Celebrating Small

As with Christmas my New Year was even more low key than usual.  New Year's day was hot and sunny and the perfect opportunity to try out a new brew.

Yup, lime and chilli ginger beer.  Found in Moore Wilsons, weird food heaven centrally located in Wellington, luckily not too close to home.

Feeling Festive

So far the build up to Christmas has been rather low key but it got a bit of a boost on the bus one morning this week.

To top it off the driver was wearing a Santa hat too, nice.

On the way to work

The saying goes that nothing beats Wellington on a good day, those being few and far between.  But every now and then you see something that makes even a bad day seem a bit special.  On the way to work yesterday I spotted this guy, you couldn't see the surrounding hills, let alone the horizon but the harbour was flat and he was out rowing in the mist.

Dumplings!

When I moved to NZ people kept asking me did I miss Melbourne.  Apart from people what I missed most was dumplings.  Now, thanks to the information sharing network at work I have found them, very close and very quick so easily do-able during a lunch break.  So last Thursday I went to try them out.  They don't look like much but they taste fabulous and have fixed my craving for a little while.

A Little Something

I haven't done much exploring around the neighbourhood but yesterday I found a wonderful shop that does cupcakes.  Red velvet with sparkle on the icing and a beautiful sugar rose.  Yum.

I'm also loving the Metlink (public transport) Christmas advertising; BUSter and the TRAINdeer spreading the word about holiday schedules.

Settling In

We are settling in.  After a couple of nights on the tiles, returning in the wee small hours, Poppy now seems happy to hang around the house.  Huia is still regularly sleeping off the exhaustion of chasing blowflies and getting amongst the unpacking.

Downsizing

I am still unpacking and probably will be for a little while yet.  Part of the reason for this is time but a big part is that my new place is smaller than my old one, particularly the kitchen.  This is pretty much the whole thing with the exception of a tall pantry cupboard you can see the edge of on the left.

A lot of careful packing of cupboards is in progress and I have even (shock!, horror!) put some things aside to donate to a charity shop.  If you are eagle eyed you will see that this hasn't stopped the early preparation stages of Christmas Cake.