Bird & Sunrise photo

Bird & Sunrise photo
Because "someday" is today!

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Welcome Home

7" x 5" watercolor on paper, copyright 2014 Tina M Welter
"A New Home" 7"x 5" watercolor ©2014
This week's post is another watercolor "thank you" card.  Yes, we have met some wonderful people here in New Zealand.

I mentioned last week the understanding of Paul and Gemma who we rented the room from while we were apartment hunting.   This week, it is their next door neighbor, Evelyn, that gets our thanks.

Due to all the stress, Jeff and I were having a rather heated discussion about why the oven wasn't cooking our pizza.  We were in the house alone at the time and didn't think anyone would hear us.  Of course, it really wasn't about the pizza, but that doesn't stop a good argument to blow off some general frustration.

Imagine our chagrin when we hear a gentle little knock at the kitchen door and a ladies voice asking "are you ok?...would you like some tomatoes & cucumbers for your lunch?"   Embarrassed, we opened the door and met Evelyn, who regularly does some yard work for her neighbors Paul & Gemma.

We introduced ourselves and apologized for being so loud.  She bravely invited us for dinner the next evening.  I'm not certain I would want to invite unknown people who had just been loudly arguing into my home!  We had a lovely dinner and met her husband and daughter.  Over the next few weeks, she introduced us to the wonderful Te Papa museum, took us for a drive up Mount Victoria, and then saved us a bunch of money and stress by helping us move all our luggage to our apartment.  What a gem!

The cat is Puggles, the family pet, and we happened to catch her napping at the house one afternoon.  I had Jeff get a snapshot of her on his iPod.  I thought she represented how we felt, we had finally found a box in New Zealand to call our home!

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Queen of the Roost...

7"x 5" watercolor on paper, copyright 2014 Tina M. Welter
"Queen of the Roost" 7"x 5" watercolor c. 2014
We have finally arrived at the first painting I completed in New Zealand.  It was five months of unsettled life for us from Nov. 2013 to April 2014.  First, we attempted changing apartments in Dresden to try and save money in November.  Oh boy.  We packed everything up, moved, nearly froze, and then moved back to our original place.    In December, I did some sketching and rough paintings, but then we spent the whole month of January packing up again and getting ready to fly.  The middle of February, we ended up moving from the south island to the north island of New Zealand and then spent another month apartment hunting.

The couple we rented a room from in Wellington were so kind and understanding, especially when it was taking us so much longer to find an apartment than we planned. Our one week stay had turned into four. We agreed that we wanted to do something nice for them.  They had three mischievous little hens in their backyard who liked to get out of their pen and hide their eggs.  The big golden-red hen definitely caught my eye, what a beauty!  She seemed to think she was pretty special too. 

We moved into our apartment towards the end of March.  There is just something about having my own kitchen and a table I can work at that gets my mind back into the creative mode again.  After all that flying around, it feels so good to have a "roost" again!