From the num­bers of you lot vot­ing for the Montana World of Wear­ableArt awards in the TAWAs, we’re guess­ing that you’re already pretty famil­i­ar with Montana wines. After all, it’s been more than 30 years since Montana’s ori­gin­al 1979 vin­tage Marl­bor­ough Sauvign­on Blanc intro­duced the dis­tinct­ive fla­vours that estab­lished New Zealand’s repu­ta­tion on the world wine stage. As part of the com­mem­or­ative cel­eb­ra­tions, Montana took the oppor­tun­ity to freshen up the look of the brand. Always keen to get our hands on free wine, even if we have to pass it on, we have two triple packs to give away so you can see the new look for your­self.

With the com­pli­ments of the lovely people at Montana and us ador­able Wel­ling­tonis­tas, you can enter the draw for a chance to win one of two Montana prize packs val­ued at $50 each. The prize pack includes three bottles of the new look Montana Marl­bor­ough Sauvign­on Blanc 2009

In order to get into the draw, all you gotta do is leave us a com­ment and tell us where you’re going to drink the wine. Are you going to take them to your favour­ite Malay­si­an BYO place, or drink them (care­fully!) at the top of the secret tree in the Bot Gar­dens? Tell us before Decem­ber 15 (which is also the cut-off date for vot­ing in the Wel­ling­tonista Awards, don’t for­get!) and we’ll choose two win­ners at ran­dom. And now for the leg­al stuff: you need to be over 18 to enter this com­pet­i­tion. We will be check­ing IDs because we def­in­itely learnt our les­son with that one guy we met on Cour­tenay Place that one time.

Just a quick note about an exhib­i­tion tonight (Tues­day Decem­ber 8th). Colin Kalden­bach – gig poster design­er extraordin­aire – exhib­its the best of his work from 2009 at SFBH, with a live set from Wel­ling­ton’s Kit­tentank.

Show­cas­ing posters fea­tur­ing bands such as Flip­per, Sons of Midas, Gay­wyre, The Pos­tures, The Ver­laines, Kit­tentank, New Tele­path­ics, New­town Street Justice and more . Prints, framed work and can­vas are avail­able for pur­chase. It’s free and there will be happy hour pri­cing all night. It kicks off at 6pm.

So if there’s a gig poster that has taken your fancy this year, you can either pick up a cheap good qual­ity print or go the whole hog and get a framed piece. There is some ori­gin­al one off work for sale as well. The exhib­i­tion will run for two days only, so get in there! You can view some of the posters avail­able here

There’s a moment very early on in An Adagio Christ­mas when the whole theatre gasped in uni­son, and both our daugh­ters stood up in shock. The moment passed, the shock faded, but they nev­er quite settled back past the edges of their seats. Like the rest of us, from then on they were hooked.

An Adagio Christ­mas is a retuned-for-Christ­mas ver­sion of the earli­er Down­stage pro­duc­tion of the same name; a series of loosely linked vign­ettes whose per­form­ances encom­pass vari­ous cir­cus skills as well as music, singing, dan­cing, and com­edy.

Tonight from 6.00 until 8.00pm Thistle Hall is hold­ing their annu­al $100 art sale. 

Sup­port the artists, the ven­ue *and* get some­thing unique for the import­ant people in your life just in time for Christ­mas.

Check out pic­tures of some of the pieces for sale here.

You can try and deny it, but the sea­son for shop­ping is upon us.

If your plan this year is to shop loc­al and/or shop hand­made, then tomor­row night is the answer to all your plans.

The­New­Dowse pre-Christ­mas combo has  space rock­ers Sparta­cus R and the first-ever Craft 2.0 Twi­light Delight.

Music + shop­ping + art

= a multi-sens­ory treat to cel­eb­rate the fest­ive sea­son

Craft2.0 kicks off at 6pm and runs till 9pm.

All the gal­ler­ies, bars and cafe are also open till 9pm.

If you’re a ped­es­tri­an, some­times it seems as though you’re the last to be con­sidered. Oth­er modes of trans­port get all the big bucks while we get to stumble along on our own, catch­ing our heels on the cobble­stones and dodging the seem­ingly inter­min­able earth­works.

So it’s nice to see that there’s a ded­ic­ated Cyc­ling and Walk­ing jour­ney plan­ner from the Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil. I par­tic­u­larly like how it tells you the elev­a­tion of your route so you can see wheth­er an appar­ent short­cut is going to be like scal­ing Everest or not. There is also a cal­or­ie counter, which I guess helps jus­ti­fy your morn­ing tea when you’ve got to work.

I exper­i­mented with the route from my house to work, and the default sug­ges­tion was def­in­itely the most prac­tic­al for the unathlet­ic, though not the shortest – it knows about the tracks over Mt Vic, but you have to drag the route over the moun­tain your­self.

Def­in­itely worth explor­ing, even if you’re a ded­ic­ated walk­er, if only so you can boast about the dis­tance to your lazy mates.

Vot­ing in the Fourth Annu­al Wel­ling­tonista Awards is open from Decem­ber 1–15. Then come find out the res­ults at our Awards Night at Mighty Mighty on Decem­ber 17!

To vote, vis­it this page.

Our nom­in­a­tions for Wel­ling­to­ni­an of the Year are all people who make our city a bright­er, bet­ter place to live. Their con­tri­bu­tions are as var­ied as Wel­ling­ton itself, and we’re so proud of them all.