Starting off with a Change

2010 arrived with a slight disappointment - Auckland Sky Tower fireworks! They seem to get worse each year, but then again it probably is (and feels) a lot more exciting when you're in the city as the clock strikes midnight. As for us though, we spent the final moments of 2009 and the decade with Jason Gunn and his pre-recorded New Years countdown show. It was a mixed bag, bits of it funny and some of it not so much.

Fifteen minutes before midnight though my brothers and I jumped in the car to travel across the bridge to Te Atatu Peninsula to watch the fireworks over the harbour. Te Atatu Peninsula has some great views, and it seems as though a whole lot of other people knew that too! We found a side street to park down and waited till midnight came. The fireworks shot out of the Sky Tower and the cellphone networks crashed slightly, but what was more exciting was the atmosphere, all the people in the streets cheering and shouting 'Happy New Year!'.

Since then. I've been spending the beginning of 2010 not really doing much, except starting to sort out music for our cousin's wedding. I've found some cool songs, such as Love will Keep Us Together, Accidentally in Love (from Shrek), Swear it Again (Westlife), and quite a few others. Now the task is to arrange them for an accordion trio!

We've also been doing a bit of home renovation. We shifted everything out of our front porch so that Aonghas and my dad could cover the floor with wood panels. My mum and I then painted the walls white (they used to be a yucky dirty yellow colour). Next we'll have to finally get around to painting our hallway after we stripped it of wallpaper several years ago!

Today though we finally washed half of the house using the '30 Seconds Spray and Walk Away', famous for the TV advert with that Japanese guy! I have to say it actually works, even if it takes longer than 30 seconds! In previous years we've had to scrub the house hard to clean it, and that is what has probably turned me off washing the house. Then again, who would enjoy washing their house anyway? This time though all we needed to do was spray the house with 30 Seconds, scrub a little and then wash with water! We had a few problems with avoiding getting the stuff on our skin and faces though. It managed to stain Aonghas's clothes!

We've washed two sides of our house today, but discovered that our house isn't even painted properly! On one side there is a patch right in the middle which hasn't been painted over! It's not too obvious since it's white and the colour of the paint we used to paint over is creamy white. I guess that will be our next job these holidays!