It has been a big day for Julie Woods - a Dunedin blind woman who has been baking all day and making truffles to raise money for the trip of a life time.
Ms Woods is 42 and has been blind for 11 years and is raising the money to fly to Paris next year to participate in the Louise Braille bicentenary celebrations.
"I had been partially sighted for 13 years and noticed the vinyl in the bathroom go all shimmery," she says. "And it went into a haze and then a blob. So in three months I lost my remaining vision and that was 11 years ago."
Robbed of her sight she turned to Braille - the system invented by Louis Braille of reading and writing using raised dots.
"It was a huge deal when I went blind," she says. "I wasn't able to read and write and learning Braille has enabled me to be reconnected to the written word, so that's pretty powerful. So to actually go to Louis Braille's bicentenary is huge for me, it's really exciting. It's the holy grail of Braille I guess."
After creating the truffles, they are then wrapped for selling and head off to the streets of Dunedin for $2 each.