our little road trip around Central Otago was amazing - and while I certainly have itchy feet when it comes to traveling international waters, it was great to get out and explore my own backyard. New Zealand has some of the most diverse scenery from wild tussock covered mountains to pretty english country side and some of the most beautiful little towns from Arrowtown - a miners settlement from back in the gold rush days, to Akaroa - a beautiful French seaside village a short drive from Christchurch. The weather was also beautiful and warm, I finally got my summer :)





Christmas was spent in Naseby with David's dad and some old friends of theirs and it was lovely - lots of great food, wine and conversation (and a great game called the Dictionary game which I'll fill you in on if you're interested!).

As we drove around, we slowly learnt the game of fruit buying from the side of the road - the number one rule is don't stop at the first place you see. They are bound to be the most expensive because they are counting on you thinking they are the only one's there, we made this fatal mistake and spent $15 on 1kg of cherry's (which where mighty yummy though). The second cherry place we stopped at we got two 1kg bags of cherry's for $10 and a box of jam cherry's that were $10 for 5kg. The only difference between jam cherry's and normal cherry's are that they are a few days older and so still perfectly yummy to eat - over 10 days 5 people attempted to finish them and David and I are still munching our way through a bag of them now.

I took these pictures last night of Mocha playing with a cherry, she was only interested in eating the stalk but had great fun playing with the cherry after that!!





I also got the chance to catch up with the lovely Andrea for coffee before we left to come back down to Dunedin, of course silly me made sure I had my camera with me but then totally forgot to take a photo with her. I find I'm one of those travelers that has good intentions of taking photos but then always forget to take any. I think I prefer to experience everything in real life as opposed to through a lens. However we did manage to take some token photos... (more of which are available for viewing on my flickr)









Some of you may have noticed that I have a new banner! I'm in love with it and have a very good friend to thank for it, Caroline and I used to work together and now she's up in sunny Nelson doing design work. Thank you so much! I know i really wasn't any help in the process, all I told her was that I wanted it to be clean, simple and have a blue theme. And after about two different concepts this magically appeared, so thank you again - I hope you get my little package soon :)

David and i have spent the last couple of days getting back into being at home, tripping over mocha because she's so happy to see us she doesn't let us out of her sight, eating the rewards of our road trip in the sun (fresh cherry's, raspberry's and yummy cheeses) and now enjoying one more relaxing week before i have to go back to work (which reminds me - I'm officially the manager as of today!!)


So, that's the end of my first blog post for 2009! I have many more vintage and thrifted lovelies to show you all in the coming weeks and months that I never got around to showing in 2008 and I have some different plans and ideas for this blog that I hope you all enjoy.

xx
Jen

Ps) I do have a few resolutions (as we all probably do) but I'm not going to list them here, nor do i plan on writing them out anywhere - they are safely tucked away in the back of my head for something to think about when things get a little tough.