WooHoo!!

Made it the front page of etsy.com and creaturecomforts! Yay!

Another One Bites the Dust!

It's official. We're taking over the neighborhood.

Jude (Ash and Siggy's Mum) has just bought the house next door to Evan and Sig's place. I can't believe it. Total number of family members in a two-block radius=9! Nine! When my Sis and her family arrives, that will bring the total to thirteen. Ooooh, that sounds unlucky. Maybe we're pushing it too far. Are we crazy?

I still can't help but think that we're doing the right thing. Rallying against the global economy or something. I used to listen with such jealous interest when my Nana would talk about the olden days when the whole family lived on the the same hill. Granted, I wish my family was a little better represented on this hill. Not that I don't love who I've got here, I just wish I could wander up the street and have my parents back me while I sing "Psycho Killer" in their music room.

Anywho, we're still waiting for Ashleigh to add number 10 to the tally (just occurred to me that we won't have 13 as a total, but 14...phew!) and trying to calculate how long it will take for her parents to join us on the hill.

Wish us luck in lawn bowls tonight, teams DeVille 1 and DeVille 2 both won last week. I'm hoping for a repeat.

I've got a secret!

And no, I'm not pregnant.

BUT...I do know the finalists for the 2008 New Zealand Post Book Awards. And I can't tell anyone until next week when they're announced publicly. Not that any of you probably care. Unless you're a hopeful in which case you probably care a damnload. I wonder if bookies cover book awards?

I've volunteered to be the regional coordinator for the festival leading up to the awards in May. These are the most important awards for NZ children's, youth and young adult books and I am SO excited to get to be a part of the celebration. Even though no one else in Nelson would agree to do it, so the job itself probably sucks, but I don't care. There's nothing I love more than kids, books and getting to boss people around, so I couldn't be happier.

I got to fly up to Wellington today FOR FREE for the seminar for all the regional coordinators and it was so exciting. Nothing feels fancier than having someone else book all your flights, arrange for taxis, greet you in the lobby and then escort you to the 12th floor conference room that looks out over the harbour. There was actually a guy with a sign with at baggage claim waiting for me. Every time I fly I get this secret hope that there will be someone there with a sign waiting for me. I also always think that if I look sad enough they'll bump me up to business class.

Plus there was finger food all day and since I was just there for the day I didn't even have to pack a bag. No luggage in an airport is awesome. I think I'm going to get a job in Wellington. The flight's only 25 minutes which is shorter than my walking commute to the cafe. Al Gore be damned!

That's all for now. Love, Laurel

Ok, Seriously

You should move to New Zealand. Or at least come visit me. I'll make you pancakes and put a little jug of water next to your bed. And hopefully, my boyfriend's beautiful Mum will come over with lobster that one of her friends left for her on her porch. Except they'll call it crayfish 'cause they're funny that way.

And then Ash won't just break it up and put it on a plate, he'll make a beautiful platter with aioli and rocket (arugula) and lemon wedges. And then he'll say, "ladies, let's open that bottle of bubbly and eat this on the deck." And I'll nearly pass out because, holy hell he's got a good life aesthetic.

This is what it will look like:

Check it out!

We're about done! Yippee!

ashhilton.com

Harvest Feast!

So, I've attended a bachannalia festival before. I was convinced to hangout topless with bunches of grapes painted on my breasts. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do when there were 7 of us at the party. Hours later when there were about 50, I started to doubt my decision. Ash and I had a harvest feast last night, it was nothing like the first one I attended.



This is what inspired it all. Corn. We grew our own corn and apparently, that's hard to do. A lot of times it comes out small and tough and not very nice at all. This was none of those things. It was so tender in fact, that it didn't even stick in your teeth.



This is our version of an Italian poached meatloaf. Ash read about it in a magazine. Some Italian family that lives in New Zealand now made it. They hang out and eat food and play ping pong while wearing capri pants and skinny sneakers. We want that life, although we're probably not effortlessly good looking enough to have it. And our fights aren't nearly as cathartic.



Well, maybe some of them are effortlessly good looking. Anyway, who cares about good looks when you're eatin' tiny, beautiful potatoes that grew right out back. And the sun is shinning and you've got a linen table cloth that only cost $5.00 at the flea market. Not to mention the fact that we had enough plates for everyone. Once again, I only feel justified bragging about all of this because, really Ash did it all. And I'll brag about him all I want cause I have to live with the bastard.

Ash and Arlo at the beach

Arlo at the beach, originally uploaded by laureljadewilliams.

This was taken at Rabbit Island, a place I'd never gone before this Summer. Ash always described it as a "poxy little hole full of pine trees." His scale of poxiness is a little off in my humble, Texan opinion. I mean, there aren't balls of tarry petrochemicals all over your feet when you come out of the chocolate milk colored water like in Galveston.

It can be a bit crowded on the weekends, but all-in-all I think it's pretty fantastic. The water's nice and warm and the big waves take me straight back to being a kid in those chocolate milk waters. You don't have time to give a damn when you're struggling to keep your footing in the water.

Things in the workshop are chugging along nicely, you can see Ash's new designs over there on the right. It's been fun testing them out and the leaves and stems don't get caught on as many things as you'd think they would. Of course, I am known for not being able to keep rings on my fingers for more than five minutes in a row.

I did a voice over for Marshalls Fashions (my Aunt Gail's clothing shop) today and it was a blast. My fifteen seconds of fame are upon us. Listen for me on Mainland TV. I'm the American one talking about the "Super Summer Sale!!!!!"

Why I love our deck

Why I love our deck, originally uploaded by laureljadewilliams.

It still really surprises me sometimes when I walk outside and I see this. I'm really terrible at taking photos, so you can't really appreciate the scale of the hills in the background because there's nothing in the foreground to compare it too (you'd think because I can write things like that that I'd actually be able to put it into practice, but no. It's a common theme.) but they're really pretty high. They get a bit snow-capped in the Winter. More like snow dusted, on some days, for a few hours.

Nevertheless, the light and the colors! It really does look like that sometimes. Everything looks so warm and crisp, like you can see what those people in those houses way over there are eating for dinner and it's lookin' delicious.

Ash is working on some really cool new ring designs that I can't wait to show you. So freakin' cute. And the best thing is, is that when he comes up with new designs someone has to try them out to make sure that they don't break really easily or, you know, have a tendency to slice your finger up or get in the way when you're doin' high fives. That person is me by the way. And Siggy. And Ash has finally learned that it makes me cry a little bit when it's only Siggy that's the tester. And YES I get that it would be helpful if the tester actually wears the jewellery for more than five seconds between tasks that don't seem appropriate for jewellery wearing. It just seems wrong to get your rings wet. I don't know why.

Zuchinni from the garden

Zuchinni from the garden, originally uploaded by laureljadewilliams.

This is the tastiest zuchinni we've grown yet. We got the seeds from Koanga Gardens, a place that grows and cultivates and saves their own seeds. They're doing a great job to maintain a diverse plant stock, which is really important if you want, well diversity. Not to mention the taste. Delicious.

Zuchinni are the best thing to grow if you're new to gardening. They grow SO fast and seem to grow in even the crappiest of soil. I never really was here or there on zuchinni before we started growing them. I think I probably bought them a few times before and would eat them if they were there in my casserole, but I would never had made a soup of just zuchinni.

Well, last night, I did. It was really good, but it had cream in it, so that kinda goes without saying. But not much cream, just 1/4C in the whole pot. We ate it with bread salad (is it really a salad if it's got bread in the name?) and I think I'll have the rest for lunch today.

At the races!

At the races!, originally uploaded by laureljadewilliams.

I bet nine dollars. I won six dollars. I spent twenty dollars on Coronas (who has Coronas in New Zealand?) and fried food. I still consider myself a winner because I know what "I'd like a dollar each way on number seven," means.

How do you like dem apples? I mean tomatoes.

Tomatoes, originally uploaded by laureljadewilliams.

I don't want to go to work, I just want to stay home and make fried green tomatoes. And sit by and watch them turn red. Or will they be stripey green? Or will they be yellow and kinda purpley? Who knows? All I know is I like dem apples. Even though they're tomatoes.

Keeping Up

Office Stool, originally uploaded by laureljadewilliams.

Uh...I'm really sorry it's been so long. At some point Ash and I are going to realize that the Holidays aren't really holiday time for us. It's the biggest, busiest, craziest, shoppingiest of jewelleryiest time of the year. Which is great! Because now we can buy a new van to replace the one that was the tragic stooge in this big, busy, crazy, shopping time. Not to mention the fact that it's also Summer and we have to make time to swim. And Bar-b-que. And go to the races!

In between it all, I've been here on this stool making up organizational systems to keep track of all that jewellery. I love this office with the big desk I insisted be made out of the old closet door. I love that Ash added another half a door to it to make it the right size. I love that we put aside our shared disdain for chemical smells to paint a whole wall in blackboard paint. I love the view out the window of our corn and the hill I used to have to climb to go to a job I hated. I love that soon my beautiful niece and nephew will be sleeping in the bed on the other side of the room after a long day at Natureland.

In other news, we made our first batch of salsa verde from the tomatillos we grew. It was delicious, if I do say so myself. It made me feel sad for all those times I left a half full dish of it on the table at Trudy's just because I liked the red salsa better. Damn it, now I've created a Queso Espescial hole in my soul that I have no way of filling.

In more other news, we found our newest, favoritest swimming hole today for our daily after work dip. It has no official name, although we're considering 'sheep poo hole,' due to it's location next to a pasture. Oscar is getting braver by the minute and put his face under today all on his own. "Watching? WATCHING? Splash, splash, 1,2,3, splash-splash."

Oh, and we put on this year's batch of plum wine yesterday. Just two short years and it'll be ready. Luckily, we put our first batch on two years ago, so we have motivation alcohol. Unluckily, last year we did flagged it, so next year we're officially SOL. Good thing we finally found a source of tonic flavored syrup for our Soda Stream fizzing machine so we've overcome the over-priced tonic debacle. Good news, good news.