phil

New Zealand, July 2010

Christchurch – Wanaka – Cardrona – Queenstown

My mum Eileen, will be with us for her 68th birthday next year, a few days before my son William’s 6th birthday. Here in Australia it is mandatory you supply birthday party guests with a party bag upon leaving the festivities – well for children’s parties at least. These bags usually consist of colourful sugary sweets plus other things like, a plastic toy, funny pencil, balloon, bubble mixture etc. My parents and I mused about what you might supply in a 68 year old’s party bag. We came up with the following:

• Broken pair of reading glasses
• Incontinence pad (unused)
• Imperial mint (sucked)
• Lost set of keys
• Hearing aid battery
• Large print book
• Unposted Christmas card
• 15 year old TV Remote control fixed with sellotape but only 3 buttons work
• Tea bag (got to have a treat in there)
• 7-day plastic pill box
• An odd kitchen utensil that no one under 48 has any idea what it’s for
• Something crochet, or maybe just the pattern
• A small bag of random buttons
• An audio tape (home recorded)

What else do you think would be good?

Some more thoughts:

• A drawing from a grandchild (under 6)
• A 5¼” floppy disk – blank (for back-up purposes)
• Denture cream
• SAGA tours brochure

Add your suggestions in the comment box below…

Linda won a competition with Woolworths and 96fm with her baked potato people recipe. Went to Sydney for a photo shoot and now sits on the Fresh Food Mums Website (though Linda’s photo has since been removed).

While the grandparents were here late last year we visited the good old Margaret River Chocolate Factory. We managed to get involved with the new corporate video they were shooting that day. See if you can spot us in the video – (there are 4 clips in all):

[See post to watch Flash video]

link to above video on their site

- our fee for appearing was coffees, hot chocolate, milk shakes and some fantastic rocky road. If we hadn’t just eaten lunch, it would have been a higher fee.

Thanks to Martin , or Choco as he’s called by the Squadra Barista cycling group, (part owner said chocolate company) for a DVD  copy of this video.

Here’s a link to the photos our son William took when we went back there between Christmas and New Year.

PS (8/4/10): We went to the Swan River branch of the Margaret River Chocolate Company over the Easter weekend and just inside the main door there’s a big screen playing this video on a continuous loop. The kids enjoyed seeing themselves and eating the chocolate. They do a fantastic Chocolate fondue – not for the faint hearted!

Welcome to philnlil’s new website for 2010.

In the process as always getting it up and running. All our old / original content is still available:

To go to our old site (version 2 – 2009) click here

To go to our original site (version 1 – 2008) click here