Our Life

Evicted from their farm in Zimbabwe, a family’s fresh start in Havelock North has brought freedom, and an opportunity to pay it forward.

In Your Backyard: Living Lightly, is a guide to making small steps towards a lighter footprint.  We’ve compiled extra materials and videos here to help further your understanding of this exciting topic.

This trestle is ideal for a compact potting table or a base for a plant container.

A tiny house that includes upcycled parts of a state home is the first step towards sustainable living for an Auckland couple.

This award-winning Geraldine home may be 10 years old, but it's still way ahead of the average NZ house.

Nathan Orr’s enthusiasm for tiny homes and leaving a smaller footprint on the planet is rooted in a teenage illness.

In Hackland, the grown-ups learn the same way kids do - by trying new things and having fun.

Fiona Kidman, Jo Seagar and Kimberly Andrews are winners in the inaugural NZ Booklovers Awards announced today.

A quick upcycling project to transform an old terracotta plant pot.

Mass murder at mosques in Christchurch on Friday targeted Muslim New Zealanders at worship. Here are some things you can do to support a devastated community.

There’s no need to bungy-jump from a bridge or swing perilously close to a cliff-face in a jet-boat to sample the delights of New Zealand's adventure capital. Autumn is a time for gentler pursuits.

Of all of the scenes set decorator Megan Vertelle has crafted into reality, her patchwork Piha villa is the one that steals the show.

Add metabolic syndrome to the long list of medical maladies that can be avoided by living well.

Make your own beeswax food wraps: updated recipe

This environmentally friendly alternative to plastic cling film is easy to make at home.

A Wellington-based painter’s pop-surrealist works are finding favour among art buyers captivated by the subversive cuteness of her creatures.

Kiwi actor Nicola Kawana feels her life is nicely balanced between roles on the stage, in film, and her work as a gardener.

These pretty, soft-as-silk knitted facecloths make the perfect homemade gift for friends or family.

A workshop, once bursting at the joists with a lifetime of useful things, is reworked into an exceptional holiday home.

Making sense of the past has allowed a Kaiteriteri couple to shape the future — titiro whakamuri, kōkiri whakamua. Now they are paddling forwards and taking others with them.

Young, smart-thinking innovators are developing remote methods to ensure the country’s rain-water tanks never run dry.

The brain is often split when it comes to processing information, which could be why humans don’t always do what they know they should.

A few principles of flower arranging will help to create lovely bouquets from your garden this summer.

Quad bikes are popular vehicles on farms and lifestyle blocks, yet one of the trickiest to use.

French architect Julie Villard has built a quiet, airy, compact smart home above a noisy  port.

If you’re a romantic at heart, turning your land into a wedding venue might be an opportunity to earn some extra cash.

A new, free website will work out how smart your home is, and offer suggestions on how to make it smarter.

There’s a new process if you want to light a fire this summer.

Rangitoto, Auckland’s most familiar landmark, harbours unexpected reminders of less-complicated times.

We take a look at three eye-catching classic car and caravan combos to look out for on the road this summer.

These free animal gift tags will make your present recipients smile — question is, who should receive the pig?

Get crafty for Christmas and deck out the dining table with homemade Santa sack cutlery holders.

Making handmade paper from recycled paper is fun and a relatively easy process. It’s a great way to give junk mail, used packaging paper and even cardboard egg cartons, a new lease of life.

Yvonne Sutherland has been firing and painting hens for more than three decades and collectors around the world obviously adore them as much as she does.

While her knowledge of soap-making was limited, she had already studied essential oils through a correspondence course which proved useful for what has turned out to be Clean Earth Soap.