Tuesday; Sorry fans no exciting renovations happening this week.

Today we convoyed into Till, I took the ute and Rowan came in on the motorbike. We had a load of things to take back and I wanted to get some washing on before we headed out to Waimate. Rowan found a cheap helmet for me that had barely been used. The helmet the neighbour had lent me is unfortunately giving me a huge allergic reaction. It started on my forehead and then down the sides of my face. We drop in to the two op shops on our way in and on our way out we go to the Waimate Bakery. It is more like a fancy bakery come cafe, heaps of seating inside and out. They are finally doing some work to the old arcade in Waimate. I can’t wait to see it all done, I have had dreams of owning it. I think I want to collect cool buildings next instead of antiques haha. We had a few jobs in Ōamaru to do, by the time we went to do some work at Leona’s office it was the afternoon. We came in to work and ended up chatting for a few hours haha. With a bit more warmth left in the day we raced back to Herbert and I got up on the container to paint. Rowan finished the flashing. It was after 6pm when I finished up there.

Rowan and I got a message from Shirley, our friend we met in Paihia. By the time we decided to have dinner with her and meet up it was past 7pm. I started looking for fish and chips, everywhere is closed of course haha. So we ask her where she is staying and I tell her not to set up for the night but to stay put we will come to her. We get to All Day Bay a freedom camping spot and it is packed! Which is a bit insane as you can freedom camp all along this coastline, but everyone stays packed in like sardines in this one spot! I give her a quick hug and tell her quietly to follow us, we don’t need everyone following. Our favourite spot is available. We park up have a drink or two. Rowan makes a pasta dish and we sit outside and eat while the sun goes down. It is about 11pm before we all go off to bed.

Wednesday; An early start to the day. We picked up the oven we couldn’t get last week Monday and decided it was worth an op shop around. I got a new hair trimmer thing, I haven’t had anyone cut my hair since my mum last did it. I have done it myself since then, I may need to get Rowan onto it soon. From there we did an op shop around but was done rather early. We wanted to hit the Waikouaiti and Palmerston Dumps. We were really early so we took the scenic back route to Waikouaiti. I found lots of picture frames which I have been on the hunt for. There is a bit of a special project in mind for Till. We caught up with our friend Liz and Palmerston. We meet her years ago when she was in Ōamaru. I ended up on the phone to another friend Robyn from around the same time who had a place in Hampden. From there we went to see our new neighbours Dianne and Trevor and exchange phone numbers. We haven’t had a chance to tell them our plans for the land yet. It is a really hot day and we got back to Herbert around 5pm. An early night tonight!

Thursday; A rather boring day to write about. Not much excitement to report. We did work on our house plans and spent a lot of time with Mitre10 talking about layouts.

Friday; More paperwork but we got some good progress, we have locked in our bathroom design and are at 80% for our kitchen design. Building a new house takes up a lot more mental space than renovations. We got on top of our tradies and tried to lockdown some more quotes. Jimmy came over with his big tractor and lifted up the trailer for me. Now I can paint the bottom of it with ease. Also an entertaining photo of some bad parking hehe

Saturday; Jim wants his tractor back this afternoon so I got onto rust converting and painting it. Rowan puts up a couple of yacht sails to give us more shelter. We make room in our container for another load from Christchurch. We want to pick up the large cabinets we used to have in our walk in wardrobe. I plant some Māori potatoes that Robin at the tip shop gave me to try.

Sunday; An early drive to Christchurch, we leave by 6am and first stop at a guys place who is giving away a bunch of stuff. He is doing up a hoarders house too. I feel much better about ours after I hear he has removed 29 large skip bins and still has more to go! From there we went to a market that happens once a month. I ended up with a few house plants and Rowan found a few trinkets. We took it easy coming up but arrived at lunchtime. We headed straight into Edgewater to pick up my second motorbike. I don’t like the first one he got me so I asked for another one haha. This one will be much much easier for me to learn on. First of all it is light, I can touch the ground and it is a moped so I can drive it on my car license. I will get my motorbike license though. I am much happier with this one. After we went to fill up all the leftover space from the storage unit. We got to Rick and Liz’s by 5pm. Liz cooked an awesome dinner per usual. It was really nice seeing them. It sounds like they had a nice holiday.

Monday; We got up early to head to where our gypsy truck is stored. I hoped to give Billy some money but he wasn’t there. We grabbed a few more things to make the baskets full. From there we headed out towards the airport to pick up Shirley, she is getting a WOF on her car. We had a lovely breakfast at the Raeward Cafe and Shirley was very kind to shout us. I came across a well carved whale tale with a koru in it. I thought of Shirley and gifted it to her. It is nice to have a wee souvenir. Next time we see her we will most likely be in Scotland! On our way back we op shopped in Ashburton but in Timaru we went back to the house with the free stuff and chatted to the owner. We wanted to make sure whatever we wanted he is okay with it going. We chatted to Bill for some time and plan to come back tomorrow as our load is pretty full already! Back at Herbert at a reasonable hour but with a lot to do. It doesn’t take us that long to unload it all. That will be our last load until we get more storage.