A little bit of New Zealandness around the world

All my giveaways have reached their destinations and I thought I'd do a little post so you can all look at their lovely blogs. First off is Lesley who is an American living in London. She takes breathtakingly beautiful photos of her surroundings. I think she is due to go back home soon and she tells me that she will then be able to get back into more sewing. Next is Marguerite in the UK. She lives by the sea in Ramsgate and is currently involved in "the Red Barn Quilt-a-long". Her quilt top is finished and looking beautiful with some lovely "Heather Bailey" fabrics. I also sent some goodies to Sandy who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She does beautiful applique work amongst other things . Lastly is Melissa from America who has a beautiful blog about her very cute little baby boy. Now one of these blogs is going to have a giveaway soon so keep your eye out for that.
As you may have noticed I have been tweaking my blog here and there and one of the things I have added is "My Flicker Photos" which is a great site to find inspiration from other sewers and also has some great tools for enhancing your photos. Just look down my side bar on the left and you will find it.

The photos on this post are of the New Zealand bush taken at a place called "Maungatautari" which is a scenic bush reserve on an extinct volcano. It is 3,400 hectares, fully fenced to keep out predators to protect the native birds and bush. A couple of weeks ago the girls and I went with my parents to do some walks around it . The bush was beautiful with some amazingly huge majestic trees and prolific bird life. They have built a tower to walk up so you can be at the tree top level and look down on the bush. My Grandparents used to live on a farm 5 minutes up the road from this place so we decided to take a drive past their old house to see what it was like now. We were very disappointed to find it completely gone driveway, orchard and all my childhood memories. I particularly remember a large grove of old Oak trees where I used to build playhouses with gardens. In spring this same paddock was a sea of spring bulbs. Never mind I guess I will always have those memories but I was sad that I couldn't visually share those memories with my girls.