The Guest House

When we first moved to Waiheke on 20 Sept 1997, it was nothing but a green paddock. And, because everything is booked for the summer holidays, we had to be in to a house by Christmas Eve. After securing consents to build, we broke ground on 5 November and began building the guest house. Our rental house lease expired on 20 Dec so we moved into a tent with a Persian carpet on the floor, furnished with antiques collected from our shipping container

At about 8:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, the plumber finished the kitchen (sort of) and we moved in.

Of course the land looked like a bomb site, and the house was very rough, but we were in. On Christmas Day we awoke to realise while we bought each of the workers a Christmas ham the day before, we forgot to shop for us. All we had in the house were onions and potatoes. Since then, that has become a Christmas breakfast tradition.