Tuesday, December 29, 2015

My Freebies of Nov-Dec. 2015

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Monday, December 28, 2015

Quick post after awesome Christmas

Goodmorning everybody!

I hope everybody had a good Christmas, although from the news there were some terrible items, about tornado's in America and floods in Great Britain and nature fires in Spain.
Will it ever happen that all over the world people will be able to have a peaceful and joyful Christmas?

It makes us realize that we are still the blessed ones and let's cherish that.
Jan and I had a wonderful Christmas. Christmas day we opened our presents and we had such fun with them. Then Jan had to go to work(and he had his Christmas sweater on, yeah!!!!, and he told me that it made the elderly smile, so it did it's job)), so I had plenty of time to prepare our little table.
And when he came home we had our meat fondue and it tasted yummie! we watched a great show first on German television and later on  Dutch television , which was a show by André Rieu and his orchester  and we just loved it! So we had a great evening.
Next day we just took it real easy and we had so much left over that we could have another fondue, LOL.
Yesterday nothing much happened, it was just a fantastic relaxed day.

Now we will have to pick up "normal"life for a few days, and wait for the New Year to arrive.
But before that starts I still have a Christmas kit for you, it's the one that I used for my bloglayout.
Named Modest Christmas, and of course the clusters from Arlene!
I hope that thses last days in 2015 will be quiet for all of us and that the jump into the new year will be safe too!
Have a lovely day.


 Download    HERE

Download   HERE


Thursday, December 24, 2015

Christmas almost there!

Goodmorning everybody!

I hope you all are ready for Christmas? I think I almost am. Just will have to do bit of vacuuming cleaning adn such today and then I will be all ready for Christmas Eve and Christmas day.
Looking forward to it for weeks, planning and wrapping presents and suddenly out of almost nowhere Christmas Eve is about to start!
Today I also will prepare my stew pears for dessert tomorrow, I normally cut them in quarters or even smaller, but this time I found such a good size that I leave them whole. Then serve them warm, probably with a little bit of whipped cream and some cinnamon on it.
Tomorrow Jan first has to go to his volunteer job in the afternoon, but that gives me just the time to prepare our little table and cut the meat and make the sauces for the fondue.
I will take a little bite in the afternoon, just to have something in my stomach till around 19.30 when he will be home. We will have a nice dinner, and in the meanwhile I already saw that around that time there is a fantastic show on the German television with Helen Fisher, so it will be nice to watch it during our tasty meal.
Next day we will have the same, because there is always so much left and Jan and I don;t mind.
And then Christmas will be over again, it all passes so quick.
But on Sunday I will have an easy dinner too, (as Jan works all weekend in the afternoon/early evening), I have puff pastry with a vol-au-vent. Easy and yummie and for a bit later in the evening some French bread and a small selection of French cheese. I have one that I will have to melt for a few minutes in the oven and then you can dip your bread in it, and oh, it will be yummie!

The weather still is rather good here, temperatures still above the 10 C, some days with some sunshine, other days are more grey, but all over not bad at all, and I am not complaining.

I hope, everybody will have a fantastic time at Christmas and even if we have harder times to endure, we still are far better off than a lot of other people in the world. So let's count our blessings, as small as they may seem.

I have a kind of vintage Christmas kit for you today, named Christmas for Ever,  with some awesome clusters from Arlene.



Download    HERE

Download    HERE



Friday, December 18, 2015

Santa's elves dropped a box.

Goodmorning everybody!

Starting with the weather, gosh, we have a warm December. Normally we are around 6C, but we have 12-14C . Amazing! I don;t mind, though. Of course it is nice to have a "white Christmas"but I like this weather more. LOL.
My back is getting better and better, will have to take care on how I move and such, but that wicked pain is gone, yeah!!!!
Wednesday and yesterday I did about all the Christmas food shopping, wanted to have as much in the house as possible already now, to avoid the big stampede in the shops next week.
There are always some small things you just cannot buy in advance, but that are only a few things so I am happy.

wednesday evening someone was knocking on our window(I wondered why, because we have a good working doorbell now, but we checked and probably touched a little button in replacing the thing in another powerpoint, so all works again now), Jan went looking at the door and wow, the elves brought us a big Christmasbox. all presents are under my Christmastree now, and it is such a happy sight, every time we look at our tree. We will wait till Christmasday to pen them. It´s part of the fun to wait till Christmas.
I remember Christmastime when i still lived with my parents, we often had a lot of friends around at Christmastime and so there were also a lot of presents under the tree. And the pile grew every day LOL.
And what fun we had when we finally opened our presents. Often it were just small and not expensive gifts, but it doesn;t matter, the thought behind it is more important than the value. And we opened them one by one, so most of the time my mother was sitting next to the tree and picked the presents, read the name on it, this person then opened it and we all laughed or AHHHH'ed and OHHHH'ed and only then the next one received a present. So you can imagine it took one or two hours to open up all presents. We did that in the afternoon with a little drink and snack and after all that we had our dinner.
Happy times and memories.

Coming back from my shopping yesterday I nearly passed Heidi´s house, so I made a little visit, to see how Danny was doing. Monday he had a check up in the hospital and all seemed to be well and in good order. He still has to take a lot of rest for the next few weeks, but all healed well enough. That was good news.
Then Jan went to a gathering from his volunteerwork, kind of Christmas gathering for staff and volunteers and he came back with quite a bix Christmasbox, stuffed with all kind of tasty things. Very nice gesture of the elderly care facility towards the volunteers I think.
This afternoon Jan will go to his job a bit earlier because they have a kind of Christmas drink(without alcohol LOL) at the section where he works.

That was about my week, of course did some bits and bobs, but not really interesting to put in this post, hahaha.
I have again a Christmaskit for you, named "Highland Christmas"and also Arlene's add-on.
Have a wonderful day and weekend and week ahead.

Download    HERE

Download   HERE


Friday, December 11, 2015

Rather painful week.

Hello everyone!
Seems the whole post disappeared. Probably me doing something that I shouldn;t have.
All perhaps due to my back trouble, came back last Saturday, and worse, so went to the doctor on Monday, glad he is practically around the corner. Got medicin, some pills, that should help to fight the blovkage or inflammation, or whatever. They seemed to help, at least I am feeling better, not yet all gone but hey, I can move around again.. Still have to be careful, not to make a sudden or strange move.

 Not posting long, still cannot sit too long at the computer.
Sorry that friday suddenly there was no kit anymore to download, so here it is again, together with Arlene's clusters.
Have a nice day, hope to be back somewhere this week again, okay?

Download    HERE

Download   HERE




Friday, December 04, 2015

Bit of stressful week.

Goodmorning everybody!

It wasn;t the best week ever. It started with me last weekend already. I was feeling not at ease, kind of tensed, restless, no, not nice. By Sunday evening it was gone more or less, so I was happy about that.
Monday feeling much better, not yet as it should be, but I could handle that.
I did some things like the laundry, a bit of grocerie shopping, little things, but okay.
Then Tuesday evening the phone rang, that was Heidi. She phoned me around 9.00 p.m. which is not a uusuale time for her, so I knew something was wrong and so it was.
That afternoon her husband Danny had a severe hart attack and was brought to hopsital and right away to operation room where he had a a coronary angioplasty. That went well and he was now on IC.Gosh, that was a shock, you could say.
I asked Heidi of course if I should come over, but she was kind of okay, and Séverine too, as far as you could expect in this situation. So I made an appointment with her that Jan and I would come next day, in early afternoon, to have a walk with the doggies, so she had her hands free during the day.
so we did. Jan went out with the doggies, I stayed with Heidi, so she could tell me all that happened. Also like kind of therapy for her, better to talk it out of your system. 
She was very tired, didn't have much sleep, very understandable.
I told her I would come back next day again for the doggies in the afternoon.
So I went there yesterday, she was feeling better, had a good night sleep(well, at least she told me so), news about Danny was rather good. He would be moved to the ward and if all went well he might come home today. Then he will have to stay "put" for about 6-8 weeks to rest a lot and let it all heal.

After I came back home yesterday I right away went into the kitchen to bake two pirogi(kind of Russian pie, with minced meat). I promised one to Heidi, so one evening in the weekend she wouldn;t have to do much cooking. Just put on some soup(canned one is okay too, LOl) and with the pirog you have a good meal. And it is better then have some junkfood. I will bring it a bit later today.
The other one I made for us for tomorrow, I;ll make a little pan of soup and dinner will be quick but tasty.
Well, you can imagine this all made it a very strange week.

I am happy though, that it went well with Danny, but he will have to take more care of himself in future, probably looking in to his food habits, and for sure it would be a good thing for him to loose some weight. 

Well, that is about all for this week to tell, but more than enough I say!
Let's end this post in a happier way, I have another Christmas kit for you, nämedd Christmas at the Countess and the add-on from Arlene at the same time.

Have a lovely weekend and stay safe.

 Download   HERE

Download    HERE


Tuesday, December 01, 2015

Christmas freebie time of WorldWide Christmas scrapbooking blogtrain

Goodmorning everybody,

Just popping in to post my contribution to the WWCS blogtrain as well as from Arlene.
ast few days were rather wet over here, accompanied by some fearce winds. It looks that today wind is much less, still we'll have some rain. Oh well, temperatures are quite awesome for this time of the year, so let's not complain too much LOL.
Because of different times zones, it might be, that not all Christmas freebies are already on line, you can find the list on the right side of my blog in the sidebar. Just click the logo of the WWCS and you will go to the blog with all the links.
So if not succesfull, just try a bit later for a download. Don;t forget to leave a little love 1st to Antoinette, who organizes the WWCS blogtrain and then of course a little thank you to the designers.
Hope you have a terrific time with all the freebies!

I'll be back later this week with a bit more rambling.
Have a wonderful day.

 Download     HERE


Download      HERE

Friday, November 27, 2015

Just a few days left in November.

Goodmorning everybody!

Yes, just a few days and the month of December starts already. I almost cannot imagine that in a bit more than a week's time I will start my Christmasdecorating.
But first things first. What happened this week?
Not too much, which I like to say, but I had a good week, accomplished several things I had on my to-do list, and that's a wonderful feeling. LOL.
Weather here is not too bad, beginning of the week we had some rain, and some fierce winds, and because of that wind it felt colder than it actually was,still it didn't last for too long. Rest of the week, well, temperatures around 7-8 C, some rain, some sunshine, all together not the worst weather for November. I could do with this kind of weather till Spring, but I fear that will not happen.

Middle of the week I went for a moment into town centre, and I came home with two lovely things. Perhaps you know all over in clothing shops you can buy "lounge-wear"? Kind of pyama''s but of thicker textile and in sooooo soft kind of fleece. Well, I bought one for Jan and one for myself, because I had my eye on them already for a long time and they were nicely priced.
Giving Jan his 'suite", his first reaction was: "but I don;t really need that".(as I know he would say , grin).
But I told him that one or two of the things he wears in the evening to be comfy, had come about at the end of their life, so he could do with something new. Well, he tried it on and wears it now every evening after dinner LOL!.
Must say that I have mine on too and it is so soft and warm, it was a good buy!
Here a picture i found on the net, of something similar I bought. Model is different, but you probably can see, the textile it is made of.
 Gosh, I completely forget to mention a Christmas sweater I bought for Jan. In a way, you could call it a "faulty"sweater but it brought a big smile on my face when I saw it in the shop. I am not sure if he will wear it ever, LOL, but perhaps when he is working on Christmas at his volunteer job it would bring a happy note to the elderly he is giving their evening meal. Found a picture of almost the same on the net to show you
Don't you think it's great fun???? And Rudolph's nose is a pom-pom on his sweater!

 
Oh, my I am quick this year with the Christmaspresents! I've one box to send and it is already on it's way! well, I wrapped all the content, and thought: "why keeping it around, better to send it early, but then I am sure it will arrive in time"and so I did. With that done and out of my mind now, I can concentrate on Christmasdecorating here, which will start on the 6th of December, just after our holiday of Sinterklaas.

Tomorrow I will have to go to Heidi's appartment to have a walk with the doggies. She is going out the whole day but cannot take the dogs with her there. So she asked me if I could take care of them in the afternoon. Of course I will do so. Cross your fingers that during the time I will be out with them it will not rain!

Now I have to say to you that it will be a good thing to mark the 1st of December on your calendar, because then I will post my contribution to the Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking blogtrain on my blog, as well as Arlene's. So don;t forget that date, next Tuesday.

For now I have Arlene's clusters for you, made with the Roses d'Automne kit.
Have a wonderful day and weekend and stay safe.

Download    HERE

Friday, November 20, 2015

Hope winter stays away I am not ready!

Goodmorning everybody!

The weather has been different lately. We had a few days of hard to stormy winds, accompanied by some rain and also a bit of temperature drop. I am not so keen on fearce wind, but okay, that quiets down again. No, I am more concerned about the temperature drop LOL!
I know, it's the time of year and it is just the way it is, but I don;t have to like it. from around 14-15 C suddenly to only 10C and even 5C at daytime, not my cup of tea.
But we still can live with that, you get used to it, I am only hoping we will not get much of snow and ice.

Earlier this week Jan painted the part of the wall where we had the leak. I think it needs to be done a secpnd time to get rid of all the "watermarks", but it already looks much better. Lucky it was just a small part of the wall, so Jan was ready with it in an hour or two( all together with moving a smaller bookcase, first taking out all conmtent, pfffff) and putting it back in place.
Rest of the week not much happened. I had to take it a bit easy first days of the week cause I had some trouble with my epilepsie. I was bound to get it, I just knew it, because we had the distress of the leak and so. I get too upset and it has its consequences. Oh well, all is fine now again, don;t worry.

Athough it doesn't look all too bright outside, may in an hour or two the rain will stop and then I might go to the market. I can do with some fruit and vegetables again, and at the moment it isn;t too cold yet.
I was quite busy in designing, I kind of trying to build up a stash again and till now it works rather well.
Next month there only will be Christmaskits for you so all I make will be for next year.
Think I went a bit bonkers in making Christmaskits, I made six, of which one for the World Wide Christmas Scrapbooking blogtrain(starts the 1st of December, mark that date!)
The other day, when I was shopping I saw some great Christmastree decoration, 3 birdies you can clip on a branch in a beautiful teal color. They were just over one euro, so I couldn;t resist buying them.
Teal isn;t the color for my Christmastree, but because they are birdies, they still will fit in LOL.
I often look at the trends for tree decoration and sometimes see beautiful things, but i always end up decorating my tree mostly in gold and red, with here and there a different colored decoration. Mostly things we received as present or older decorations with sweet memories.
Imagine, in about two weeks I will start decorating the tree already.

Time to finish now, have myself another cup of coffee and someting to eat and then get dressed and then go to the market. As Jan has to go to his volunteer job this afternoon, I want to be home not too late.
I have an autumn related kit for you, named Roses d'Automne.
Have a wonderful weekend and week ahead.

Download    HERE

Friday, November 13, 2015

We aren't always the most lucky ones!

Goodmorning everybody!

Wow, what a week this was. Some of it quiet and good, some of it completely opposite.
We had another leak from the neighbour upstairs!
Wednesday I was rather late at home, Jan too had left,nothin special about that though. Okay, Imade dinner and then we both took a short nap, it sometimes happens.
Awake again we had our coffee and Jan walked to the rear back of the room, just to take a look into the garden(not that there was much to see, all dark already) but he though it was raining.
But....no rain outside. No the noise he thought was a bit of rain came from the inside of our living room!
So he turned on the light there and good heavens, a pool of water on the floor, looking around, one wall wet and dripping, and oh so lucky the dripping from the ceiling just beside my piano!
Well, you can imagine what kind of words and expressions came from our mouth.!!!
We already noticed that upstairs they were busy with the appartment. And they were ripping all and it will be renovated, I guess. But they have waterpipes all over the place, (for extra baths and a jacuzzi and such) abd probably didn;t shut them all or didn;t shut down properly the watersupply. Whatever!
We had the trouble, again!
Tried of course to contact the owner, and somebody else of whom we had a phonenumber. It isn;t easy to get in touch with them, they always have a voicemail on.
But, oh miracle, one of them called back. He would try to contact the owner and come up with a solution.
I was sooooo pissed off, that I demanded an answer within half an hour, or otherwise I would call police and/ or firebrigade to break in and shut off the water or find whatever was causing the trouble.(They wouldn't be happy with that, we did that already once and it costed them a lot of money).
well, to be a bit short, somebody was sent over, but couldn;t open the door, one lock just wouldn;t open, another person came, broke open the lock, shut off the watersupply, looked if there was anything more.
after that, thank goodness, the dripping stopped slowly and during the night it stopped completely.
We had put sheets of plastic on the floor and some towerls, so there wasnt much damage on the wooden floor, so to see, but a part of one wall doesnt look good, so we will have to paint that again.
I am really fed up with that neighbour now. I think we had trouble with leaks already 4 or 5 times now.
And all the time we don't see the owner, (I think that is very unpolite, to say the least)and so no compensation and it is just a bit too little mess to have the insurance come over.
Now they are still busy in the appartment, and I guess they will be for some weeks, so it isn't really quiet around here, with bangs and booms and sound of a drill at times, and hammering, so I am not yet sitting really relaxed on my chair during the day. And every evening Jan or I check now the whole house, to be sure there isn't another leak or anything else. Not nice.!

But we will survive it, somehow and hopefully soon life will be more peacefull again LOL!

Some good news too, Social benefit was deducting something that we didn;t understand. To cut it short, they made a mistake and we have been payed back. It lasted some time, (these institutions never act quick!)but finally we got the money returned. Hoorray, persistance sometimes pays off !

I am not sure what kind of weather we will have later today. They said at the weather news we might get a stormy afternoon and evening, with some rains or even hail? I surely hope it will not blow too fearce, because Jan has to go to his job today and with severe winds it isn;t nice to be on a bike!
If it is really too nasty he can take a tram, but it takes more time all together.
With that said I might be better go out not too late do do some weekend shopping. Lucky I don;t need too much, but I just forgot a few things yesterday.

Then I have some serious work to do in Photoshop this weekend, to make several previews of clusters and quickpages I got from Arlene, made with my new Christmaskits.Yeah, soon you will be treated with them, starting already the 1st of December. That's the start of the World Wide Christmas Scrapbooking blogtrain.
For today the freebie is also from Arlene, clusters and quickpage made with the Afternoon in September kit.
Have a wonderful weekend, cross your fingers for us that we dont get any more leaks.

Download    HERE





Friday, November 06, 2015

Great week, still work to do

Goodmorning everybody!

About the whole week we had great weather, only yesterday in the evening we had some rain. But this morning it looks rather good again, might be we get a bit more rain towards evening.

I told you that I dug up the dahilia bulbs. Good I did it before the rain came. I cleaned them up, labeled them, and spread them out a bit in the shed to dry, and then they can go into their boxes, for their "Hibernation time".
I took some bulbs of all of them, for my friend Heidi and delivered them. As I wasn;t sure if she would be home(of course i could telephone, but I was too lazy for it, terrible hey?), I took  the set of keys we have from her house with me. But I didn;t need them, because Séverine was home and just when I wanted to leave again, Heidi came home. so I styed for a little while longer, to have a coffee.
It was a nice interlude(now how  did this word came up? no idea LOL) of the day.

I also went again to own centre to see if I could finish the Christmasshopping. Well, I think I finally got all I wanted, I will check it this afternoon, when Jan is away, and may already start wrapping some in nice Christmas wrappingpaper. It will be a good time to do, Jan out of the way, the whole couch and often also big part of the floor all free for me to use, hahaha.

Also did some cooking(okay, I do it every day, but sometimes I do more then just the quick dinner cooking) and made a serious portion of apple compote. Why? Well, I had a lot of apples lying around to be used for that, and last week Heidi tasted a bit of it and I gave her a little box with it to take home.
She liked it, so I asked her if she wanted some more. Yes, so I made it Wednesday and brought over a box yesterday. This time nobdy was home( as I knew) so with the key I could go in and placed it on the kitchen counter with a little note.
The doggies were so happy to see me and were thinking I would take them out, But I had no time, had to go to an appointment a bit later. It was disappointing for them, but I knew Heidi would come soon to take them out.

Today I think I will do some grocerie shopping, and perhaps it's also a good time to get some of my medicines at the drugstore.  then I guess the house can do with a good vacuumcleaning and some dusting.
I think that next week I will do some really serious work on that, there are corners and shelves and such I tend to "forget", but it would be nice if it's all done before we put on our Christmas decorations.
We'll see how far I will get, I have my doubts, but I can surprise myself at times ROFL!

Time for the freebie, named "Afternoon in September".
Have a wonderful weekend, till next week!

Download   HERE

Friday, October 30, 2015

Still nice weather over here

Goodmorning everybody!

Yes, it is still nice weather here, most of the time. we even had one or two days temps around 16-17 C, which is wonderful and lots of sunshine. And this weekend it will stay about the same.
So Wednesday afternoon I fianlly got on my garden boots and went in with my pruning scissor.
And yes, suddenly we don;t have any dahlia's anymore. I decided it was abut time to cut them down, let them "recover"a bit from it and them perhaps take out the bulbs this weekend.
I did cut off all the flowers they still had and they are now giving us a last show in a vase in the room.
Gosh, with all those stems cut down in the garden we suddenly have a lot of almost empty space there.
Jan also cleared  out some of the pots with annuals, threw the soil on a spot in a border and that will be good for use again next spring, I think.

I also took a day"off"and went kind of Christmas shopping, but that wasn;t a big success. Why don;t I learn from the past? Whenever I go specially out for Christmasshopping, for presnets I mean, I almost never come back with something. It seems as if my brain is kind of blocking and getting uncreative and without fantasy and such. So most of the time I do my best buys at times when I am out for something else, I just have to stumble upon things.
Hmmm, it is a bit frustrating, abd I only have now one more mounth to find some things. Still I am nt desperate, all will turn out well, it always does LOL.

h, Jan also took out our manger, and have a look at it. I realized, that I have this "stable" already all the time Jan and  are together, (23 years), and then I know we had it at my parents house(where I lived too) for many years. So I guess it has and age of around 35 years! You can say my father did a good job when he made it. But now it was showing a little decay, so Jan now repaird it, still has to give the whole thing a new coat of varnish and it will live on for many years more.
Yes, tomorrow is Halloween, which we don;t celebrate so much as in other countries, but after that we only have a bit more than a month before we start decorating for Christmas.! I almost cannot believe it.
To all of you who do celebrate Halloween I say: have a wonderful Halloween and lots of fun.
And to make some happy memories I have another kit for you, named it "Goosebumps"  and also will post the clusters and quickpage Arlene made you.

Have a fantastic weekend.

 Download kit HERE
Download QP's and cluster HERE

Friday, October 23, 2015

A "surprise"for Brodski.

Goodmorning everybody!

You might have noticed I changed my bloglayout. Yes, we are in autumn season now, so the layout should fit that LOL.
But although the weather isn't that great anymore, we still have mments of sunshine every other day or so, and after a week of really low temperatures, even for this time of year, it slowly rises a bit and we should reach about 57.
Jan and I both did little bit in the garden, but we have to pick another day and really get busy on clearing out the borders and some pots, but we have to wait for some days, it will not not rain, so the soil will be dryer and it will work a lot easier. Adn we still have lots of flowers, spceially from the dahlia's, so it's such a pity to remove them already. Not the best photo, but you get the idea!


Last Monday it was cloudy, but still not bad weather, so I decided to go to the market. It was that kind of weather when it is good to walk, and even getting too warm with your jacket on, but without it it is again too frisk. About halfway I saw standing some chairs along the sidewalk, someone apparantly wanted to get rid of them, they were kind of used, but I saw use for one of them, hahaha.
I first went to the market, and hoping they would still be there on the way back home. I did my thing at the market, bought quite some veggies, some fruit, took my time to walk around and look around and after an hour or two I went home. And yeah!!!!, the chairs were still there. Hmmmm, now get one of those home! without any further delay, I took on on my arm and walked home. Had to switch chair several times to the other arm and back, even had to put it down a few times to have a rest, but I succeeded in getting it home. ( pity it didn't fit on my little shopping car, which had been much easier).
But why did I took that task upon my shoulders???????? Just simply because our cat Brodski needed a new chair, hahahahaha. Yes, that is true!
For several years he is spending quite some time outside on an old chair(also found along the sidewalk), but it has had it's living time now, poor Brodski almost fell through the sitting part LOL!.
And just in time I saw the "new"chair. Well, the "new"one isn't completely without defects, but it will do for certainly a year or may be even two. And how quirky one can get about his or her pet? Jan even took the trouble to give it a new coat of varnish!( it also kind of "preserves the chair a bit). Yes, Brodski is happy with it and already has adopted the new chair.LOL.( and it is placed under a balcony so he can sit pretty much dry when it rains)

The rest of the week I stayed busy with the usual things we girls have to do in a house, hahaha. Every day one or two things, in between some shopping, which is good for the muscles in your legs, and the whle body, actually, moving around walking.
And I finally finished one of my knitting projects I was working on. I've made a new "blanket"as cover of our couch. For now it will do fine , it is of very soft yarn, and for winter time I think it is making you a little bit happy, just because of that bright green color in it. Soon (well, first days of December aren;t too far away anymore), the couch will be covered again with a Christmas blanket!.
It is time for me now to finish this post, the writing always takes longer than you think, and I woke up rather late this morning(around 9.30, which is late for my doing, most of the time I am awake between 7,30 and 8,30), and time flies again.
But I will not part without a freebie, and no, not one, but two! Today you will get one of the two Halloween kits I've made, (named Creepy Romance) and I will post Arlene's clusters with it as well. Oh wow, I am sometimes a lovely person, ROFL!!!!!!!!!!
I hope you will like this kit, next week  will post the other one, and it will be just in time. Adn believe it or not, I am already busy with several Christmaskits, yes, it may be early, but before you know the month of December is there and even gone. Terrible, how fast a year goes by finally.
Ahhhh, it is one of the facts of life we cannot do anything about .

I wish you all a fantastic and wonderful weekend.
Download kit HERE
Download clusters HERE

Friday, October 16, 2015

Slowly preparing for winter.

Goodmorning everybody!

Yes, winter times are creeping nearer and nearer LOL. In the very south-east of the country there even was a bit of snow. Okay, it didn;t stay for long but it is a kind of sign.
The last couple of days temperatures aren't that marvellous anymore, I think we just reach between 46 and 50 C. But later in the weekend we might climb up again and reach 53-57 C again. And that is a whole lot of difference! Specially when there is some sunshine with it again.
Yesterday it rained a lot, today I think it will be the same.
So we might like it or not, we will have to prepare for winter time.
Jan already did a lot in the garden, put away the chairs, cleared the terrace, removed already some plants, that were finished, Adn perhaps next week it will be time to clear out the borders.
Oh, I am also a happy person , yeah. You know Jan made a bird feeder-house and finally a bunch of great tits discovered it and the food in it of course LOL. But it is so wonderful to see them, and I hope they will be there all winter.

Yesterday we had our Cv kettle cleaned, ready for another year again. But it is an old one and sooner or later we will have to replace it, but to be honest, we don;t have the money for it. They aren;t all to cheap and there is labour to pay too. Still, we hope it will hold on for some more time.

Our Brodski is spending a lot more time inside now that it isn;t that good weather anymore. Yeah, he is getting old, I guess. We aren;t sure completely, but he might be around 14 years old. I know, cats can live for also 16-18 years and even longer(we had once a cat that died at the age of 22! ). But his age is going to count, although he still is lively enough. The only thing is that he hasn;t much tetth anymore LOL. Oh well, the food he gets is easy enough to swallow for him and he still can chew if necessary( I know, because he oftens sits with me in the kitchen when I am preparing dinner and "by accident" there might fall some little pieces of meat on the floor, and he let's them disappear in no time!

Time to finish this post, not without a freebie, made by Arlene with the Fresh Memory kit.
Have a fantastic weekend.!
Download    HERE

Friday, October 09, 2015

Found myself a new project, LOL!

Goodmorning everybody!

It was a rather good week, I can say, and it is nice to be able to say such a thing!
Every day I did some "work"at home, the cleaning stuff and such, not too exciting, also did some shopping here and there, in most of the time still not really bad weather.
Yesterday I gave myself a day off, LOL and went into town center. And oh, I was a preetty strong girl there, holding my hand firmly onto my wallet, to keep it shut, hahaha.
But.........I saw some really nice things too that might be good for Christmas presents, and I will go for it probably next week.

Jan is still having some trouble with his cold, although it's goin better slowly, but stubborn guy as he is, he thinks it's not necessary to go to the doctor. Well, He is that kind of guy and it has no use to "force"him going. So we'll see if it will get better, although it will take a longer time.
I "brewed"him a little drink, that should help a bit to cough up the mucus(I hope that is the right word for it?). Because of his liver and stomach trouble( which is going wonderful with his medicins now), he cannot just take any coughdrops. About all of them contain ingredients that are bad for him.
So therefor I wanted him to go to the doctor, perhaps he knows coughdrops he can take without problems.
Alas, we;ll have to do with my own brewed stuff, that may be can help a bit,  almost feel like a witch towards Halloween ROFL!!

What about my new project then? I have a lot of recipees, quite some neatly in a binder, but I see sometimes such nice recipee binders, all scrapped and lovely and happy looking, that finally I decided to give it a try myself. So I will do it the "old-fashioned"way, all by hand and using glue and paper and alll kind of lovely things. Gives me opportunity too to go through the recipees and I will only keep the ones I really use or will be using in near future. Oh, it will be a long project, I am sure, but it will give me something to do during winter and it will be good to do something "by hand"and not at the computer.

Time to get me a sandwich and another coffee, I think, and then get dressed and go out just quickly to buy some stewpears(yes, I saw the first ones already) and that will do fine as dessert for the next few days. I will make them this afternoon.
But I am not going before leaving a freebie. Named  it "Fresh Memory" and and all in purples!
Have a wonderful day and weekend!
Download    HERE

Saturday, October 03, 2015

A rather productive week, LOL

Goodmorning everybody!

Yes, that Indian Summer weather definately has a good influence on me.
During the week I was out almost every day, be it for a quick grocerie shopping, or just for one thing needed at that moment, but I also did some work in the house, finally.
I did the floor in the kitchen, I did some ironing, I did several laundries, I washed the curtain in the living room, I did a vacuum cleaning, and then some other things that we have to do each day, hahaha.
So I am happy about myself and promised myself an easy day today.

I also did some designing in between and at the moment I am hooked to the game Mahjong again, grin.
I admit that i like to play some games at the computer, but that also has it's periods. There are times I almost don;t play them and then suddenly I find one that I really like and times passes aweful quick then.
Oh well, as long as I don't spend all day on it, it's okay.

The other day I got a request from a visitor, if she could use the Fallicious kit for a tutorial and I gave permission and I have now the link for you for that tutorial. It's for a lesson in PSP and i Dutch but you can throw Google translate on it or something like that. It's a very nice result of the materials the lady used, take a look, it might give you some inspiration.
http://www.babaloux.nl/herfstscrap.html

I think we will have the last of the beautiful Autumn days this weekend. Next week forcast says we will have rain and a serious drop of temperature towards 13-14 C at daytime!
Perhaps in the weeks after the weather will "restore"itself a bit and we could have still some lovely late autumn summerish weather? Let's hope it does.

So that's in short my passed week, and it wasn;t a too bad one, let's go for more of those kind of weeks and I will be a rather happy girl LOL!
I have a freebie for you, made by Arlene, with Fallicious kit and she also made a fantastic quickpage.
Have a wonderful day and week ahead and stay safe.
Download    HERE


Saturday, September 26, 2015

Kind of Indian Summer starting here.

Goodmorning everybody!

Yes, after a week or two of rain and cloudy weather most of the time I think we are heading for a very nice week. It started already yesterday with a day mostly filled with sunshine, at times some small clouds, but wonderful weather, temperatures around 18C, so not too much but enough.
So I decided to take a walk yesterday afternoon, just walked to an area of our town, where I don;t go too often, but where they have a lot of beautiful houses and gardens, a lot of greenery and some smaller woodland area's to take a stroll.
And gosh, I really enjoyed myself there, and all together I was out for about 2 1/2 hours!
On the way back home I passed a little garden centre and yes, you can guess it...I went in, of course.
But I was a really good girl and didnlt buy any plants, well, almost none LOL. I just bought a nice blooming begonia for Jan'indoor plant collection and a tiny little "leaf-begonia"as they call it, Ths one just has beautiful foliage, but doesn;t get flowers.
I though this begonia had such happy colors, and just in fron you see the tiny little one I bought too.

But when home i really was glad to sit down on the couch. Jan already had left for his volunteerwork, so I watched a bit tv and then made myself some dinner and sat down at the couch again LOL.
The rest of the week was filled with a bit of the usual stuff, some things done in the house, some laundry, some ironing, some grocerie shopping, also had a trip to the market, and always must be careful not to buy too much veggies and fruit.(prices are rather low at the moement for a lot of things).

Just looking out of the window and see lots of sunshine but also dark sky, funny combination. Hope that it will not rain. I must go for some small things to the supermarket, so it better stays dry.
And i think I will stay home for the large part of the day. Oh, not a bad thing, I can work on a knitting project and also perhaps on a new kit for you and in the afternoon I can watch a few of my favourite programs on tv, these are on the BBC, and one is The Harrys Biker Food trip (I have a link for you to check them out and you will also find some great recipees there:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/chefs/hairy_bikers) I just love those guy, because in their program they cook some not too difficult things of the countries they are travelling through, but also you learn and see some cultural about those countries. You could call them kind of unconventional LOL
Just after that is the Great British Bake off, just love to see that, no baker myself at all, admire all that creativity and yummie things. Then there is Flog it and just after that Gardener's world.
Then it's about time Jan comes home and we watch the news and then a new detective serie that just started last week. Very interesting one, and kind of fingerchewing too at times, LOL
here's a very short story line:
Inspired by the story of a real couple, the  four-part drama begins when Eccleston’s character Robert and his teacher wife Katy (Marsha Thomason) are asked by close friend and police officer Mark (Paterson Joseph), to turn their remote Lake District B&B into a safe house for protected witnesses and crime victims.
Their decision to say yes means Robert revisiting the memory of a tragedy from his time as a policeman when a witness he was protecting was shot and killed.
The first family that come under Katy and Robert's care also cause the couple a few problems...

So we have a busy tv evening ahead, hahaha.

Only thing that could be somewhat better is Jan's cold he has at the moment. Mine is almost gone, thank God, but he is still coughing a bit too much to my liking. Well, perhaps he needs a few more days of good sleep and sme sunshine of his body!

Do I have a freebie for you after all this rambling by me? Yes, I do! it is named "Fallicious", meaning it has a bit of autumn in it in a soft way.
Have a wonderful weekend.

Download     HERE

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Too bad we have to live in a paranoid worl!

Goodafternoon everybody!

Kind of late yes, but I woke up in the morning at a nice time and just sat on the couch with my coffee and watch a few programmes on tv and suddenly it was afternoon LOL.
Never mind, it's the weekend and there is no rush today.
Perhaps you wonder about the post title?
Well, that has to do with the news break we had yesterday. On the railwaystation of Rotterdam a Thalystrain(heading for France) was held up, because a young man jumped on it on almost the last minute and shut himself up in the toilet. No big deal, you would say, but several weeks ago there was about the same incident in Northern France I believe, and there really was a weapon involved (an Ak47!)and just because a few men were brave and overpowered him, a real tragedy didn't happen.
So of course when the incident in Rotterdan took place, all passengers were removed from the train police, military, search dog, helicopters, everything was there.
It took some time( Ithink too long,) to captured the young men, but then it showed he had no weapon or bomb or whatever and porbably had no harm in mind.
We still don't know whjy the young guy acted the way he did, seems there is a problem with language, so may be we will hear some more in a couple of days.
But I find it a terrible thing that at every corner of the street something could happen to you.
I am not walking around with that idea cnstantly in my head, but thinking about it it is kind of frightning. And these things make people paranoid, and sometimes too much.

Then we have another problem going on in Europe at the moment, and that is the huge amount of refugees coming to mstly Western Europe. Lots of them are refugees from Syria, escaping the terrible war that is going on there already for about 5 years,
In the surrounding countries of Syria, there are enormous camps, most with bad conditions, because those countried cannot cope with 3 or 5 million people extra!
So in a hurry several european countries take measures to recieve a lot of refugees, but it isn;t always so easy to give them a place to stay. it is a tremendous problem, but the politicians are to blame too for it. They could see it coming already for many years and as long as we don;t try to solve the problem at the roots, we will have to deal with large numbers of refugees. And I mean real refugees, running away for wars, life threatening situations. Yes, I feel really sorry for those people, leaving everything behind, not knowing if you will be able to start a new life, all you want is peace and safety and being able to live your life. And yes, we should help, even if it's  not always easy, but we never should forget the word " humanity". If we loose that, we aren't worth anything.
As long as there is a weapon industry there will be wars and that has its consequences.
Kind of funny really how the world works. On one side "we" spend millions on help to countried and charity organisations and on the other hand "we" deliver the means(read: weapons) to them.
Well I better stop moaning, I wouldn;t know a quick solution for the problem neither.
But that there has to change something is obvious.

Is there some more chearfull news to tell? No, not really, life here is pretty quiet at the moment, and I must say I love it, after all trouble we had the past months.We still have not all too bad weather, although it is not the kind to sit in the garden. we still have some sunshine, some rain too, you can notice autumn is coming near, you also can see it in nature. Trees slowy are changing their leaf-colors,
more and more plants finish their bloom, so in a few weeks it might be time to think about Christmas time again. Hahaha, no, I am nt up to it yet, but as soon as september is done with it seems that Christmas time is hurrying towards you.
For now I don;t want to think about it yet, I'd ratherr have some more really nice autumn weeks or even months, with not too much rain and wind and not too drastic dropping temperatures.

So time to finish the post, and leaving you with a freebie from Arlene, made with the Mode du Passé kit.
Have a wonderful weekend.


Download    HERE