Sewing and baking fun

So cause I have still not yet found a job down here I have instead been keeping busy with some sewing, knitting, cooking and baking. Here are just some pictures of the end results: The cake was part of my beautiful sister-in-laws birthday present, it’s a vanilla cake with butter icing and a layer of white sugar icing with sugar icing roses (which took me pretty much a whole day to make). The little gingham dress and one of the taglet blankets is for our cute little niece Abi, they are apparently great for kids as they learn to self-pacify and since I don’t have kids I am hoping this is true. She also really love chewing on tags so it will at least give her something to do.

And yes it is cold enough for a fire to be going in the background 🙂

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East London

Next on our trip was a stop in Sunny East London. We arrived to a wonderful Braai with the family, again it was great to see everyone and fantastic for Sean to have the opportunity to meet everyone.

The next day saw us travelling up the beautiful wild coast to Chinsta where we had the opportunity to stay for 4 nights at my parent’s timeshare. It was absolutely beautiful and despite a little wind we couldn’t have asked for better weather. There was a great little café there called the Barefoot Café that made the most amazing pizzas so we happily had dinner there on the second night but every other night Sean tried his hand at making a proper South African Braai, which he did very successfully.  Being at the beach for a few days was amazing and such a break from the heavy city living we had become used to in London. On the last day there we even embraced our Wild West side and did some horse riding along the beach.

It was back to reality after our little holiday in the holiday and it was raining (of course) so we ended up spending most of the next week at home or just picking up last minute gifts for everyone and waiting around for news on our visa. But SO fantastic spending time with mommy and Ian and we can’t thank them enough for making our stay there so lovely and for all they did for us.

We knew our case worker had received all our paperwork and were very disappointed to get an email from him saying that visa times have been extended and we should be able to expect it in July. Since we had already booked our tickets for the 14^th June we were both very sad to find out we may need to move our flights (at a cost of course). So after sending him an email explaining our situation we were ecstatic to get an email an hour later confirming my visa was successful!!!

So off to Johannesburg we went after a very emotional goodbye to go see my aunt and uncle. I really enjoyed our 1 night there and even though it was such a short time I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them all. And it was great to have a haven to wait out the delays to our flight to Australia thanks to the volcano in Chile. Quantas was amazing and gave us a call to let us know about the delays and make sure we knew when to get to the airport, they even surprised us by buying us dinner at the airport. So after a very long 6 hour delay we were finally on our way…onto Australia!!!

Aberdeen

Leaving Cape Town was incredibly sad but on we went to visit my grandparents in Aberdeen.  We rented a car so we even got the chance to travel along the beautiful garden route, then up the N9 through Oudtshoorn and onto Aberdeen and the beautiful Karoo. It was amazing spending time with my grandparents, we arrived in the evening so spent the first night just chatting and settling in. The next day we went to visit my great-aunt who made us a very authentic farm lunch followed by a visit to the old dam that they were re-concreting.  It was so great to see her again and really lovely going for a walk around her veld.

The next day was spent wandering around the gorgeous town of Graff-Reinett, it was a pity it was raining and a bit miserable , but it was lovely to see the old buildings and especially a town so rich in history. It was also lovely to spend the next day with my uncle on our old family farm.  It was amazing spending time with my grandparents, even teaching granny how to use the internet!

Cape Town

Our wonderful holiday started in sunny Cape Town, well it was more like misty Cape Town, but it was still great to be home and even better was the fact that I was bringing my husband home.

We did all the usual sight-seeing stuff, including V&A waterfront; the Castle; Muizenburg;  Robben Island, Camps Bay; Cable Car; Simonstown, Spier farm in Stellenbosch  and even the Chart Farm. It was really great seeing my family and finally introducing Sean to them (face to face, rather than skype).

We even got the chance to join our friend Deon on his family farm close to Vredenburg for a spot of hunting,  unfortunately  it wasn’t quite hunting season yet but we did have a fantastic time with him and his family in  a very old farm house (with the spiders).

Dad and Naomi were amazing and it was so lovely having them spend time with us, they rally made Sean feel welcome into the family and many a night was spent round the table playing rummi-cub and having long conversations.  On one of our favourite days Naomi organised a trip from Cape Town city all the way to Simonstown on an old refurbished steam engine. It was really fantastic spending the day with my parents and viewing Cape Town from a different point of view. It was also really great to catch up with some old friends who I haven’t seen in ages!

Boris Bikes

My sister and I decided to spend a glorious day biking around London on the Boris Bikes, this was obviously before we left London (apptly named after our Mayor as he implemented the scheme in London). We were lucky enough to have fantastic weather, nice and sunny with just a slight breeze to keep us cool.

Starting in Warwick avenue we headed down the Regeants canal and on to Regeants Park It was so scary at first, the last time I was on a bicyle was probably when I was about 10 years old and I am sure I have never been on the road before so tackling the narrow steets and buses was a pretty nerve-wracking experience! But when we got to the park there was a great path we could cycle on around the outside of the park which was fantastic and so beautiful.

We stopped off and had a picnic in the park and even enjoyed a little easter egg treat and then carried on along the canal till we hit Kings Cross station and decided to give up due to the fact that I was starting to feel incredibly sore (they are definitley not the most confortable or light bikes). We then headed down to the most beautiful little french cafe, in an area I can’t remember the name of,  and had a lovely cheese board before heading home.

Such a great way to spend time with my fantastic sister before we headed out to South Africa.