Out and About

 It's been a busy old time lately.  Each month a group of ladies from our village go out to lunch.  It was my turn to organise it this month, and as usual we went to one of the local cafes.  We all enjoyed our lunches and I asked the owner to take a photo for me.  Ooops, the photos seem to be turning out a little fuzzy lately.

Gill, Audrey, Janice, Jan, Jenny and Dot

The cafe has a large collection of English teapots made to look like pretty cottages.  Like most collections, this one started small, then just kept growing, we were told.

A lovely collection of fancy teapots

THen in the weekend we joined our caravan club friends for a rally at the   Tauherenikau Caravan Park.  Tauherenikau means "the house made of nikau palm fronds".  The weather warm enouigh to sit outside for morning tea, so that was really good since we are in mid winter here.  Luckily we had a small hall available to use during the evenings.  

A few of the early bird vans

 On Saturday evening most off us drove through to Greytown to check out the Festival of Christmas light show and food stall.  We found a car park and had quite a long walk to get to the town centre, which was closed off to traffic.  The place was humming, full of people with toddlers in pushchairs and older kids running around, dogs on leads, and lots of oldies like us.  The first thing we saw on arrival was a row of burners used in hot air balloons.   Whoosh, whoosh, they went, flames shooting upwards.  You couldn't get too close without feeling the heat from the burners.  Plenty of people were taking videos and photos, and just standing around watching it all happen.

THere was plenty of interest in the burners

We wandered around with the crowds and checked out some of the food stalls.  Mmm, profititeroles, that sounds nice.  So we shared a few of these dainty little cream filled balls covered in chocolate, while sitting on a very low wooden structure. The  next food stall was selling fried oysters, but at $78 a dozen, we passed them by.  I love fried oysters but certainly not at that price.

We shared the profiteroles

Nibbling away, we watched as  mid winter themed images were played across one of the lovely old buildings.  Kids walked by with glow sticks, excitedly exclaiming at all that was going one.  Gingerly getting up from our very low seating, we wandered down another alley and found an interesting Japanese food truck.  This was new to us so we ordered, and enjoyed,  some fried dumplings and Japanese fried bread.  The fried bread was rather like a toasted sandwhich containing very tasty curry meat filling.  Who would know that curry was a Japanese thing?  Or maybe it was a Kiwi special?

We came across a huge Christmas tree, such a pretty sight.  Nothing nicer than Christmas in July celebrations.  We were getting weary by this stage, and my back was protesting, so we wandered back through the throngs of people.  I'm sure more and more were arriving as it got darker.  Sore back not withstanding, I'm so pleased we went to have a look.

Christmas tree

The weather wasn't quite so nice on Sunday, the sky had clouded over and the wind had got up so we were pleased to have the hall available for morning tea.  Everyone said their goodbyes and started to pack up and head home.  Not us though, we had decided to spend an extra night in the Wairarapa and check out the newish Masterton NZMCA Park.  The members in the area have done a wonderful job of planting NZ native trees around the perimeter, these will slowly grow and  mature, provide shelter and encourage native birds to come and visit too.  This is a large roomy area with water available, rubbish bins, and a dump station.  We had a relaxing Sunday and finally arrived home on Monday afternoon.  The only crafting I did was to continue knitting my socks, now I have finally done the heels it was easy knitting in the car as we traveled there and back.