I am feeling rather pleased with myself for my spectacularly witty and original title. Hahah!

Yesterday the earthquakes made a reappearance. It’s been pretty quiet and shake-free here in Christchurch for the last few months, and everybody thought they’d finally stopped. Unfortunately not. Since 2pm yesterday there have been two 5.8 quakes, one 6.0 quake and a lot of other smaller ones. According to the news, there haven’t been any serious injuries or reports of new severe damage, but it’s pretty horrible having them start up again, especially so close to Christmas!

In more cheerful news, I finally took some photos of the mini Christmas tree that lives on my desk. Thanks to a friend who is obsessed with Christmas, I am building up quite a collection of ornaments!

Since I’ve seen a few other bloggers posting photos of their Christmas decorations, I decided to take some of mine!

1. This angel was the one we had on the top of our Christmas trees when I was younger. Since our current tree is artificial and huge, this little angel is too small to go on the top. So I borrowed it. :P
2. Lorraine gave me this one last year, because it was pink and purple.
3. Glittery shoe; one of the first ornaments I added to my own collection.
4. Brooke gave me this one year, but I don’t remember when.
5. I found this cute strawberry in the bottom of a bag when I was decorating this year.
6. Another one Lorraine gave me. I think she knows that I like purple. ;)
7. Right after I took this photo, I cut my finger on one of the metal wings. Oww! >.<
8. Lindy gave me this for my birthday this year. Not sure if it’s supposed to be a Christmas decoration, but it looks pretty.
9. Santa is another new 2011 addition.
10. This snowflake is funny, because Christmas here in New Zealand definitely doesn’t involve snow!
11. Yet another angel from Lorraine! This one is pretty old too. The heart has broken off so many times and been superglued back on.
12. I think this star was originally a decoration on a bottle of wine somebody gave my parents one year.
13. Heaviest. Decoration. Ever. I’m amazed it hasn’t tipped the whole tree over!
14. As suspicious as this looks, I did not steal this heart from the Hearts for Christchurch exhibition! Mum bought it in Scotland when she visited a couple of years ago and it smells of lavender.
15. Fairy mouse! I forget where she came from.
16. This angel is actually a bookmark on a long gold ribbon, but she works as a Christmas decoration too. :)

This is the whole tree. Secretly I have only decorated one side of it, since it’s sitting in a corner and you don’t really see the sides or back. I think this year might be the last year I need the pink baubles as space fillers!

SOMETIMES people give me early Christmas presents and I think I’m going to be all awesome and adult-like and wait to open them until it’s actually Christmas; but I ALWAYS open them early anyway!

SOMETIMES I get the idea that I need to keep all my undergrad notes and course readers (and even some from high school) in case I need them sometime, but I ALWAYS end up throwing them out eventually because I never look at them again and they take up SO much room in my closet!

SOMETIMES I think I’m going to be really organised this week and plan and draft my posts for this linkup beforehand, like Megan does, but I ALWAYS get to Wednesday and find myself thinking "What the heck am I going to write!?" ;)

Thanks for reading my Sometimes and & Always! Leave me a comment so I can come and see yours!

This may possibly be the strangest and most eclectic blog post I have ever made!

Today Jenny and I went to the museum. Our reason for going to was to see an exhibition about WOW (World of Wearable Art). This exhibition was awesome, and the thing that stood out to me as the most memorable was definitely this…

Yes. This is exactly what it looks like. A bra made from two taxidermied budgies. The story behind it was that the designer’s two pet budgies both expired at the same time (goodness knows why) and for some reason it occurred to her to create a bra out of them? I know. It creeped me out a bit too – but apparently it won a prize at the exhibition, so someone must have liked it!

Aside from strange and impractical underwear, we also visited the Antarctic exhibition. Christchurch is the closest decent sized city to Antarctica, and therefore it’s where all the planes flying there leave from. We have an International Antarctic Centre here, and also a section of our museum dedicated to it.

I have to admit that it’s not something I’m hugely interested in. But, you may have noticed that I am also a very large child cleverly disguised as an adult, so I WAS hugely interested in this. A skidoo. That you can sit on. When we first walked past it, there were some children on it, so Jenny and I just kind of loitered around waiting for them to move on so I could take the following photo (edited in Instagram since the flash made it very dark) for your blogging entertainment. Yes. Surely you can see just how excited I was!?

Also on the back of this awesome vehicle, was the above sign. "No penguins allowed?" "Keep from freezing?" There was no explanation of it anywhere nearby, so I’ll leave it up to you to try and work out what they meant. I have no idea.

The winner of the Strangest Thing We Saw Today award? This.

For people who cannot read the description, it says that this is a photograph of an "Earthenware butter-cooler in the form of a lettuce, Spode. c. 1770 – 18??" I think I need this in my life – just because it is so STRANGE.

Finally, and most awesomely, we saw this exhibition, inspired by the blog Hearts for Christchurch. I went a little crazy with the photo taking here, but I just think this concept is so awesome it’s worth all the photos. I could not imagine starting with this tiny little idea on a blog and having it grow to something so huge and worldwide that it warranted a museum exhibition.

For those of you who are wondering what Hearts for Christchurch is about, here is the text from the first photo…

In the days after the devastating earthquake that struck Christchurch on 22 February 2011, the whole of New Zealand felt a huge sense of disbelief and sorrow.

It was a time when everyone’s heart went out to the people of Canterbury. From this, and idea was spread amongst the stitch-craft community, of a small gesture that could be made in this difficult time. These crafty people began making hearts, the universal symbol of caring. Two heart shapes sewn together, stuffed or not, embellish, embroidered, quilted, plain or fancy, felt or fabric, basically anything goes.

The word spread that Evie Harris from Nelson would be gathering these hearts for Christchurch.

"I don’t think there is a minute in the day when the word Christchurch isn’t in my head – sometimes with nothing other than the word. It is what is in the hearts of other that have helped launch this journey and the gathering has begun."

What started, at first, as a gentle trickle soon became a torrent, as hearts started arriving from all over New Zealand and shortly after, from all over the world. Stitching groups from New Zealand, Australia, Europe, North and South America, Asia and the Pacific have amassed over 4000 lovingly crafted hearts.

Christchurch our hearts go out to you.

If, by any chance, any crafty types happen to be reading this and want to send hearts (she’s still collecting them!), her address is

Hearts for Christchurch
C/- Evie Harris
523 Main North Road
Bay View
Napier 4104
New Zealand

If you send a heart, please let me know (take a photo), and next time I am in town I will go to the museum and see if I can spot it for you! :)