Back from the brink of disaster

And feeling a little less death-warmed-up and a little more health-on-ice. A subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless. Not so bad all in all, and considering I've been sick for a week. Plus, I got to add something new to my 'experience the unexperienced' list ...several times I threw up so hard, I had chunks lodged up my nose. Now that is puking! (and, even though I haven't eaten carrots since I was about 9 ...well)

It was only a week or so ago too that I was thinking I really had to do something about the extra couple of kilos that seemed to have settled around my butt ...and Voila! Problem solved! I only had to nearly die to do it (really, such a small sacrifice for such quick results), and I can still only eat soup and bread, but, you know, if I was a super model, I'd only be allowed a lettuce leaf every second day and I'd have to puke forever, so really, I'm living it up!

Gisborne was great though and the first couple of days were gorgeous - going to bed early, getting up early, going for long walks, nosing about and eating a lot.

Huge kudos to the following places:

Peel - for a fab bagel with cream cheese and strawberry preserve.

Wharf - for the best creme brulee I have ever [inhaled] savoured in my life. Seriously. I swooned.

Gordon Gecko - for a divine eye fillet steak.

Muir's Bookshop Cafe - for having books and coffee in the same place. Fantastic coffee too! Fall in your cup stuff.

Villaggio - for being muffin heaven (and no I don't mean it's a cafe full of girls who don't know what size jeans they should be wearing). Pumpkin and corn, Spinach, Feta and Pesto, and blackberry and custard ...huge muffins too! Plus, I learned a very valuable lesson about 18 month to 2 year olds and chocolate fish while I was there. If you are having coffee with a group, and said group consists of 18 month to 2 year olds, you can not leave your chocolate fish to enjoy once you've finished, or nearly finished your coffee. Once the little buggers spot a chocolate fish, it's all over. There will be tears, tantrums, and dirty tactics, but you will end up sharing the damn thing with however many of them there are. Still, it's one of those learned-my-lesson-the-first-time things. Won't happen again.

Anyway! I said I was going for the food, and the above were very happy times, well worth noting.

I also found a very cute little boutique, loaded with very cool clothes and things. Cool enough that I can forgive the rather odd name Beaufoy ...Thinking about the name, I feel as though I should understand some great secret but I have no idea what it means, if in fact it means anything at all. I suppose googling it might be helpful (no, it wasn't). It was a very cool store though and had a really good mix of designers - Kingan Jones, Sabine, that sort of thing. And hats! Fabulous hats! I fell head over heels in love with these gorgeous knitted beanies that they had ...very simple, and extremely cool. I tried one on in winter white, but, I was obviously possessed by a demented spirit at the time, because I didn't buy it. Duh.

The other thing I found in Gizzy Vegas is that is is full of gorgeous old houses - huge estates down to little cottages, and most of the ones I saw were beautifully restored. They were all over the place! I fell in love so many times over the course of a couple of days ...and usually our walks ended in Al dragging me home by the ear. I love old houses.

I'm sure there's more, but you should see the stack of paperwork I've walked into at work this morning! I'm actually going to have to go and do something about it. I'm trying to concentrate on my blog (obviously, my top priority), and I can see these piles of paper out the corner of my eye, waving about saying "Look at us! Look at us! See how many of us there are!" which is very distracting. Tragic.

Oh, and there will be pictures of the bathroom too, so never fear! We've polished the wooden floors that were hiding away under the revolting light blue feaux tile (textured) lino floor (no more having to scrub the lino on my hands and knees to get the dirt out of the texture! Wooppee!!) and so the bathroom is only going together properly later this week sometime. We still have to gib and paint the walls as well, but once we've had a divorce over what colour we're going to go with. So hopefully pics will So, pics will come in due course - hopefully in a week or so, or if I can't help myself, you'll get pics with bare gib walls. We'll see how I go!