Heather's Stuff: February 2009

Friday, February 27, 2009

Cuba Street Carnival

		Colourful cut-outs floating about the sky.
		I really don’t know why – but the trees were being kitted out in knitwear.

Birthday!!!

I turned 33 yesterday. These are the nifty goodies from my gorgeous husband:

A gorgeous bag - silk ribbon handles and flocking flowers on the outside. I was excited just about the bag - but there were cool goodies inside too.

The most beautiful card, EMERGENCY CHOCOLATE!, and a CD.

The Emergency chocolate comes with instructions:
'For immediate relief of chocolate cravings, lovesickness, exam pressure, mild anxiety and extreme hunger. Directions for use: Tear open wrapper, break off desired dosage, and consume. Alternatively massage into the affected area. Repeat dosage as required until finished. If symptoms persist consult your local confectioner.'

And it is dark chocolate - 70% cocoa. Yuuummeeee.

The CD is by a band 'The Frames' who have the singer Glen Hansard as the lead man who you will know of if you have watched the movie 'Once'. Great movie - if you have not seen it, it's well recommended. Oh and the CD too. Also well recommended. Falling Slowly is a pretty pretty song – you can follow the lyrics in the crazy scrawl in the CD insert.


the BIGGEST book - at least in my personal collection. It's about an A2 size. And filled with the most fantastic info and images.		This is a page in the Africa section - some buildings from Jozi. While Africa only gets a small percentage of the pages I am very happy that our stuff is there. And it's good stuff too!

Zibibbo Restaurant

For my birthday Ryan took me to Zibobbo (you can see more about them here: http://www.zibibbo.co.nz/)

They have a bar downstairs and restaurant upstairs. It’s all very warm and welcoming while still looking fresh and clean.

The photos are a bit dismal – I didn’t want to use the flash and blind the patrons all round. But hopefully you get the idea.

The walls were painted orange, green and brown with some walls in wood cladding. Sounds horrific – but it all worked somehow.

Green on the two ends, orange on one long side and brown on the other long side. I think maybe it works because there is very little wall area – most of the wall being taken up by windows or art or backs of the booth seating.

The lighting included some cool pleated linen tube pendants and some box lights.

The majority of the art on the walls was for sale.

Leather booth seating along one side.	Linen pleated tube lamp.	Looking around the corner, there is a very nifty piece of art – black background with white line figures. Cool box lamp


	The food was pretty fine. They have a tapas starter platter and a dessert platter for 2 so that sorted out two of the courses. The dessert platter arrived with a flourish – cute egg dish is a mango mouse with mango coulis on top. Cut pastry ‘soldiers’ on the sides.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Wellington Airport - chairs

These were some of the funky chairs at the Wellington Airport. This is on the domestic terminal side.

Cross Street Carnival - Auckland

This was a small carnival in Cross Street. This is a small street that connects two bigger streets running sort of perpendicular to it. The carnival was in aid of anything arty, noisy, colourful, fun. There were some stalls, live music, performance art. Many good-kind-of-nuts people.


An impromptu ‘band’ arrives from nowhere	Selling real meat	Bunch of crazily coloured sheets make some shade down an alley.

	Some of the colourful people

Auckland Buildings

Some really phenomenal architecture going on in Auckland. These are a couple of my favourites.

		This is set of apartments being built in Cross Street. The suburb here is quite artsy. Absolutely adore how the ‘boxes’ are stacked upon each other.
		These are two from Waiheke Island. The one one the left was taken from inside a bus – so excuse the off reflections everywhere. Floating looking private residence way up on top of a hill. Must have fantastic water views from every direction.
		Some new and some old.
		Some spruced up old and some new.

Auckland Clocks

We went to Auckland to Watch Nine Inch Nails at the Vector Arena. It’s an hour flight to get there from Wellington. We stayed for 4 days to allow for some sight seeing. Auckland is the biggest city of NZ and houses the majority of the population. While it is certainly more ‘big city’ than Wellington it is still nothing like European big cities. It still has a personality and quirky side streets, lots of heritage, old and new mixed together.

Here is my collection of clocks that I spotted in Auckland. All except one are within a few streets of each other.

		This is from Parnell – a suburb south east of central Auckland
	This is at the harbour just outside the ferry station.
This is just a couple buildings away from the Auckland Art Gallery which is currently under a multiple year refurbishment – cant wait to see the finished product.