A small celebration

MrMacD spent a lot of time in the garden today, which is his happy place, and I sanded the cabinets for the bedside tables.  They’re looking really good now.  I’ve still got the four drawers to do, which might be a little bit fiddly as they’ve got grooves on them.  Then it will all need a fine sanding before waxing.  It was very satisfying getting rid of the last of the stain and seeing the grain of the wood appear.

Today is our UK 16th wedding anniversary.  We got married in New Zealand in July 2007 and had a duplicate “ceremony” for all our UK friends when we arrived back from New Zealand, so we have two celebrations each year.  We decided to go to Restaurant 1861, which is part of Casa Nova House (https://casanovahouse.co.nz). The food is tapas-style and we were told that the portions were small and we should order 2.5 dishes each.  We followed that advice and rather wished we hadn’t because the portions, while absolutely delicious, were larger than we anticipated and we didn’t quite manage to finish it all.  I, however, sweet tooth that I am, had a pudding (almond and chocolate pot) and MrMacD had another glass of wine.  We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.  We’d decided to walk there and took a slightly longer route than necessary (5.95 kms) through the Oamaru Public Gardens, intending to get a taxi home.  However, after our meal we decided to walk home the shorter route (5.26 kms) and were quite glad we did.  It was a very mild evening but we were somewhat over-dressed, having assumed it would be cold.

The blip shows photos of Restaurant 1861.  The curtains were quite something, but not half as colourful as the wallpaper in the ladies’ loo, which I didn’t take a photograph of.