PaisleyJade

Summer Holidays!

By PaisleyJade - Wednesday, January 30, 2019

The school holidays have come to an end! Apart from a few road trips, these holidays could pretty much be summed up with two words: Kittens & Marie Kondo! Haha. We've absolutely loved playing with our gorgeous kittens and have also dabbled in a bit of decluttering thanks to inspiration from the hit Netflix series with Marie Kondo.

Here are a few of our holiday antics below...

Our road trips these holidays included a road trip to Auckland Zoo...

The Parrot Place in Kerikeri (highly recommend!)...

And of course the beach...

After finally finishing the Twin Peaks Zig Zag Blanket, I was super excited to have a chance to start a new project. I've always been intrigued by the Larksfoot stitch (sometimes called the arcade stitch) and was keen to give it a go so began a blanket with some rather bold colours. I really enjoy this stitch, and it is really nice to be doing a different project after having worked on another for so long.

And of course, our favourite past time these holidays have been getting to know and play with Ripley's kittens. As I mentioned in a previous post, the kittens didn't quite turn out like we had planned, but we love them all the same and are so excited that we have found lovely homes for all 5 kittens! We will be keeping 2 of the kittens (yes we will be a 3 cat family! Eeeeek!). We will have the kittens with us for a couple more weeks, so are savouring every moment with them...

I have been so impressed and proud of the stunning pieces of art that are being created throughout our central city of Whangarei with #streetprintsmanaia. Me and my girls spent an afternoon finding most of the murals around our city and loved it so much!

Symon's side of the family didn't get the chance to gather together last Christmas, so we gathered together recently for a meal and made sure to take some photos too. Only 5 of our family missing!

Of course the holidays also included puzzles, games, yummy food and lots of time with our family.

With the 10 year photo craze currently happening, our son decided to get in on the action with these funny photos! 😂

I'm glad to be back to routine but will miss being in holiday mode! Here's to a great year ahead - Happy New Year!

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Boo

Farewell 2018!

By PaisleyJade - Monday, December 31, 2018

Way back since 2009 I've had the annual tradition of looking back through the blog for the year and remembering the year that has gone by - celebrating the wins, and acknowledging the highs and lows. This space is usually only a highlights reel of my life - a place where I like to capture the good stuff to remember and savour years later. It doesn't usually include the tears and trials of life, and this year has had its fair few. But another year has passed, we've survived and in fact, we've even thrived through it all.

So I'm celebrating the year that has been, and looking forward to a new year ahead, like a fresh blank piece of paper, waiting for adventures and stories to be recorded, I know 2019 will be a good one. And as it always is with life, some of the stories written won't be the ones I planned or chose to have included, but whatever comes my way, I will chose to grow and thrive with God's help - because life is not about your circumstances, but how you choose to respond to them.

I want to keep a sweet heart, a spirit of adventure and have a stronger faith than ever before in the goodness and faithfulness of God. I'm so thankful for the past, but looking forward to the future!

This was the first year I ever used the app "1 Second a Day" and believe it or not, I actually collected a whole years worth of seconds! It's amazing when I watch through it how I can recall each day. Such a great way to catch a snippet of the year to preserve, and also realise how every moment and day in your life counts. The individual ones are stored here, and if you're game enough to watch a whole year of seconds go here.

So here we go as I look back at some of my favourite highlights and memories from 2018...

Adventures

Our adventures this year included many road trips and beach trips. Here are a few of my highlights:

We absolutely love taking some of our church team down to Life Conference this year. Always an amazing and inspirational time.

We had a wonderful family holiday this year close to home. Always so good to hang out together as a family...

We loved going to Armageddon this year, especially getting to meet Rhys Darby!

Apart from the many various road trip adventures this year, my friend Nina and I embarked on anther type of crazy adventure this year... secretly fundraising for some friends of ours. We wanted to help an amazing family who had been through quite a bit fundraise some money towards their new business. Our goal was to raise around $800... but somehow we raised $7,000!! Check out the awesome video here if you haven't seen it already. SO MUCH FUN!

Renovations

In April this year we started renovating one of the smallest rooms in our house... our ensuite.

Nine looooong months later, and we still haven't officially finished the room - but we are nearly there! The room we thought would be one of the smallest, cheapest and quickest to renovate has taken the longest, caused the most issues and gone way over budget. I'll write more about it in the new year when I do a blog post about it with some before and afters, but believe me, it's felt so disappointing only having worked on 1 room this year when in past years we have nailed multiple rooms. Here's hoping 2019 is a bit different in the renovation department!!

Family

I shared a blog post early in the year about how quickly the days fly by with raising your kids, and it's really made me value each moment with our family and friends. I've learnt to cherish each moment, rather than constantly hark back to the old days or look forward to the future. I want to cherish each season.

Our eldest daughter was baptised this year - such a special moment for our family!!

Our family lost 2 beloved pets in the same month - Barney our 13 year old tabby cat and Boo, our 13 year old Staffy. Both of these pets were so loved by our family and are still missed.

Our kid's school did their first school production and it was amazing! We were so impressed with them all and can't wait for next year's production!

We also had a new addition to our family - Ripley Drake, our Ragdoll Birman cross.

And a few weeks before Christmas had 5 gorgous kittens arrive! Not quite the kittens we'd planned, but we love them so much!

Our daughter had quite an adventurous stay in hospital this year which was slightly scary for a while there but ended up all good in the end!!

Our eldest has a lovely girlfriend in his life 😍❤️ who we are loving getting to know!

Makings

I started my Twin Peaks inspired Zig Zag blanket for my eldest son..

And thankfully finished it! It took me so long but was so worth it.

I made this delicious Rich Chocolate Cake (flourless)

and a super simple Doctor Who Tardis Cake.

I had heaps of fun making crochet shopping bags...

These reusable fabric shoppings bags with pockets were also fun to make!

I love these Coconut & Date Bliss Balls - so easy to make and delicious!!

I had heaps of fun making a few softies again this year. I do love making softies when I have time and am hoping to make more creations in 2019!

These Apple Turnovers were so delicious and super easy to make...

Along with food & crafty makings this last year, I started writing the occasional article for our local newspaper's faith section. You can check them out here, here and here!

Symon even caught the crafty bug this year and attempted and nailed his first ever cross-stitch!!

Celebrations

This year Symon & I celebrated 20 years in ministry (as youth pastors and senior pastors) and along with that our church celebrated its 41st birthday, and was relaunched as Renew Church. Change isn't always easy, but it's the end goal that we have kept our focus on and it has been so worth it.

We also celebrated 20 years of youth church with a night of old school songs that we used to sing (all homegrown originals written by our guys). It was an amazing night and so awesome to have a mini reunion with some of the guys that came out for the night, along with our old youth pastors over the years. Such a legacy!