I've had a really busy weekend, and got loads done.

Its New Zealand winter now, so it's cold but most days we get some sun. We went to Bethell's Beach on Saturday, which is where Xena was filmed (Calliope's cave). Really beautiful beach, lovely sand dunes,and HUGE waves that were whipping up foam which we caught as it blew across the beach.

Today I carried on working on the fairy grotto - I'm making the door of the room into a giant tree trunk by painting a tree around it - it's quite difficult to get the shape of the boughs right. So far I've used 3 colours of leaves, but I'm going to have to go back and reshape some of it. I've been using acrylic paint, and one of the tubes was almost solid and smelt like old brussells sprouts (not kidding) - it worked okay once I'd mixed it with water. I also reorganised and sorted out all my daughters toys, and did all the washing and cleaned the fridge. This is mainly because we've got a visitor arriving on Wednesday for a month.

I'd been having weird dreams lately, lots of dreams about dead people, so I have had a phone round over the weekend to make sure everyone is still alive. I spoke to my best mate, who I hadn't really spoken to for a few months cos it's difficult with a 12 hour time difference when we're both doing things. I was also looking up something on Google, and by chance I tried putting in one of my friends from college, who came up on her work website. I emailed her and she wrote back - we lost touch years ago, cos I used to move about every six months with work. I don't know if it's because its winter, but I am trying to catch up with people I owe e-mails to now, and trying to update our family website (which is only for our family to see photos of what we're doing here).

I'm also really tired and trying to eat more healthily because of it - today I lapsed with a danish for breakfast, but had celery soup for lunch, which is meant to be very cleansing, and steamed veg with cheese sauce for dinner, although we started doing stuff for lunches for the week after dinner, so I also had a cheese twistie and a banana muffin and a bit of chocolate shortbread ( we add the healthy stuff in later)

Auckland has just had the 'Big Day out' music festival, with Muse and the Killers. I ummed and ahhed about going cos someone was crushed to death a few years ago when Limp Bizkit played and they blamed the organisers for not caring about the audience. By the time I'd decided to go (and take my kid) all the tickets had gone - Boo!

So I had a cheer myself up weekend instead.

I made a chocolate fudge cake on Saturday - it was huge - a 2lb cake tin. The centre was too light and not fudgey enough, so I won't include the recipe.

On Sunday the weather was lovely - a NZ summer day in all its glory. Spent the day on the beach with the kid bodyboarding, then came back and had a gourmet BBQ. Tried Tarahiki - a NZ white fish - firmish flaky texture. I bought fillets and marinated them in lime juice, caperberries and sweet chilli sauce, then onto the BBQ for a few mins, and served with a squirt of lemon juice. Instead of rolls I did panini grilled then topped with olive oil, BBQ'd red onions, grilled tomato and red pepper slices and some sea salt. Its also asparagus season here, so we had plainly BBQ'd asparagus. Pudding was the chocolate fudge cake, which works better as a pudding than a cake, especially when served with chocolate fudge brownie ice cream and cream. Calorie attack!!!

Best of all, there are clear skies tonight, so I and all my neighbours saw the McNaught comet. It has an amazing tail on it.
link to this for piccies is NZ Herald

The other thing I've been doing lately is reading fanfic by ljs . Having read her "What would Hugh Grant do?" fic (Ganya) I've made a start on her website (as her journal is flocked) to read more Ganya. She writes it so well - I haven't finished the fic yet, so I won't name it as I haven't commented on it - but its written the way I would want Giles and Anya to be together. Its incredibly romantic, but still with the full-on characters. Whew!


Have also started on glassdarklyuk kinky as hell Wesley/Spike fic (Spesley?) and am enjoying it immensely! I will write more about this!