Exploring the Land of the Long White Cloud

Back when we were making plans to head to Wanaka for the wedding, we got to thinking about stopping over in another city and by a good stroke of luck we found that Beervana, a beer festival, was going on in Wellington the weekend before the wedding. So we decided to go for it and after looking into it, we decided to volunteer for one session which would give us free admission to another session. So, Friday night we arrived for our volunteering session and got our assignments. Dustin was helping at the Portland seminar where they were pairing food with Portland brews. I was stationed at Liberty Brewing to serve the beer. It was a busy session and we both were exhausted by the end of the evening! The event takes place at the stadium in Wellington so about half of the concourse was taken over with stalls of food and beer. I can't be bothered to look up numbers at the moment (c'mon, I'm on holiday!) but there must have been 30 to 40 breweries offering multiple brews. I

For me, it had been easily ten years or so since I would have played a full proper game of volleyball. My hand tells the story... That was last month when I started up with a casual volleyball league and luckily the subsequent games haven't caused such damage! We play Sunday nights and I think there's another 6 or 7 games in the season, it's been fun!

A couple months ago, friends asked me to make their wedding cake for their Wanaka Winter Wedding  that is set to take place this Saturday! These are some photos taken through the process of making the fondant leaves that will adorn the bottom tier. Getting the right imprint of the veins really makes them that much more realistic. And of course, they couldn't all be flat because that isn't very real either! These are all hand-painted and ready to be packed up and shipped. I experimented with some colours but will probably use the orange and red ones mostly. The logistics involved have been adding another layer to this cake - because had plans to travel to Wanaka and Wellington the week ahead of the wedding meant I couldn't make it on the normal schedule that I would. So the leaves were first up and have been layered with lots and lots of packing paper to be sent in the wedding convoy along with boxes of my tools. The cake itse