I'VE TAKEN THE PLUNGE AND THE BUILD HAS BEGUN

OMG I am actually doing it......finally! After several years of planning, designing, working with architect, getting approved plans, freaking out at cost, pulling the pin, taking another look at it, getting more quotes, all hideously far too much......well now here I am now actually started.  I am very excited and just a tad nervous as I don't really know what it will cost.  If you have everything quoted it costs up to 20% more to allow for contingencies.  So I am winging it.  Knocked back all the build quotes and instead I've got my son, Rory, and a local Akaroa builder on a labour only contract and I will pay all the trades myself.  Rory has totally got my back and is excited too, to be involved in his first build out on his own after completing his apprenticeship. We will project manage it together, each doing what they are best at. There's a long road ahead and no doubt some tricky times but I am going to try my very best to keep the stress levels down and enjoy the process.  My sister and her husband live right behind my site and have very generously allowed Rory to stay there during the week while they are in town, which helps enormously and just makes everything so much more possible and it feels so good, and he just loves it at their house and feels like a rock star!  Building by day, rapping and writing songs by night.

Everything else is ticking along, although it has been an extremely stressful start to the new year due to some personal family difficulties, which have put us all under a lot of strain, but happily now things are beginning to settle down.  My business is very busy at this time of year so while everyone else is on holiday I barely get even the stats off and need to remain focused and busy the whole way through the season.  Making hay while the sun shines so to speak, and that is going well.

Looking forward to early Feb when I'm going up to see my blogging mate Charlie who has invited me up for a few days for the second time to stay on their wonderful farm near Mt Maunganui and Tauranga, with their 360 degree views of the hills and the sea.  We really "get" each other and have become great friends.  After that I'm doing a road trip with my friend Jane right round the North Island for two weeks in March.  It's to celebrate our 60th birthdays which happen in April and May but we thought we'd better head off while the weather is hopefully still pretty warm.  We've been friends since we were 12 so that's 48 years now!!  Sheesh!!

The AirBnB thing I'm doing is also keeping me pretty busy and I'd better go now and pick some flowers for the room for tonight's guests which is a family with a two year old! All the money goes into the "build fund" so there is a very definite purpose and reason for opening up my home to strangers. It's really not very hard and they are all very nice, varied and interesting people from all over the globe, and people always interest me, so it's a bit of a win all round really.

In case anyone wants a wee report on the sugar intake, it is only slightly improved.  My experiment didn't work, hahaha, but I have since been a little bit more disciplined.......if I don't buy it I can't eat it.....yer right!