Ingredients

Photos taken in my kitchen today.







"Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all."

- Harriet van Horne

Blue and yellow

Photo taken in Spain in 2007. I realised today, while going through old photos, that I never actually blogged the photos from our Spanish holiday, so you'll be seeing some of them.



"Every house where love abides
And friendship is a guest,
Is surely home, and home sweet home
For there the heart can rest."

- Henry Van Dyke

Rosemary

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."

- Albert Einstein

Daniel the hockey player

So proud of Daniel, he tried so hard on the hockey pitch at a tournament recently. (No, he doesn't have black teeth, that's a mouth guard.)

What I wore to church today

White top: Sainsbury's
Waistcoat: Pagani (on sale)
Tweed skirt: thrifted
Shoes: thrifted
Necklace: Accessorize outlet store (on sale)

I'm kind of annoyed - I bought this waistcoat a few weeks ago and today was the first time I wore it and it's actually already too big for me.

The boat solution in action

The guys have been out a few times in the boat already, on the river and in the sea. They go up to Kawakawa Bay or Kaiaua where it's very sheltered and there is no swell. On their first fishing trip this is what they came home with:



An impressive catch of snapper! Grant was very happy. ("I caught a fish!!")



Here are some photos Grant took yesterday on the early fishing trip they took with the boys while I was at work. Before you go all health-and-safety on me, there is no swell, the kids are wearing life vests and the boat goes very slowly. The kids loved it; Noah couldn't stop grinning the whole way out.













They went out to the mussel farm (snapper eat mussels):







Yes, Noah's life vest is pink, but he doesn't mind! We managed to get a set of 4 (two adult and two kids') lifevests on TradeMe (like eBay) for less than what one would have cost in the store. We'll upgrade later but for now they're fine.

The boat solution part 2

Here's how Grant and Paul tricked out the boats. First of all, for those interested, here are the specs.

Small boat:



Big boat:



Here is how the big boat looked to start with, with one bench added (I don't have a shot of it totally naked):



They designed and cut plywood seats, ground the edges ...



... padded them and fastened indoor-outdoor carpet onto them:



Here's an unpadded, uncarpeted one being tested on the boat:



The seats are fastened on with ropes that have knots on the ends which snap into carabiner clips that stay on the boat:







Once the seats were done they moved onto the floors - one for each boat. They flipped the boats upside down and traced the floor area onto clear plastic and cut it out:



The pattern was then used to cut plywood floors:



Initially they experimented with fastening the floor to the boat with ropes through the loops that were already there, but in the end they didn't need the ropes as it stays put just fine without them:



The floors were stained black and edged with hose:



The floor of the big boat is in two parts which fit together like a puzzle before being inserted into the boat, which makes storing and handling it easier:



Here's the little one with the floor in:





You can see the floor in the big one here, as well as the rig for the outboard motor:







The middle seat holds the fish bin which is a plastic tub that they made a plywood lid for, with a lip around the edge to catch any spills when gutting fish:





In one of the photos above you can also see the rod holders they made, fastened to the middle seat. The boat does come with rod holders:



But they made extra ones out of PVC pipe:







The rod holders on the boat originally don't go to waste. They use one for an extra rod (as seen above) and the other is a handy place to stash the net:



Under the seat they have a plastic tub full of extra gear:



And don't worry, they do have oars in case the motor conks out!



The smaller boat is attached with rope which has been threaded through plastic pipes and fastened on with carabiner clips. The plastic pipes prevent the small boat from drifting into the motor as they slow:





The name of the boat is quite appropriate:



So there you have it, the pimped up, tricked out boats!



And how much space do they take up in storage? This much, which is significantly smaller than a regular boat:



The total cost has been around NZ$400 (US$302 / £193 / R2,529), which I think is pretty good for what they've managed to put together (the motor is on "permanent loan" to them which helped to bring costs down.)

I must admit, I started out kind of rolling my eyes as they talked about the two small boats and the jetski, but I've ended up being quite impressed with their ingenuity and the results. (And I'm quite looking forward to tooling around up and down the river or in the bay in the summer!)