QdM News

Its been a bit mad here lately. So this years newsletter is pretty much strictly the holiday dates for you all.

Here they are:

• Office Holiday: 13th December – January 16th
• Last Website Updates in by: 10th of December
• Maternity Leave: 16th March – 31st June 2012.

Work has been mostly website upkeeps but I have one new one that I MUST post about… sometime soon. Happy Holidays everyone. Get in touch anytime with urgent matters. Get in touch with new work or ideas before the 10th of December or after the 16th of January. I will be ready to work hard when I get back refreshed and ready to go.

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A bit of an experiment I am running at the moment – is having two blogs. I know that its well documented that you should have only one. I think these people assume we all have one main passion and interest and they most certainly overlap. Sometimes my interests MIGHT overlap, but really, sewing, fibre and art don’t really mix with geeky old web design. When it comes to getting good visitors to my business blog – ones that have been searching for banana cake really are not the people I am after.

In the interest of keeping my life simple – all of my old posts will stay on this blog, but from now on my physical world the latest crafty project or sharing links and photos – these will be done on the other blog – called “Made Happy”. I chose the name after alot of thought and brainstorming and it felt pretty accurate.  The design is super simple. I have lots of design in my life – infact I am still trying to redesign this site! I thought I would like it all pared back to basics so that photos and content took center stage. Enjoy having a look around I have written a few posts to start on. You will still get web design related information here and whatever is happening in my business’s world.

Thankfully our neighborhood is on the flat and to the side in what seems like a little island sanctuary to me right now and we have had no damage. No breakages even. I went though the house after the smaller 5.5 one just to check and pushed things to the back of shelves and put a few things away…. which probably stopped the few breakages we may have had in the 6.0. Go across a by two blocks and there the liquefaction starts! Some people homes were thrown around worse or much like the the February one. Its crazy to me how it changes so drastically from house to house. Yay for no deaths or serious injuries! I have already mourned the loss of buildings and how the city was and continue to look forward to the future with anticipation and curiosity on how everything will look in 15 years!

Second item of news is a temporary relocation for me. My partner Kylie is having to work from Te Awamutu in the next three months and I have decided to join him – with cats. I have the luxury of just needing an internet connection and my laptop to earn some money. So I may as well follow him instead of miss him! Have a break from my beloved shaky town and explore the north island. Which I have not done that well yet. So pretty excited! Just letting you all know this is not holiday and I will be working as per usual. Just from a different spot for a little while. Continue to bring forth the work

Stay safe and look after your loved ones!

Despite the earthquake interrupting some upcoming jobs I seem to of been kept rather busy. Moving house can do that to a person. Also due to the wonderfully timed quake I was way too busy to do lots of pre-packing as I had originally planned – there also being a box shortage (as you can imagine when a large amount of houses in our injured city are left to dangerous to live in) i just had to make do with what we could get – which in the end was plenty, two sets of friends had boxes from moving to Christchurch from overseas and when the word went out we had boxes turn up on our doorstep quite regularly! The packing happened in fits and starts in the week preceding and on the day of the move.

It was a rather exciting full on day of two cars with two trailers, large amounts of helpful hands there to clear the house and much “drop ins” to have a look. I was perpetually packing up the kitchen and then unpacking the kitchen as the rest of the crew emptied our house and probably saw far too much personal items of mine that i hadn’t had time to pack. It was awfully embarrassing when we realized how much stuff we had, when normally as we packed we would have done a great sort out, the sort out is now happening as we unpack.. which is good and therapeutic sometimes (i liked throwing out some more old uni work), but this does nothing for the (mostly mine) reputations as a pack rats has already been fully established. However the packing was done by very forgiving and helpful friends, they seemed to still like me after it all, so can’t be too bad. Afterwards we hosted a large bbq and some nice beers on our new slightly rotten deck and after throwing all boxes from lounge to hallway/bedrooms and wherever else they fit… we could actually sit (and as it turns out sleep!) in our lounge quite comfortably.

As I type I can still see all the boxes left to unpack and all the clutter thats spread out in the rooms we have managed to furnish and get up and running. One more room is left to set up furniture in, then its the unpacking of the boxes in all the corners and garage.

I have not been so much on my feet since the waitressing days and by the end of the day I am even too tired to read, i just lying there decompressing my brain in silence and thinking about our new little house.

For myself I am excited and since we have no internet (will be posting this at the local library) I am not seeing our bank balance become affected by the large loan! I do have internet on my phone, its not too desperate times, since there is so much to do I am ok for the time being. We have tried to get connected but there seems to be a fault with our lines. Funny that.

As i write this (i copied and pasted in the library) I am sitting facing our new backyard and deck with my old bucket garden taking to the new deck nicely, as the new conservatory fills with its sunshine… which it gets practically ALL DAY. Its north facing baby. This place has a very small veggie plot, (soon to be enlarged) and one shared apple tree.

The earthquake has caused some damage. The roof has holes and there are cracks here and there, but we got off very lightly and had zero liquefaction, our foundations are mostly fine. I am feeling extremely blessed at the moment. Insurance is sorting out the the roof, the cracks and even a new paint job on the outside of the house (paints cracked off!) so this designer gets to choose some paint colours. The big grin is currently spreading across my face….  all of this is covered by EQC! We will be getting the contractors to fix other parts of the house at the same time – since its the right time. Which will cost us, we will stick to the essential for waterproofing and conserving, as much as we would love to add in much more extra things, these can wait for when the mortgage has been whittled down quite a bit more and it makes more financial sense. Lets just say we are not banking on our plot of land selling to finance a few improvements any time soon!

After this extremely long winded blog post I have a few last last things to leave you with. One – thank god for friends!, thanks to the gravel soil our house sits on and thank you everyone I know and love are safe and well. And second this may be one of the last personal blog posts on this blog, I am working on a new place for my personal writing so i really can keep this one for work nattering only. With the quieter month for paid work I have been working on this sites re-design and the new personal blog… soon to be uncovered!

Hope this post finds you well and happy. Stay safe and always, always have a plan B… that has plenty of water and canned food somewhere to snatch and grab… xxxx

The guilt will go when everyone else in Christchurch has all the need to move on as well. The reality is there will be people with nowhere else to go living in houses that drafty, surrounded and sitting in silt and damp. With no water, or sewage. Fortunately the power people have been amazing at restoring power to much of the city already. I hope the water people can move as efficiently in the next week. Then there are those scrambling trying to find somewhere to live after loosing their homes.

I am still very much overwhelmed by whats happened and the job we now have ahead of us but I keep focusing on what I need to do right now. One of those is move into the new house – first as a rental because the banks (to add to everything else) have frozen all lending. Even though we have a contract saying we will get the money. Plus full insurance. Hopefully very soon the fact we still have jobs and the house is fine means the bank will go back to being helpful. Or we may just be out of a home, although I am trying not to think about that!

Today I work  and call the carpet cleaners to come in the clean the carpets ready for the new tenants in the place we are living in right now. Keeping moving and buying things in Chch will mean that it bounces back much faster.

Righto then – time to work!

While weathering aftershocks and still being unable to think about little else I have started the office clean up and have been in touch with most of my clients who are affected by the quake. Some more than others. I just want all of you to know that all servers and sites I have checked and even the Christchurch ones seem to be working well! I can do little to help but offer to put up some status updates on your websites free of charge. If I have not already been in touch with you about this let me know!

Apparently due to that wee block of text Dusk had increased visitors to the shop. Not sure about the others. But its very exciting non-the-less. He he… quoted. Tickled I am, tickled.

In other news I went to the Ellerslie Flower Show on Friday afternoon. Here are my snaps of my favorites.




Big Rhino. He was rather magnificent in the evening-after-rain light.

Don’t ask me why, but the heads – I really liked.

The temperatures have started to drop and Autumn is in the air. Woolly socks, scarfs, hats and jumpers. Malieka now sleeps under her wee cushion. For added insulation.