Treasure Hunt Roundup

Life sure does creep by when you are having such fun.
I still can't believe it can take so long just to round up 21 pictures, I mean we had 3 months to find them, what took us all so long?
I managed to find 21 items, however I did have to use both substitutes as I was unable to find 2 of the main items.

While I would love to give you a run down of all of my pictures, I haven't been blogging about anything else over the last 3 months so all my posts are about the treasure hunt, so please feel free to scroll through my last few posts to see my finds.
However I will recap over a few items.

The easiest to find:

That would be 8 - a tattoo because I have a tattoo so I just took a picture of myself!

The hardest to find:

That would be 20 - a bus with a picture on the side I thought this would be an easy one to find but alas it evaded me for sometime as we seem to have gotten rid of all the buses in Hamilton with pictures on the side, that is until I spied just 2 buses around town and then had to keep an eye out for them to gain a quick shot!

The one I knew I would never find!:

That would be 14 - a parade & 15 - a juggler!
We're in winter here and parades just aren't a happening thing at this time of the year. I am sure I could have thought outside of the square like some people and found a parade in another way, but alas no!
As for a juggler, well same sort of thing, without getting a family member to perform the trick for me, when I really wanted to find a juggler rather than create one, I just knew the chances of coming across one during winter was very low.

My favorite to find:

Has to be 18 - a waterfall we had such an awesome family day out to the waterfall. Due to getting lost on the way we ended up having a fish and chip lunch at the beach side town just a little further up the road and then retracing our steps to find the said waterfall, and believe me it was worth the find.

The one that I was surprised to find:

That would be 12 - a mascot I really didn't think I would find anything for this as I just haven't seen mascots for things around.

I hope you all had a great time over the last 3 months, finding all of Rinda's list. I am so grateful to Rinda for hosting this wonderful event yet again. I am looking forward to next year already and we still have 9 months to wait!

15 - A juggler

Substitute 15 - A birdhouse

Again one that I had a pretty fair chance of knowing that it was going to be against the odds if I managed to find this one during the hunt.
I discovered the bird house in a friends garden a few weeks ago. I explained that I was looking for one and they happily agreed for me to photograph it whenever I needed it, well today I snuck round to steal a shot of it and I managed until just as I was returning to the car the husband came round the corner, he laughed when he heard I was trying to be sneaky!

10 - a photo bomb

Without getting the boys to crash someone else's picture I was never sure how this one would go down!
I thought I might have achieved it quite early on in the hunt but was not sure so left it until the end to submit my picture as I wanted to be sure.

Yesterday on our drive back from a judo tournament I was messing around with the camera in the car and Ben happily climbed into my shot of myself!

My original picture was going to be the one I took of Ben that Alex decided he just had to be a part of!

14 - A Parade

Substitute 14 - a hot air balloon
I knew I was never going to achieve this one during the whole hunt, I didn't want to be a defeatist, it is just that due to being winter the chances of finding a parade was about 1%.
I never gave up and thus the reason I have only just submitted a substitute because I wanted to be absolutely certain.
I actually managed to find the hot air balloon very early on in the hunt one Saturday morning whilst at soccer with my son, so it has been saved in the hunt box for that just in case need.

Well that just in case need is here:

20 - A picture of yourself with something that represents the current season

I am one of those lucky people who get to do the summertime hunt in winter.
Makes for some interesting finds when we are looking for things that are in abundance in summer and not so much winter, one year we had to find a bride, well for the life of me I never came across one in the whole time cause we don't have brides outside during that time, but that doesn't mean I give up, just cause it is winter still means things are out there you just have to be creative.

I give you a picture of me in my winter coat with a nice cosy scarf and of course my sunglasses because NZ winters are still very sunny, thus the reason why I could never go back to England, just too darn cold!

20 - A bus with a picture on the side

Do you know it turns out that in Hamilton we don't have pictures on the side of our buses!
I was pretty sure we did and I do remember seeing them, but however someone in their ultimate wisdom decided last year that all buses would now been plain and have just the bus company logo on the side....how boring!

I did finally manage to see a bus round town with a picture on the side and realised that in fact we had all of 2 buses with pictures on that visited into town once every hour!
I even managed to find out where the bus passed through town but never seemed to be hanging around the bus stop at the right time.
So imagine my surprise to come up beside it at the lights on wet morning.
I have never got the camera out so fast to grab a candid shot before the lights changed colour.

It may not be the greatest picture but it is a bus with pictures on the side so I don't care!

18 - A Waterfall

From the moment the list came out in June, I knew where I was getting this picture from.
It just took me more or less the whole hunt time to get the family organised to take a day trip to see the falls, although now we have been I am so glad we did.
It was spectacular.

13 - A sunrise

This has been the one I have not been looking forward to, well with one or 2 others but this one really meant you had to be devoted to the hunt. I mean how many of us are routinely up at the crack of dawn with the camera in hand?

Turns out the 1 day I really needed some sleep I was awake at 5am and managed to stay in bed till 5.30 and then that was it, took sunrise picture, put washing in the machine and generally got on with the day.

Unfortunately it was also the day we were travelling to Auckland to see a show so made it to bed at 2am and felt like I had been up for days let alone hours!

12 - A mascot

Another little picture that I thought I would struggle with, seems NZ is not big on mascots for things.
I sat and went through all the products I could think of and tried to think of the mascot for it and there was nothing that I could come up with that was easy to find.

Then one day we were in the local shopping mall and they were advertising the up coming school holidays and the fun programme they had with shows and activities for the kids to enjoy whilst their parents shopped.
I quickly grabbed my phone and took a picture of the boys with the mascot.

This was great for posting to the Facebook page but not so great for posting on here, see I may use my phone to take pictures and yes I know how to upload them to FB or Instagram from my phone but I has no idea how to get them off my phone and actually loaded into blogger as a picture!

By pure mistake I happen to discover that all the pictures were being saved in an area of my gmail account and so with a little adventure of discovery I have found where a copy of my pictures are being stored online and hey presto I have a copy to upload to blogger, yea me.

11 - A horn

I tried, oh man did I try to get something more creative than the horn in the car!
I watched all the animals whenever we went anywhere, I did see a sign with an interesting looking animal with horns on it and made a mental note to get a picture on our return trip but we ended up taking a different route so I missed out!

6 - An urban street

I was never actually too sure as to what was required for this picture?
I took a picture of the street but it seemed so plain and boring, sure I needed something a little more exciting, but here it is anyway.