Happy Times

My beautiful dad.

The beach houses surrounding the house we stayed in. The agapanthus grows wild in front of these houses. I would love to see them flowering.

The gardens in this small sleepy beach side town are to-die-for.



Table set for Dad's Birthday lunch.






I spotted this cute beach shack when I was out picking flowers and loved it. In New Zealand I've noticed they paint many of their houses black and white which I love.



I had a bath in this huge clawfoot bath every day we were there. I love the little vintage butterfly prints on the wall.




When we eventually renovate the kitchen in our new house I definitely want to have a cabinet built just like this one which was in the kitchen at the beach house. It was so perfect for all the plates, platters, cups etc.

The beach in front of the house.

We've just returned home from a week in New Zealand where we celebrated my father's 60th Birthday. After spending a few days in Auckland we caught a plane down to Napier and drove down to a beautiful beach house my parent's have been frequenting over the past 12 months in a sleepy beach side town in Hawkes Bay. We spent 3 days here with my parents, brothers, cousins, aunty & uncle and our grandmother. It was the most wonderful holiday with lots of laughs, lots of tears and lots of reminiscing. Mum cooked an amazing lunch for Dad on his birthday. I went down the street and picked some gorgeous roadside flowers which I arranged for the table. It was the most amazing week away from work and the craziness of life. Happy 60th Birthday Dad. You are one in a million and we all love you so much.

If anyone is interested in staying at this beautiful house click HERE for details.

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10 Craziest Tattoos

Tattoos have always been a tradition method of self-expression. But sometimes that self-expression expresses just a little too much and many times you just have to wonder what people were thinking when they decided to get these tattoos.
10.

To Do List Tattoo

Now this is an interesting tattoo but I think that eventually it may become a tattoo that they will regret. As someone who has a wrist tattoo having something that you are going to see almost constantly every day it really has to be something important and personal. But just maybe this tattoo will keep it’s novelty and be cool to the person who has it. At least I really hope so.

9. Six Pack Tattoo

I suppose if you know that you’re never going to get in shape then this might be a good idea seeing as it will be the closest thing you will ever get to a six pack. Though I think it also gives new meaning to the phrase “beer gut.” Sometimes you got to think about the reason people get tattoos because like other tattoos this is only funny the first time you see it.

8. I See You Tattoo

This is another unique tattoo that really I cannot understand why someone would get it. Sure I mean you do it once and it is kinda funny and it will definitely catch you off guard. But after that it gets old rather quick, so I think that the goal of this tattoo is to constantly keep meeting new people. Once again I think I can respect it but I think in the long run this could be a rather silly tattoo.

7. Cow Tattoo

Now there are a number of tattoos that utilize holes in the body in order to add another dimension to their tattoo. Many of the more disturbing and unique ones, use holes that well I was not comfortable sharing pictures of. Turning the belly button into an anus has become a… shall I say “popular” bizarre tattoo as I have seen it done with a few different animals. This is possibly the best of the worst but many of them I have seen with cats.

6 Alien Tattoo

This is a truly impressive tattoo and this would really make anyone double take when you walked by. This is a bizarre but really cool tattoo and unlike some of the others on this list I really don’t think there is too much to complain about. I would really like to hear the story behind this tattoo though and I would also like to see people’s first reactions when they see him walking by.

5. Zombie Boy Tattoo

This is a tattoo that I can respect because it takes a great deal of dedication (and apparently more than 24 hours and thousands of dollars) to turn yourself into a zombie. Now I personally do have a passion for something great enough to tattoo my entire body with it, so I think it is impressive that this guy does. But then again he might be a poster child for being overly obsessive about something…either way this is one really bizarre tattoo.

6 Baby on Board Tattoo

This tattoo is really bizarre on so many levels. First I don’t think getting a tattoo while pregnant is the best idea. Second, do they realize that eventually the baby will come out and that the tattoo won’t make sense anymore. Though I truly believe that having a child and being pregnant is something that is perfectly inspiration for a child, I would hope that it would have a bit more meaning and something more personal that this one

2. Legs Tattoo

Here is a tattoo that gets props for being creative but I’m not sure this is the type of creativity that is going to make him very popular with the ladies. After all who wants to date a man that has turned his armpit into a… well a… you know. I wonder if all of his guy friends thought this was brilliant or stupid because I could see a guy going either way on this one, a girl on the other hand…not so much.

2. Breakfast Anyone? Tattoo

Now you have to really love your eggs over easy with bacon and hashbrowns in order to get this tattoo. Bald heads are great places to get unique tattoos and I have seen plenty cool and unique ones. I will grant that this one is unique, but I really think that it is unique for a reason… Honestly I can’t understand the justification for a tattoo like this and I would really like to hear it.

1. Digit Tattoo

This tattoo is perhaps the most disturbing that I have ever seen and I’m not even sure why. I mean to make your arm look like a giant finger is undoubtedly creative, and if we’re being honest people are probably going to stare anyway, so why not give them something to really look at. But still I find this tattoo as creepy as it is creative.
If you decide to get your own tattoo make sure it is something that you can truly see yourself appreciating for the rest of your life. If you don’t like tattoos remember that not all tattoos are just to look silly or strange, some of them are very important and personal to the people who get them and that is something that should be respected. In the meantime enjoy the art!

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Amazing 3D Tattoos

A tattoo artist Lane Jensen, 30, came up a creative idea to give silicone breast implants to his cowgirl tattoo in order to make “her” looks shapely. Unfortunately two weeks later, his body rejected them.

“My body just rejected it. I guess my girl wasn’t meant to have 3D breasts,” he said. “I thought it would make for good promotion. Augmenting tattoos with implants is becoming very popular,” said Jensen.

Lane Jensen, who is the co-owner of Dragon FX tattoo and body piercing shop at Kingsway Garden Mall, has more than 20 tattoos on his body and the sexy cowgirl tattoo on his left leg was done three years ago.

A friend of Jensen, Brian Decker, who is also a New York-based micro-dermal surgeon, performed the implant procedure on him. But two weeks later, the sutures split and lymphatic fluid drained from Jensen’s leg.

Jensen said, “there was so much fluid in there. I went back to the studio and pushed on it gently – the implant shot right out. The surgery was done in ideal conditions and Decker did a perfect job. It just goes to show you some people’s bodies won’t tolerate foreign objects.

“The body rejects 20% of them, no matter what kind of implant it is, how safely it’s done, or how skilled the surgeon or artist is. A lot of places won’t tell you rejection rates before you buy $10,000 implants to stuff inside your body.

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Stange Body Modification and Body Piercings From Around the World

People get piercings for every reason, from tradition all the way to rebellion. Different kinds of piercings can be found all around the world, but one thing that we can be sure of is that piercings from some countries are unique and very bizarre.

The woman shown above is Brazilian lady Elaine Davidson, who currently holds the world record for being the most pierced woman in the world. She has 720 piercings and counting. She currently lives in Scotland

Rather than getting piercings that excel in quantity, sometimes the bizarre factor is accentuated in quality. The Vegetarian Festival in Phuket, Thailand involves the extreme piercing of Ma Song or religious devotees to the festivals, who stick everything from swords to bikes in their cheeks. They do this so they can shift evil from the community onto themselves.


Luis Aguero from Havana, Cuba was previously the most pierced man in the world. He has 230 piercings, and 175 are on his face alone!


In Africa, earlobe stretching is a custom within the Maasai tribe, located in Kenya and Northern Tanzania. This kind of stretching is more common amongst the women than the men of the tribe. They often use stones, thorns, and twigs to create these piercings, and to begin the stretching.


In northwest India, the Meghwal women show their status with their nose piercings. Married women often wear gold nose rings, and the size of the nose ring shows their status in society. The bigger the nose ring is, the more important they are in their society.

In the United States, piercings are mostly used for simply aesthetic purposes rather than for tradition or custom. The girl above has vertical labret piercings, and a nose piercing. As piercings are becoming more and more acceptable in society, and the professional environment, more and more Americans are getting piercings. Although it may look bizarre to some, to the people who choose this path, it is a way of life, and what they believe. To them piercings mean more than just holes in their bodies filled with metal - they symbolise tradition, decoration, and custom.

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World Strange Places (Part 4) - Rare Photos and Information...

White Terraces



Natural Wonders from New Zealand that just memories because destroyed by the Tarawera volcanic eruption in 1886. The natural phenomenon of warm water that formed by geysers that blast down the hillside across the thickness of ice left, the largest pool of warm water was recorded around 3 acres. Before the destruction of this phenomenon, It belongs to ” The Eighth Wonder of the World “.











Bathing at the White Terrace



Before the eruption of Mt Tarawera in 1886, the Pink and White Terraces at Rotomahana were a spectacular tourist attraction. The terraces had natural silica basins where you could bathe. When English novelist Anthony Trollope sampled one of the pools in the early 1870s he wrote, ‘The baths are … like vast open shells, the walls of which are concave, and the lips ornamented in a thousand forms … I have never heard of other bathing like this in the world.’ Here, three men (one Pākehā and two Māori) share a bath at the White Terrace, about 1880. Racially mixed bathing became less usual in the later 19th century.





Rice Terraces



In Luzon Province of the Northern Philippines, through mountains and rice terraces, the road ends at a church, in a small town called Banaue. 4,000 feet above sea level in Banaue sits a small market village in Ifugao province. Located north of Manila in the Philippines, Ifugao province is famous for the handiwork of its people, who increased cultivable lands by carving gigantic rice terraces from the sides of mountains. For over 2,000 years, the people of Batad have built these terraces, one stone at a time.





This growing, living stairway stretches far beyond what the eye can see. Taking an estimated 2,000 years to build, the still-productive rice terraces rise from the valley floor to heights of up to 3,000 feet, a feat of engineering so substantial that some call them the eighth wonder of the world. The only man made wonder which was literally sculpted from the earth. A scarcity of water has led to some rice patties drying up.The mountainous rice terraces of Banaue and vicinity in the Philippines are mankind’s grandest scaled engineering feat. The vertical distance between bottom and top rows exceeds the height of the world’s tallest building. If the terraces were laid end to end, they would stretch half way around the world.







Banaue is known for its rice terraces built along the mountains sides like stairways reaching the sky. 2000 years ago Ifugao's constructed it by using their bare hands and & wood as tools. The terraces are located in Banaue, Hungduan, Kiangan & Mayoyao. Banaue rice terraces are dubbed as the 8th Wonder of the World . Batad is a popular for its amphitheater-shaped terraces & the cascading Tappiyah Waterfall.

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