Camping

Over Labour Day weekend we went up to camp at Tawharanui.  It was a bit of a rush to get away and in the process I forgot to pack a few things, namely chocolate biscuits and Earl Grey tea.  Disaster!  Fortunately a quick trip to Matakana rectified the matter.  That and a few questions I've had lately about what to bring when camping spurred me to blog about what we do.

[Anchor Bay, Tawharanui]

We camp in a tent.  It's a three room + vestibule dome tent.  When we considered which tent to buy we preferred to get a lighter tent rather than the larger, heavier framed tents.  It means we compromise a bit in terms of size, but that can be advantageous too.  We have had no problems so far with it standing up to rain and wind.

[Our tent at Tawharanui a few years ago]

We mostly stay in camp grounds with minimal facilities (water and toilets) so we take a gas camping stove and have recently added a Cobb portable BBQ/oven to the mix.

How much stuff we take varies depending on the length of time we'll be away and what we're intending to do while there.  We take the family car, a trailer and sometimes add in a roof mounted travel container.  I do use a list, but we were in a hurry this time and I didn't, consequently... no chocolate biscuits.  My plan for next time is to create some storage containers with dedicated camping items in them that can be grabbed and put into the trailer easily.  We've done this with the kitchen gear and tent gubbings and it has worked really well.

[Sleepy girl on her stretcher]

Everytime we go camping we seem to think up ways to refine our experience.  Our next challenge is to work out some way to have a fridge. DH has plans for solar panels, batteries etc to achieve this.  We haven't quite reached the glamping stage though! :-)

[Making a dam]

Feeding the whanau is something that features strongly in my role and it can be a bit of a challenge. While my children aren't fussy eaters, they do fail to realise that while camping the menu changes from what they are used to.  I do not have access to an unlimited pantry!  So what do I cook?

This is a list of things I'll often have on the menu.

Breakfast

• Cereal
• Toast
• Eggs/bacon
• Olive filled pita

Lunch

• Sandwiches
• Canned stuff like spaghetti, tuna
• Fruit

Dinners
I normally try and bring fresh fruit and vegetables where possible, but the dried vegetables are often convenient and aren't too bad in terms of taste.  Canned peaches are a favourite dessert.  I will sometimes pre-make things like pancake mix or a spice mix for curry.  Keeping meat fresh is a challenge if camping for any length of time so either I have to make a visit to a store, or go vegetarian.  The latter isn't always greeted with joy by my carnivorous family. 

• Bacon, eggs and pancakes
• Pasta of various kinds with various sauces
• Steak, potatoes, onions, salad
• Devilled sausages with vegetables
• Curry and rice
• Burritos or nachos
• Nasi Goreng
• Pad thai
• Canned soup 
• Whole chicken on the Cobb with roasted potatoes done in the base part of the oven
• Anything BBQ on the Cobb e.g. hamburgers, sausages, steak....

Now we have the Cobb, I am keen to try other things.  We've experimented at home and so far have tried pizza, a tagine, and Medfouna with varying degrees of success.

Anchor Bay, Tawharanui

Snacks

I will try and take a variety of snacks.  It always seems like the family is extra hungry when we camp.  We can go through a loaf of bread in a day.

• Trail mix 
• Nuts
• Chips
• Fresh fruit
• Dried fruit
• I will sometimes bake a cake or cookies to take

What do you eat while camping?

[Making sand walls]

In which camping is done among other things

Photo of me wearing the beret I felted. This is my first attempt at a 3D object and it worked out quite good though I did have a few near disasters happen. All good learning!

We camped at Tawharanui over Labour Weekend. The weather was gorgeous and we had a prime spot in the campground too. DH took around 350 photos (most of which will be deleted) so he was pretty happy about that. There were some dotterel pairs on the beach which featured strongly on his memory card but also the sunset/sunrise scenes too.  You can see some of his efforts on his Flickr.

The children love camping.  They also like playing Angry Birds on the iPad.

We spent a bit of time looking around the rock pools and seeing the sea life there.  It's a marine reserve so there is quite a bit of interesting stuff there.

Even though we're camping it still seems that someone likes to visit Mum & Dad's bed!

This one tends to roll off the bed in the night.

Back home I went to another felting class this past week to learn how to make bags.  These were the sample ones the teacher had on display.  I really liked the red one.

These were the bags our class made.  We ran out of time to make the cords for the handles so I still need to do that.

This is a closer look at my one.

With the flap opened.  It has a little pocket inside for a cell phone.

I'm really enjoying the felting thing.

Yesterday I went to a Stampin' Up! Extravaganza and made some very cool things. :)  It was nice to get into paper craft again - I've done so little of it these past months.

I have also been sewing - it always annoys me how much I underestimate how long a sewing project will take! Anyway, done now. More planned. Just need time.

Hodge podge

My blog seems to be mostly about books these days - sorry.

Just for a change, here is a shout out for the MAGS Roarbotix Team who won the New Zealand Vex Robotics National Championship 3 weeks ago.  They are now off to Dallas, Texas in the US to represent New Zealand tomorrow!  You can track the progress of the team via their blog.  Mitchell, the driver of the robot in the nationals is the son of one of our friends.  Please pop over and give them some comment love - I am sure they would love some support from back home while they are over there.  It's really exciting to see these young guys pursuing robotics, and being a household of geeks we think stuff like this is cool. Tim is a keen robot fan.

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January Blogosphere Book Circle Review
The bolter : Idina Sackville-- the woman who scandalised 1920s society and became White mischief's infamous seductress / Frances Osborne. London : Virago, 2008.
ISBN: 9781844084814

Synopsis
On Friday 25th May, 1934, a forty-one-year-old woman walked into the lobby of Claridge's Hotel to meet the nineteen-year-old son whose face she did not know. Fifteen years earlier, as the First World War ended, Idina Sackville shocked high society by leaving his multimillionaire father to run off to Africa with a near penniless man. An inspiration for Nancy Mitford's character The Bolter, painted by William Orpen, and photographed by Cecil Beaton, Sackville went on to divorce a total of five times, yet died with a picture of her first love by her bed. Her struggle to reinvent her life with each new marriage left one husband murdered and branded her the 'high priestess' of White Mischief's bed-hopping Happy Valley in Kenya. Sackville's life was so scandalous that it was kept a secret from her great-granddaughter Frances Osborne. Now, Osborne tells the moving tale of betrayal and heartbreak behind Sackville's road to scandal and return, painting a dazzling portrait of high society in the early twentieth century. ~from the blurb

I did enjoy this book.  I know some of the book circle group found it boring, but I found it easy to read; the historical side of things always appeals to me.  I really couldn't relate to the lifestyle portrayed in the book though!  Wow is all I can say! :-P
I did feel sorry for Idina - she obviously was born in the wrong era and her upbringing must have heavily influenced her attitudes towards a whole bunch of things.  These days she would have been some sort of politician I'm sure!  She appears to have been a feisty number on the outside but with a terrible need to be loved/worshipped. It's clear she was looking for "something" that would be fulfilling and never really found it.  As a mum I found it so hard to understand how she could abandon her sons and have so little to do with bringing up her daughter but as other book circle members have pointed out, the connection between parents and kids in those days in that class was very distant.
I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone who didn't like to read about historical time periods or biographies.  There is a lot of detail about various family members and important people of the day which I found reasonably interesting but others found less than diverting!  But that's ok. :) 

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Easter Camping
We spent the Easter weekend camping at Otamure Bay.  Friends on Facebook will have already seen these photos.

The weather was great, some cloud and a shower or two but mostly sunny and warm.  The kids had a grand time playing in the sand and sea and generally pottering around.  The photographic options weren't so good for Rod but he did take some photos.  We went with some friends of ours who have children a similar age and this turned out to be a good thing for the mothers since they mostly entertained themselves together. :-)

The campsite was very busy with fishermen, people attending a motorbike rally next door and of course, the likes of us on a family holiday.  Unfortunately this meant queues for the toilets and the single shower (cold) and that wasn't especially fun.  It's a lovely spot, but perhaps not one we'll be going back to.

I've had a few days off work this week and today I'm *gasp* even going to do some scrapbooking!

Camping Trip to Tawharanui

Over Labour weekend we stayed at Tawharanui Regional Park.  It's a lovely spot.  We had great weather for the Sat/Sun, though Monday was a wet pack up and we've had to dry out the tent in the garage over the last few days.

Missy Moo got some bug that has been going round so she spent a lot of the time being out of sorts and dosed up on Pamol.  Mr 6 had a blast though.  I blobbed around reading books, doing some sketching and enjoying doing nothing in particular.  I could have easily spent a week of it but would have needed a few more books to read.  In my efforts to pack minimalistically I didn't take enough "entertainment" things for me or the kids.  So the Hairy McLary book got a beating!

This is the second time we've used the tent and we're pleased with the way it works for us. In fact, we were pitched a bit further along on a bit of a slope the first night and a flatter site became available the next morning.  So we undid the pegs and dragged the tent down a few metres to the flat. The first night wasn't that great actually because it felt like we were sleeping on a mountain side and there were a bunch of idiots pickling their brains until 3.30am and making lots of noise. A couple of us complained to the ranger and they got sent packing - yay!

Missy Moo discovered my ear plugs in my hand bag.

DH got up every morning to do some sunrise photos and spent every evening doing sunset photos.  He came home with a full memory card and is feeling quite pleased with himself.  You can see some of his efforts on his blog.  We also did a few family rambles.  Missy Moo was happy when we stopped for DH to take photos but wasn't if we were walking and moaned for me to carry her everywhere.

The beach is lovely.  Bikini clad wenches were out in force!  But I wasn't one of them ;-)

Mr 6 made some stone constructions.  This one has 2 chimnies, a hot water cylinder and pipes apparently.


















Missy Moo kept showing me rocks - "Look Mummy!  I found a rock!"  Perhaps my enthusiasm wasn't quite up to her requirements but given their prevalence I wasn't too surprised about her discoveries...




Looking forward to going back with more books, less sickies and for a longer time!!