Our Life

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.

Whether you want to package up tiny jewel boxes, bottles of fizz, or magazine-shaped Christmas gifts, you can easily master this folded-cloth technique to wrap and carry anything beautifully.

For more than 100 years Wellington’s Clyde Quay boat sheds have been happy places for people who love tinkering with boats.

You don't need a permit, plans or instructions to build a tree house. All you need is some nails,  timber and a hammer.

A small house in an olive grove is the smart home of Brooke and Maggie Noonan's dreams.

Beautiful, hand-made beadwork decorations put the compassion into Christmas.

Three books that traverse the diverse culinary landscapes of Central Otago, Sri Lanka and Dunedin are bound to get food and wine-lovers talking.

Build this smart stand-alone ‘gutter garden’ to grace a deck, patio, courtyard or an external wall. It has a shallow base and best suits shallow-rooted plants.

The humble New Zealand biscuit is celebrated in a new tea towel and poster.

Six months' volunteering abroad inspired a 24-year-old Wellingtonian to look for a sustainable and economical solution to a worldwide problem - and to implement it on her university campus.

A comprehensive step-by-step guide to building a pizza oven for your backyard.

Follow these step-by-step instructions to create a Chick Inn Coop Sign, as seen on the cover the Summer bumper issue of NZ Lifestyle Block.

A smart home is one designed and built to a standard that few NZ houses meet. We talk to three design specialists about building small, efficient, warm, smart homes.

Keeping it in the family, two talented Picton creatives share a love of hand-crafted work with individual pieces that take fierce focus and many hours to make.

Whanau, film, theatre, love and Neapolitan sauce are paramount in the lives of a super-creative couple who have masterminded the revival of Italian cinema in Aotearoa.

Keep the kids busy these school holidays and support the Eastern Rockhopper in Forest & Bird's Bird of the Year competition with this easy toilet-roll craft project with printable stencil.

Ruth Paul is a children’s book writer and illustrator who shares her semi-rural lifestyle with her husband, sons, dog Teddy, and other wandering wildlife. She’s also just won Best Picture Book at the recent Children and Young Adult Book Awards.

With lab-raised meat and plants picked by robots, what was once science fiction is now reality.

Ruth Pretty 'the host with the most' shares tips for how to create a dinner party to remember.

A Taranaki gardener has found there are some growing opportunities in the $1.5 billion pet health business.

If you are lucky enough to have access to beeswax, or have a good stock from your own beehives, then you can use beeswax to make useful household and cosmetic products.

An award-winning New Zealand-designed electric utility bike for the farm is on the road to success in the US market.

From a water-powered hen gate to a repurposed trampoline - ten inventive New Zealand chicken lovers share their best DIY  coop designs.

Once the domain of royalty and rock stars, a glamorous Rolls-Royce is living the ordinary life in Rotorua – well, almost.

The reviews are in for Australian crime novel, Into the Night. 

Looking for a satisfying craft project, therapeutic activity and a better way to recycle all in one?  Paula Lang in Whangarei suggests trying to make paper.

Wellington poet Chris Tse delivers a special poem for National Poetry Day from his collection He's So MASC.