The last week has really flown!

I got a real shock when I saw that it's been almost a week since my last post!!! School is officially busy now... we've had stationery orders arriving throughout the day and my maths, reading and writing programmes are in full swing :)

We haven't been ignoring our D.I.Y. project though... although Dave has been doing most of the work while I've been at school. He got busy on Thursday and Friday and stuck all the tiles on the front edges of the steps and they look pretty good:

And here's a closeup:The front of 'my' step looks great too :)They've all been grouted now and the job looks fantastic! Then Dave built me a gate... it took a bit of working out because we didn't have an old gate to compare measurements with but he did a really great job!I found some gate hinges that I really liked...And a latch...And here's what the gate looks like from 'inside' the patio area:I really like the look :) I took this photo when I got home from work on Thursday and then on Friday Dave stained most of that side of the gate... we ran out of stain so it was back to Bunnings for some more stain and since we've bought it the rain has been stopping us from getting it done:On Saturday we decided to spend the day doing something fun :) We were going out to have a look at a classic & vintage boat show and got ourselves completely lost! But we ended up 'finding' ourselves at Lake Rotoiti so we had a lovely picnic in a beautiful setting:We really are very lucky to have such beautiful scenery in New Zealand!Then I finally got to do something that I've been wanting to do for over 20 years!!! When we moved to Whakatane as a teenager we used to pass Hongi's track every time we went to Rotorua and we never had time to stop and do the walk so I talked Dave and the girls into doing it on Saturday and it was great!!!Dave and Mikayla were totally amazed at how big some of the trees were... and they made up lots of stories about swinging through the forest on vines LOL... the imaginary visuals of leopard skin speedos had me cracking up until my ribs got too sore to laugh any more :)And here's my favourite photo of the day... just love the way the light comes through the tree tops and the colours are simply stunning!!I'm working hard on getting some balance in my life so Saturday was perfect!!! Hopefully I'll have more D.I.Y. to show you as we work on completely this job!