Winter in New Zealand

Molly’s school have a theme this term. They’re learning about Te Ngahere (the bush). This is including learning about the native plants as well as the wildlife. Those of you who know Molly well will understand how well this theme suits her.

Today at school drop off I was greeted by 21 sheets of green painted paper in the classroom. Apparently the children have all been out in the school grounds drawing the native trees, and today they are going to paint one of them.

Inspired by this, I decided to take a series of photos out of each of our bedroom windows today, for this blog post. 

It’s the first official day of winter today, and I just love how New Zealand stays so green and lush even at this time of year. It’s so diverse and stunning and we are very lucky to live here.

Other things I love about winter are:

• Hot water bottles in bed. So cozy!
• Seeing snow on the top of the mountains in the South Island in the distance when I go walking in our local mountains, so beautiful!
• Home-made soup - I’ve been trialling a lot of different recipes lately. Favourites so far include spicy pear & parsnip, and roasted pumpkin, chickpea & feta.
• My new bread machine (a wedding gift). It’s so nice to have one again after a while without. The timer switch means we get up to a delicious smell at weekends, I have finally perfected the foccacia recipe, and all that bread goes well with all that soup!
• Zumba classes to warm me up (instead of make me melt, like they did in the summer)
• Taking the kids outside to see the stars before bed and/or playing in the dark with glow sticks and laser lights!
• Wrapping up warm and going for a big walk along the beach, with a flask of hot chocolate

I am aiming to do each and every one of those things this weekend!

Meanwhile, Jake has (finally) bought a new bike, after almost a whole year of research. Big apologies to all the friends and bike shop staff who he pestered so regularly for advice – we owe you one!