Halloween Happiness

My lil' crew have had a bit of silly Halloween happiness these past few days. The lead up was fun preparing decorations and thinking up food ideas. Georgie missed having 'school friends' over for a birthday party this year as she hadn't yet started school after relocating from the United Kingdom to New Zealand. So we thought it might be fun to have a bit of an impromptu gathering for Halloween. I was a little nervous as I've never had a Halloween party before and our place in the UK was a little small for entertaining of any sort really, so I'm sooo out of practice. But I braved it and we had a really fun night. Here's a little photo montage of our silly fun...

Here's my crew in their Halloween costumes ready to receive trick or treaters. Fair to say, Zachy gave more than one group a bit of a fright. He was so cute in his get up. Totally his idea to use that mask when he saw it in Dad's dress up stuff. I wouldn't have chosen that, but he rocked it!

A little while later, he decided he should try on Papa's horsehead, but he's seriously too cute to spook!!!

I got a little carried away with the theme. I even pimped the toilet! But it was super fun having a bit of a laugh as we prepped all the different aspects for the party. The soap dispenser wasn't perfect, but I'll improve on it next year.

     

The monster in the toilet and the ghost soap dispenser.

 I had some help with the spooking from a few little friends.
     

     
The kids were greeted by these guys as they came up the stairs to the TV room.


 The kids were super impressed by the Giant Spider on the ceiling

   
Moomin was in charge of the Halloween movie treats

My beautiful niece rocking the sassy witch look with green hair!

I'm not a great baker or cook, so I found simple ways of making the Halloween food a bit 'sleuky' (Georgie's baby word for scary, it's so cute, it's stuck!) I made Spider Pizzas, Mini Jack-o-Lanterns, Oreo Cookies guarded by an Oreo Spider and Witches heads made from mini pavlovas, chocolate cookies, mini mallowpuffs (a New Zealand cookie) and Hershey's chocolate kisses, with black liquorice hair and whip-cream glue.

     

     
Go on, take an Oreo, if you dare!

Residing over the table, ready and waiting to take your order, was this lil' Witchy Waitress, drawn by one of my favourite crafty artists, Krista Smith from Saturated Canary.

So glad I brought home the kids trick or treat buckets from England, which actually made really fun chip buckets this year! Thank you Marks & Spencer's! So miss that store.

Even the juice boxes got the friendly ghost treatment

The Witches who came to tea.

I ran a couple of competitions for the party. Best costume and a colouring competition using a sweet image from Sylvia Zet of Wee Stamps. With her kind permission, I was allowed to use the image for the kids to have a go at colouring her sweet witch 'Hazel'. They were all so good, but I managed to narrow the win down to three, which I thought was pretty good.

These were the entries for the colouring competition

Here's our costume competition winner flanked by my kids.

Finally, I had a little 'stand' with the take home goodies and the prize wins by the front door. I was canny and managed to pick up this stand on Halloween Thursday from our local Warehouse store, as all the candy had sold out and it was likely headed for the trash! It had some cute lil' bats on it and a couple of fun skeletons, which just added to our Halloween decoration stash. It looked great sat by the front door to give the kids their treats as the parents came to collect them.

This lil' bat box I made for the winner of the costume competition. My Zachy was heartbroken when I gave it away, as he had been convinced it was for him! Such a sad sweet moment. I hadn't realised he'd made this attachment to it! So I've promised to make him another one! This lil' box was filled with bat droppings, ahem, Maltesers.

This was the colouring competition prize along with a bookmark I made and laminated which you can see in the picture above. There were two, one for each competition. I seriously have spent way too much time on Pinterest lately, ghost poo, hehehe.

Family and friends, I hope you enjoyed seeing our Halloween fun today. I've stashed some of the decorations for next year, so let's see if I can go one better then! Ciao, Wends xxx

Quick update: I made up Zachy's little bat box today, sweet wee guy, really was so crushed when that got given away in the prizes. So here's his lil' batty...

(I tried taping down the front flap first, which has ruined the ink finish sadly, but he's 3, so unlikely he'll notice! Taped the underside afterwards, which is what I should have done in the first place!)

We're here!!!

We've made it back to our homeland and we're loving the long Kiwi summer days. This Kiwi summer is awesome! So many days of sunshine since we've been back, I'm forgetting what the rain smells like! It's a stark contrast to the soft white snow we left behind in London. I wonder how long it'll be before I miss that? Too soon to tell!!!

Georgie and Zac - leaving London in the snow!

Our life in boxes! You realise all that matters in the end is the ones you're left standing with!!!

Zachy and I watching as the shippers get ready to put our car up in the container.

Next stop was New York.

Georgie with her buddy Aaliyah in Times Square.

A pic taken by my sis Becky in LA - half way home to NZ

The kiddos are loving it here, being in nature and surrounded by family. It's blissful! But the house hunt is proving a little more stressful than we'd hoped. The property prices in Auckland are outrageous!!! I can't wrap my head around having to spend $1,000,000 for a property. I don't fancy spending anywhere near that, so 'dream home' may have to give way to 'okay family home'. Oh well, where ever we end up, and in what ever house, there'll still be plenty of room for visitors, so bring on the Scandinavian and UK mates visits!!!

In the meantime, we're really blessed to be staying with my brother Vaughan and his partner Shane. Who are taking awesome care of us and have made us feel really at home. Thanks guys, you rock!

So much to look forward to now we're home, two weddings, lots of family get togethers and today, is my baby girls 8th birthday. Woohoo!! Happy Birthday my beautiful girl, Mama's super proud of you!

I have to go make birthday cake, so catch you all later, mwah xxx

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

The house has sold - woohoo! The flight path has been chosen, but not yet paid for, as we're still waiting for the kiddos New Zealand citizenship papers to arrive. Time is ticking away! We're supposed to be leaving this rental property on the 15th Jan, which happens to be our 19th wedding anniversary!!! Oh my, it's all go here. I just can't wait to be all organised and boarding the plane for the first leg of our journey. New York and our lovely Aussie pals, here we come! But for now, here's reality...

Christmas has been fabulous, spent with friends we love very much. Here are a few pics of our munchkins enjoying their pressies and the general festivities of the day.

Georgie was rather chuffed with her pink Nintendo DS!

The kiddos had great fun making a rather fabby gingerbread house.

Yummy spoily treats from Harrods!

This Christmas cake was almost too pretty to slice into!

Zac's favourite toy! There was quite a lot of 'pirate speak' Christmas day!!

Well that's all for today me hearties. I'll update again once we have some news of our departure date. Hugs from us all xxxx

House Has Exchanged! Woohoo!!

After a lot of stress, sleepless nights and furniture crammed into our tiny rental apartment to save on storage costs, we have finally exchanged on our house! Not an easy or pleasant process, but oh so satisfying to get to this point.

We are set to complete on Monday, so fingers crossed there'll be no delays. But so far, all has not run smoothly, but let's just hope this one goes off without a hitch.

13 years in the UK, 8 in our lovely wee North London pad. Needless to say it will be a bittersweet goodbye. So many memories and wonderful experiences. Both our babies were born here and brought home to this little flat. Georgie is quite upset about 'her house' being sold. So there's been lots of talk of all the exciting things New Zealand has to offer and the cousins she'll get to know and be able to hang out with. So the blow is being softened, but it's still a lot for a little 7 (almost 8) year old to take in.

Georgie lost another tooth on Wednesday during the day at school and was so proud to show us when she got home. She forgot to take it out of her book-bag though and I fell asleep when I was putting Zac to bed that night, as I was so shattered from racing around with stressful things relating to the house sale. She was so crest-fallen the next morning and buried her head under the covers refusing to get up until the tooth fairy visited. Guilt trip well and truly laid on Mama, you'd think I would be on the ball the following night. But no, the tooth fairy had to visit (in drag) because I fell asleep again putting Zac to bed! To put this in context, I'm a night-owl, so I don't usually fall asleep at that time and it's only that I'm so shattered from all the stress of preparing and selling the house, that I have been falling asleep putting Zachy to bed and just haven't been able to get up again, even when Greg's tried to wake me!! Totally out of character for me. So when Greg realised I hadn't done the tooth fairy visit again, he made sure that it was sorted, even venturing out to the car (where he thought there was small change) in the freezing conditions we've had the past few nights! Basically being my hero - love that!!!

So much going on right now, it's hard to keep track of everything, but I know I have to keep up with the little things, because that's what mama's do... but right now, my pillow's calling, so night y'all xxx

 

Pics of my wee girlie and her yummy hot chocolate from a little 'movie with mama date' last Saturday morning. She was so chuffed with her treats that day and we had a really lovely outing just the two of us. :)

House Stress

Mmmkay, so it's fair to say this lil' house is full of stress right now. Can't book the tickets home until the house is actually sold, and the selling process has not been as smooth as we'd hoped. 

So just wanna be booking our tickets to New Zealand and planning our last days here in the wonderful UK which has well and truly become a second home to us these past 13 years. The parting will be bittersweet, so many beautiful friends we are leaving behind and so many wonderful memories we are taking home. But the pull of home gets stronger for me each year and with two little British babies to teach the ways of the Kiwi clans, it's definitely time to return down under!

Off to Sweden next week, probably for the last time before going home. Our heartstrings are tethered to that country now thanks to a certain wonderful Scandinavian family. But don't get me started, no tears, no tears, no tears, oh dang, you know it's gonna happen!!!

Right, lawyers to phone, estate agents to wrangle, on with the day...

Just for a little eye candy, here's a 'blast from the past' pic of my sweet Georgie aged about 4 taken in our old apartment. She used to love fairy dress up! Sweet sweet memories in that lil' home.

Moments of Joy

I have been looking through some of the pics from our lovely family trip to Wales recently and came across this lovely little moment. I love the connection that my hubby shares with our kiddies, they both have their own very special bond with their papa and I just think these pics captured this so well...

I hope you enjoy sharing this special lil' moment now as much as we did on the day. 

Hugs from us all, Wends xxx

Boxed In

I'm so frustrated with all the boxes in the house right now. We are in limbo, packing up to go home, but it's too early yet to send anything!!! Aaarrrgh!!! I just feel like I can't move. But perhaps this is a good thing. It's making me really anxious to get home and have some 'space'. I miss New Zealand like crazy now, not so much the place, but the people. My mama is 70 in January and my nieces and nephews are growing up so fast. It will be so good for the soul to be back amongst them all, I just can't wait now.

But this is not to say I won't miss London. 13 years is a long time to have lived here, away from 'home'. The UK has most definitely become our second home and we have loved living here. Being a part of our local community, joining in with activities for and through the kiddies at the school etc, has given us a real sense of 'belonging'. Yet, I have always felt a little 'in limbo', never quite settled. New Zealand is home and always will be, but now the question is, what will my British babies make of all this!!!

Georgie & Zac in Wellington, New Zealand ~ August 2011