Yaaarrrr! Here be pirates!

Last Saturday, we had a Pirate-themed House Party! It wasn't for any particular reason, other than the fact I like dress-up parties, and our house deserves to have good parties. We have this great room on the roof, dubbed the Skyloft, which is a wonderful space for parties and hanging out. With only a few weeks left in this house, we needed to make good use of it!

I made the decorations, including this pirate ship, made out of pieces of cardboard and the insulation cladding you put on water pipes!

I also made the food, complete with little pirate flags!

As is common with pirates, eventually the alcohol took over, and duels ensued!

Craig chose to come as a Muppet Treasure Island inspired cannibal, rather than a pirate!

Pirate wenches!

We had traditional and modern pirates turn up, including a Somali pirate complete with machine gun, and an internet pirate!

I had a great time hanging out with my friends, but I'm quite sad thinking about it. A lot of them will be leaving NZ at the end of the year, and I shall miss them! Don't want to have to find myself new friends, I like the ones I've got thanks!

Superhero Birthday!

I've been back in New Zealand 2 weeks now, and have just finished my first week of REAL NURSE work. Woohoo! But that hasn't been the only excitement in my life since I've been home. I had my 25th birthday last week and to celebrate I planned a house party. Now, I haven't had many parties during my life, and certainly not much in the way of birthday celebrations, so it was about time I did something. I had always wanted a costume party, so now was my chance!

The theme:

My love for dressing up and comicbook characters finally combined!

Rhonwyn and I spent thursday and friday cooking up a storm, and my sister and my cousin came to stay and helped me with the decorations and preparations (BIG thanks to Graham for cleaning the BBQ in the pouring rain!) And not to forget Craig, who went to fetch the BBQ and ran errands for me at the drop of a hat.

Anne and Graham's homemade potent punch!

We started off downstairs in the kitchen/lounge area with a BBQ just outside - it had been raining so we put the BBQ in the doorway so we wouldn't get soaked. My cousin volunteered (well, okay, maybe not volunteered exactly...) to be BBQ chef, along with JT, from whom I'd bought the BBQ anyway.

The Penguin and Indian Jones bonding over beer and BBQs!

My flatmates and friends really put a lot of effort into their costumes, I was very impressed!

Craig as the infamous Joker! Scary!

Rhonwyn as Poison Ivy

Leanne the Warrior Princess

The X-Men - my camera flash turned him into a great Havoc! And he's accompanied by Storm

Danger Mouse - I loved this costume, and she won the costume competition!

Sailor Moon!

Me and Danger Mouse

The Huntress and Sailor Moon team up!

Death and Highlander Lass

The Pink Ninjas!

After stuffing our faces with food downstairs, we headed up to the Skyloft which I had turned into a party room, with lots of yummy desserts, party decorations and games. My original plan was to have kids party games, but this proved a bit too much for me to organise. Instead we had a pinata, Twister and the dancemat set up. I stupidly forgot to take a photo of the skyloft with all the pretty decorations, so you'll have to take my word for it that it looked great!

Dessert in the Skyloft!

Pulling the pinata!

Battling it out at Twister!

I didn't take as many photos as I'd have liked, as I was getting quite drunk. You can tell by how blurry some of photos are... I had a terrific night though, eventually going to bed at around 3am, after most of the guests had left (except the one who wasn't up to walking home, haha!)

Roll on the next party, any ideas for the theme??!

Wellington Trip, Part 7 - Final Days

I had planned my Wellington trip so that I could do most of the touristy stuff during the week and then spend time with my friend Rebecca at the weekend when she was off work.

On Saturday we went to Otari Wilton's Bush for a nice walk in the sunshine. The reason I wanted to go there was because it had a canopy walkway, although to be honest it wasn't quite as impressive as I'd hoped. The Reserve itself though was beautiful.

Otari-Wilton's Bush Reserve consists of 100 hectares of native forest and 5 hectares of plant collections. The area has been protected since 1900 when a local landowner Job Wilton fenced it off, thus protecting it from being logged and farmed like the land around it.

One of the things I have really enjoyed about Wellington was its wealth of green spaces. I've visited Karori Reserve, the Botanical Gardens, Otari-Wilton's Bush and walked through the Town Belt - all these places are within minutes of the city centre. I barely felt like I was in a city at all. All these green spaces and the coastline as well - Wellington has so much beauty!

After our walk, Rebecca took me for a drive around the coastline of the peninsula. We had lunch in a cute little cafe courtyard in a little suburb (I can't remember the name exactly) and then continued our drive round to the Red Rocks Reserve.

In the distant I could just make out the Kaikoura Ranges of the South Island. We didn't go into the Red Rocks Reserve itself, as it required either driving a 4x4 (which we didn't have) or walking several kilometres. This area was really nice though, and there was an informative display in the visitor centre (really a big open shed-like building) about the history of the place.

During the evening Rebecca and I met up with a girl called Steph, who I had met at the hostel, and we went out for dinner at a really nice Asian restaurant called Monsoon Poon, then coffee at a funky cafe. None of us were particularly in the mood for a big night out, but the evening was fun nonetheless, and it was great to see the busy weekend nightlife of Wellington compared to Dunedin!

On Sunday, Rebecca and I were being particularly lazy and spent the morning watching the Shortland Street omnibus... but then we decided to make the most of the afternoon sunshine and took our books to the city beach to read and relax. It was really nice just to chill out like that. I really liked the beach, which had warm, safe swimming water, compared to the pretty rough beaches of Dunedin.

Finally it was time for me to fly back to Dunedin. I was actually pretty sad to leave, I'd had a great week exploring Wellington in beautiful, warm weather, which was completely unexpected (everyone warned me about the rubbish weather Wellington has, but apart from the first night I didn't see it at all!) I definitely recommend taking the time to see all Wellington has to offer, rather than just spending a night here, as so many backpackers seemed to do. There were still things I didn't have time to do - I wanted to go out to Matui/Somes Island and Kapiti Island, for example. Well, there is always next time!