Everything and…

We drove to Bell Block, a little north of New Plymouth, last Sunday. The folks building the kitchen for our new home had hoped to see us the previous week, but due to a communication breakdown we didn’t know. So, we arranged to see them on Monday morning.

I booked us into what turned out to be some very good accomodation in Fitzroy, called The Residence. It was new and well equipped, and just a few minutes walk from the beach were we enjoyed an evening stroll and distant views of Mt Taranaki:

We had a good and very productive meeting with Lew on Monday morning, as the saga of the kitchen sinks continued, but was resolved with Lew’s help. In short, we are having two sinks in our new kitchen, a conventional or normal one and a small one for a tea and coffee making area. Our first choice for the small sink had become unavailable. Bert had found an alternative, which I discovered on Saturday evening was also now unavailable! I found a third option, this time stainless steel as opposed black composite, from a manufacturer called Sergio. I noticed when we got to The Residence, that the sink in the kitchen area was a Sergio, normal size. When we started discussing sinks with Lew, he said, “ah, Sergio, yes we use those and have a local supplier where you could go and have a look at them.” Brilliant. So off we went to see matching small and normal sized sinks, rang Lew to say that’s we we wanted, and a few minutes later picked up an email from him confirming the order with his supplier. Ten minutes later we had a phone call from Bert to say the suppliers of our second choice have found one of the small sinks in the store room!! We had to make a quick decision while on the road and decided to stick with the Sergio sinks, as amongst other things it would save us $1300.

We had lunch with a sea view on the coast road to Wanganui, then stopped at the Arty Tarts café in Opunake for tea, coffee and a shared slice of Kahlua cheesecake. Next stop was the Bread Capitol of the World to buy 20 mini apple turnovers and two dozen fruitless hot cross buns, all for $12. We gave most of them to the workers at our build, and enjoyed the remainder ourselves. The gib was almost up, and Nicky swept the house during our evening visit. Adam’s broom is looking a little aged.

Our return drive on Tuesday was in much better weather than we had expected. On our way out of town after popping into the build, we called at the church and the other BuildTech build on the other side of town, and then headed for Angel Louise in Raetihi for an impromptu smakeral of bacon and egg pie and date scone to wash down the tea and coffee. It was quite late when we got back to Auckland so we had a roast takeaway for dinner which went down well.

Wednesday was wet, but it started drying up on Thursday so Nicky pressed the washing machine into action, and it hardly stopped on Friday as the breeze was drying the laundry almost as fast as the machine was washing it. I had some on-site jobs which went well, and Nicky enjoyed another ukulele concert in town.

On Friday Nicky started producing five fruit cakes for Christmas, birthday’s and because should could. This process continued into Saturday morning but they look very good and she is pleased to have them done. I started moving things out of the garage on Saturday, things that we definitely want to take to Wanganui. Claire’s bedroom is the temporary storage location. We had a good chat with Dawn on The Rattigan where we also had lunch in the sunshine with the southerly breeze. Tea was followed by an evening stroll.

Nicky was up early this morning to make her contribution for the shared lunch at church. She made 12 individual tuna tarts and one big one for us. The special service was due to start at 10, but Nicky returned home around 10.30, tarts in hand, as the service had been moved and was held last week.

The morning’s heavy rain finished just as she was departing for Scrabble at Stella’s, and the afternoon sun has been lovely. I have made a 1.5Kg pork and apple pie, and fruit bread for tea, which will probably be followed by tellyboxing as the eighth of the Harry Potter films is on this evening. In preparation we watched the seventh this morning while ironing and cooking.

Take care, Rick