Creative projects are good for your wellbeing. And for many, the weekends are the perfect opportunity to get stuck in.
New Zealanders love weekend projects. From tinkering with old machinery, to painting, building a shoe cabinet, playing an instrument, or gardening, New Zealanders find a wealth of ways to unleash their creativity and unwind from the weekday grind. And it looks like our weekend projects may even love us back, in a way — there’s research to suggest that engaging with hobbies is associated with better mood, mental health and life satisfaction.
More specifically, it may be the joy of hands-on activities that provide this boost, rather than more passive activities like reading. Over lockdown, people who got into woodwork, DIY and arts-and-crafts activities reported higher life satisfaction. These activities can be expensive though, requiring special supplies, tools and the power to run them. Contact Energy’s Good Weekends plan can help reduce hobby overheads. It offers lower, off-peak power rates so you can save on your energy bill and put more towards creative endeavours.
Beyond the health benefits, hobbies are a way to learn new skills and can sometimes take on a life of their own. Three people who are working on a variety of projects opened up their at-home work spaces to The Spinoff. Some of them focus on one thing, while others let their interests roam. Some of their projects have turned into income streams, others are done strictly for joy.
Kat Waters, hobbyist
Kat Waters is a self-described “hobbyist” who has been sewing since she could grasp a needle. Some of her many hobbies include embroidery, sewing, screen-printing, knitting, woodwork, weaving and shoe-making. Waters says that her parents are both “avid hobbyists”, and she grew up watching them work. Her father is a woodworker, and her mother is a quilter.
“One of my earliest memories is sitting under the sewing machine table with the special thread snips as my mom worked on quilt pieces. My job was to snip apart the pieces and stack them up neatly. It was a distraction for me,” Waters laughs.
With Waters’ teen years came growth spurts, which meant she quickly outpaced ready-to-wear garments. Living in the midwestern United States, Waters describes needing to mail-order inevitably ill-fitting clothes from a catalogue. It was then that her sewing journey began in earnest.
Fast-forward to 2016, Waters moved to New Zealand with her now-husband and decided to stop buying ready-made clothes completely. It was a decision that led to pick up new skills like shoemaking, which she describes as “immediately addictive”. By documenting her journey on social media, Waters was able to find a community of like-minded makers in Aotearoa.
For Waters, “learning is part of the fun” of hobbies. She finds a lot of satisfaction in problem-solving and customising projects for her requirements. But mostly: “I find such joy in creating.”
Despite gaining a large social media following over the years, Waters doesn’t often sell her creations, and consciously separates her day job from her various creative outlets because, as she puts it: “the money isn’t the point… the point is the joy of the thing.”
That joy has led Waters to spend many, many hours on her various projects over the weekends and evenings. Her wedding dress, which she hand-embroidered, took 300 hours. Over the years, Waters has also accumulated a lot of gear, including various sewing machines, power tools, and special lighting for the more intricate work. “You’re looking at the most power-hungry house in the room,” Waters laughs as she shows me her work space. For weekend hobbyists like her, Contact Energy’s Good Weekend plan, offers free power from 9am to 5pm on Saturdays and Sundays – a great way to bring down hobby overheads.
For Waters, her various hobbies are worth every minute, and every cent, though she notes the costs can stack up. Time and money are often a barrier to getting really stuck in. Learning skills like sewing though is more accessible than ever thanks to the internet, she says, and encourages anyone to give it a go. Sewing Reddit and Instagram are treasure troves of tutorials.
Jose Antonio Villamil and Nikki Villamil, cakers
Jose Antonio Villamil and Nikki Villamil are a husband-wife duo who seriously love to bake. For Jose it’s been a life long hobby and sometimes also a job, “My grandma owned a restaurant, and she used to pay me to help her with baking. I made all the cakes. Then I learned cake design in New Zealand,” he says.
Both Jose and Nikki work in healthcare. In 2019, Jose was stuck at home with a broken arm. With his unexpected free time, and with a little difficulty, he started baking cakes again. For the couple’s first baby shower, Jose made cupcakes which their friends loved. From there, Jose and Nikki started taking orders and created their own cakery – The Teaspon.
The couple love baking together at home in Karaka. Surprisingly, their kitchen looks like any regular domestic kitchen, with the addition of a few fancy stand mixers. “Our oven is deceptively large”, says Jose. It’s a home oven that works harder than most and is often running for long periods over the weekends and in between his thrice-weekly nursing shifts. The couple also have a second fridge in a spare room for extra storage. If you’re someone who likes to experiment in the kitchen on the weekends like Nikki and Jose do, off-peak power plans like Contact Energy’s Good Weekends can help reduce your hobby overheads.
The duo say Jose’s job at the hospital is still their main source of income, though The Teaspoon offers a supplement, and adds flexibility to the young family’s schedule. Though Nikki is also a qualified nurse, she now only works the odd shift and mostly manages The Teaspoon from home. “The time is in our hands. We don’t miss lunches or dinners with the kids,” she says.
The couple say the chief perk to The Teaspoon is that it provides an outlet for their love of creating. Nikki says “the cherry on top” is being a part of others’ special occasions. They get to be part of major milestones like weddings, baby showers and family reunions. From its beginnings as Jose’s weekend hobby, The Teaspoon has grown into a labour of love. One day, the couple say they’d like to operate a brick-and-mortar store. “The Teaspoon — it’s actually our first baby,” Nikki says.
Shahlima Perese, DJ Leemz
Shahlima Perese, also known as DJ Leemz, has been on the decks for over 13 years. She has always loved music and began her DJ career after discovering she “couldn’t sing” and had “two left feet”. As a uni student, Perese saved hard to buy herself some “real crusty, real cheap gear”. By the time she finished university, she almost had a full set-up.
“There’s one photo where you can see I had all my old DJ gear on [my table] but all my assignments too. It was this organised chaos of living in two worlds, but I loved having that escape where I could be super creative.”
Perese’s first gig was at a big event in the Auckland suburb of St Johns. At the time, she didn’t even have a DJ name. Her brother dubbed her DJ Leemz, and from there, Perese steadily built her career through gigs like corporate events, weddings and baby showers, all while pursuing a career in education.
With the birth of her daughter and her growing success as a DJ, Perese decided to leave teaching. Today she describes herself as a full time mum, and says she feels fortunate to be able to feed her family with DJ work. Now, her passion is DJing fitness and club events, and she plays a slot at Orange on Karangahape Road most weekends. Recently, Perese also DJed for the Black Ferns tour, choosing the tracks that played as the team walked onto the pitch, as tries were scored and in downtime.
“Being able to hear my work through stadium speakers was unreal for me, a full-circle moment. It was also empowering for me as a female DJ to break stereotypes and to be a role model for my daughter.”
For any burgeoning DJs, Perese says it’s important to practise on the decks during downtime. She says DJing is like riding a bike, once you learn to do it, you’ll have that skill forever. Still, you can always be learning new tricks to add to your repertoire. Though she has less time to practise now, mixing at home is still a crucial part of Perese’s creative process. It’s a truism that any musician will know, she says – practise is essential to the craft. When it’s practise time, Perese plugs in her decks, her computers, power strips, head phones, speakers, lights – all of the gear she uses when she’s playing a gig. Any home musicians, mixers, bands or even gamers wanting to jam on the weekend can take advantage of the Good Weekend’s plan to power those sessions for free.
For Perese, the best part of the job will always be the music — setting the vibe and making sure everyone’s enjoying themselves. “It makes me feel good when everyone’s having a good time, because everyone’s happy in that moment… And what’s life without music? It changes your mood. It’s so powerful.”
