I love following the Maramataka Maori calendar (www.manawhenua.com). I look ahead and try and ensure that the meetings, events, and important dates are scheduled in on days that work best with the calendar.  I love getting out in the garden and planting veges knowing that they will likely have a better chance of surviving because I am planting them at the right times (and in the right season tends to help too!). 

It's been a mixed bag of days in the calendar this past week, some high energy where I am going 100 miles an hour, Augie can attest - in my stride I thought it a great idea to paint the stairwell (he finished it), amongst other days in the calendar where I purposely took a bit more care, was more thoughtful, and chill.  There's still quite a lot of chaos in the whare - most of the house is all neat, but the kitchen and dining are a total wreck as we are revamping the kitchen. Hoping to have it installed prior to this long weekend.  Keep calm though, this hasn't impacted on the business, we still have our Toru Road Vegan Kale & Kawakawa Pesto!

I have managed to do some work on my brand this past week, so finally we have some proper business cards to hand out that have the right website address (www.toruroad.nz).  I was so embarrassed handing out my first set that were a rush job as part of the Pop-Up Business Aotearoa School.  I've also done the branding for the Toru Road Not Your Ordinary Granola, Honey.  This will be the basis for the other products we have, so this is very exciting.  Still working on my pesto labels and the dukkah, and then our Kimchi with Watercress - which should be mature in a week or two.  Yum.

Had a great night out at Lulu's in Wellington on Friday night with my Spicey Friends (I'm Posh btw) to celebrate our Lochiel Spices birthday (ex Lochiel Marching Team), ​and had a request for Toru Road to make a white bean dip as an alternative to hummus. My white bean dip uses cannellini beans instead of chick peas and is nice and creamy.  I will have to think on that a bit more, every kai introduced has to have a native NZ ingredient that makes it pop so if you have ideas and want to have your influence in a white bean dip to beat all other hummus dips on the market then message me https://m.me/ToruRoad.  Another name other that White Bean Dip would also be great.

Toru Road Events have an event coming up next month that we are super excited about. Once its been held we will have photos to post (keep it a surprise for the mo).  Had a busy afternoon and evening creating six "different but same" mockup centrepieces with my collaborator on this event, MaiTui Events, ready for a presentation hui that I had last Thursday.  My whare was just a tad chaotic in the process, and that's not just because of this creativity, nor the moko visiting Nanny and Papa's on a regular, but it was the week that I decided that we (note the inclusion of Augie) would clean up a storage space to set aside for Toru Road. Everything that was in that space was tipped out, and put into other spaces around the house and the storage space is completely empty ready for Toru Road gear. In the process I found some hidden gems that I had forgotten about which have quickly been put to Toru Road Event use, and forced a reorganisation of another space - so that's two rooms total cleanout!  

Don't you just love it when you find stuff that you haven't discovered for a while. Amongst all event/theming, props hire items I found, I also found numerous memorabilia.  A programme and pen from the North Island Squash Champs, and the Wellington Squash Champs from the amazing year that was 1980 (how can that be 40 years ago, wow), a book of waiata that I had carefully written (and drawn pictures to match) from Te Rangatahi our kapa haka roopu from Kapiti College - how cute lol, and just a couple (well quite a lot, I was proud) of newspapers from Augies NZ Dragonboating days.  Glory Days!!!  So cool to look back at that stuff from a different time and have a laugh. 

I just love the creative juices that come alive when collaborating with MaiTui Events, it is soooo much fun, and I love that when working together we can mess around with each others creative capacities (don't worry there is no shortness of critiquing going on, which is great because you want to have the best). My resulting hui with the organisers was a success and they loved the concepts, so we are good to go.  Yes this will be my first official Toru Road Event having now secured my company name last week.  A big occasion for the business and that makes me happy.

Along with my MaiTui Events collaborator I had a fun night on Friday night with some amazing wahine toa that we met at a HineBoss workshop that we did last year.  This group of like-minded wahine are super spesh and are all following their dreams to get into a business venture of their own, or are already successful in their own businesses.  Being around them is so inspiring and I just love this photo taken which depicts some of their energy! These two look amaze and whilst we did do a few karate kicks on our way back to the car afterwards, it was not quite as fast as lighting - and it was, dare I say it, just a little bit frightening!  Love these girls. 

Can't stop singing... Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting...