Hop over to the NEW FORUM

Goodmorning everybody!

Yesterday I got a mail from a memeber of the "old"magickal scraps forum, that the link wasn;t working anymore! I checked and yes, there is no forum anymore, seems they already shtut it off!. So please everybody, go to the NEW FORUM link(see my side bar! ) to pick up the rest of the daily downloads for August.
And tomorrow we officialy start with the new forum, like this:

There will be goodies to pick up after you have registered for free!

Don't let us down, ladies, come and join us there!

Hmmmm, what else to tell? Oh, yeah, yesterday there was again a card play evening at the cafe with the lottery. So Jan went there to buy some tickets. And guess what? He came home again with lots of things. I don;t know exactly if he did win it all in the lottery, or if some of it was just given to him by the owner.LOL

This was what he came home with: 4 porc chops !, a package of coffee of 500 grams(as I am the coffee addict, it always is good), a little manicure set and best of all, at least for Jan: a small helicopter with remote control!! You sould have seen his face when he showed it to me!!!!!!!!!! I asked him if he had already somebody in mind to give it to and he answered: "Nobody, it's for me, isn;t it awesome????""

That shows again that men always stay a bit little boys inside, hahahahahaha! Now I hope the thing works and if so I will try to take some pictures whenever he will try the helicopter. 

Yesterday afternoon I went out for a moment and it even wasn;t that bad. The wind was blowing, but at a reasonable speed and even had some sunshine. When the sun is out it is still showing off it's power, lovely.!

Today it even looks a bit better, at least the wind and towards next week they forcasted that temperature would go up again and I do hope so! Perhaps we will be able to take a long walk again. And that means

nornally some pics too. We'll see how that goes within a few days.

Here I have a little kit for you, named it"Rosalie". Not sure why, perhaps because I used some roses in it LOL. Okay, let's see if I can get some things done today and till tomorrow, here on the blog and also on the new forum!

Have a great day.

Download     HERE

Stormy day

Goodmorning everybody!

Hope your weekend weather was better than mine! Saturday it wasn't too bad yet for a while, I even had a 15 minutes in the garden, enjoying a brief sun-moment, but then it was over! Rain started to fall again on and off, but Sunday it was really bad. During the day it already didn;t look very nice but in the evening there really was a stormy like wind blowing!!! Brrrrrrr, I don;t like that and Jan was looking outside and said with a big smile:"It's a good thing you don;t have to go out now. Otherwise I had to fix your shoes with extra weight and put some bricks into the pockets of your coat, to prevent that you would be flying around!!!"
What a nice little fellow is he, hmmm????

So you can guess we spent the weekend inside, not doing very much, watched a lot of tv, I also had time on the computer, almost finished up a new kit, just have to find a name for it and upload it.
Yesterday I also ironed away all the laundry and there is place on the rack for a new load! Amazing always, how much laundry two people can have at times!!
My cats are weird as ever, LOL! Brodski is a bit more inside the house with this bad weather, but the other one, Dikkie Dik, seems to like storm and rain! He is outside almost all days and nights, only comes in for a short time to have a bite! I'll never understand my stupid cats completely, they always do something different from what you might expect.

I started this morning to read the blogs of my friends, which I didn't do over the weekend and wow, I had a lot of stuff to read! Specially Snowy had loooong posts and she did a lot of work over the weekend, posting new stuff in her blog shop, and even posting there a new freebie for you!
Now these two days we will have to have a meeting with the creative team of Magickal Scraps(lol, it will be by mail I suppose, ) to discuss the latest details about the opening of the new forum on the 1st of September.
And there will be starting the new daily download for September too! It's named "September Song"and it's again a terrific collab from the girls!

Despite of the still hard wind I must go out for a brief time, I'll just have to pick out the best time for it. At least for the moment the sun is peeping out a bit. which makes it look at least a bit friendlier!
Perhaps at the end of the week weather will improve again slowly, which I hope so. I am not ready to give up on our walks yet! Still have a few ideas for it, so hopefully after some nasty days, the rest of Summer and who knows, may be even a part of Autumn, will bring some great days to go for a longer walk.
The changing of season in nature gives us sometimes great opportunity for wonderful pictures, if you think of Autumn colours.

On to your freebie, in one of my favourite designing colours, purple! Name of the kit is "No Secret Romance". LOL, Snowy, I think you were again my inspiration for it, and don;t you chuckle now!!!!
Have all a wonderful day!
P.S. I hope Mediafire is working all right now, some people still had some trouble with downloading. I don;t understand what is the matter.

Download    HERE

New kit in progress

Goodmorning everybody!


What a wonderful quiet day it was yesterday! Great part of the day it was raining, which was not nice. In some parts people were having real trouble because of the lots of water that was coming down! The fire brigades had a lot of work, not for fires, but to pump away all the water that found it's way to cellars or first floors of houses, and streets that looked more like little rivers!
And they will have more work to do today, more rain is expected.
But may be I can find a moment that it is dry, cause I'll have to go out for a moment. We need fresh bread and the cats are running out of food.
Jan attacked another part of the big closet, he just came in once to ask me if he could throw some maps away with old papers. They are gone now, whoopee! But it's just progressing slowly. Most of the time is taken by searching all the maps and such, going through them to see if it needs to be kept.
So he was busy, and I was at the computer, LOL! And finally started a new kit, have to do more work on it, most of it being elements for it. I could give you a little peek, what do you thing? Okay, why not. It's just giving you an idea, but in fact you should see all of it. Here's one paper I made and a backpaper, and the colourscheme

I think it's looking not too bad.

Speaking of new kits, I told you that Snowy has started uploading her kits again on a special blog for sale. Well, she has done some more work on the blog, definately worth to take a look! I have put the link to her new blog in my sidebar.
Oh I forgot to tell you! The detective serie with the stunning priest has already come to an end for more than a week!!! I was sooooooooooooo disappointed!!!!!! We are watching another serie now, also Italian, and the mean part is played by a guy, not real bad to look at, but definately of another type! But the stories are good! It's called "Nebbie e delitti" (Mists Crimes). Here some pics I found:

I must admit that the guy has great eyes, you cannot see it well on these pics, but they are of a special kind of blue.
What a pity it may be my priest has gone, we still are left with some good detectives, hoorray!

Okay, that's about it, I think Time for the second part of the "Emozioni"kit and then we can start thinking of the weekend. Some work to do there for the new forum, which will be "officially" opened next week!
 We still have to coordinate a few little things.
Wishing you a splendid weekend, hoepfully it will not be too wet overhere! My friend Edna said in her blogspot"I am not ready yet for Autum" and I can fully agree with her. Autumn is a beautiful season, or it can be if weather stays a bit nice, but for me it can wait another month at least!
Till Monday again!

Download   PART 2 HERE

It's wet, it's raining!

Goodmorning everybody!

It started already yesterday evening, but when I openend the curtains in the living room this morning it still was raining! It looks a bit gloomy and depressing outside, I must say. You can notice that Autumn is on it's way!
Oh my, just looked outside and it's raining even harder now! Some water is always good, but somehow in Holland the rainfairy is always overdoing her job, LOL. I know parts in Europe where they would dance of joy when they got the amount of water that is falling today!


Good thing I that I go out yesterday to do my things(just some shopping stuff) so I can stay in the house if it may rain all day! There's enough to do here, so no need to be bored hahaha. I also should get into a more designing mood, my "reserve shelf " is getting empty a bit. I was happy I finally finished a kit yesterday, it took me a long time, didn;t have an overflow of inspiration.
As you may notice by my rambling about nothing I don;t have too much to tell you today. Oh well, there are sometimes such days.
Best is I hop on to your freebie. It's a rather large kit, so I splitted it up in two parts. I think it's a rather versatile kit in a two colour scheme, named "Emozioni".
Hope this can brighten up your day a bit and if your are longing for some rain, just give a call, and I always can try to go outside and blow some of the rainfilled clouds your way! LOL!

Download    PART 1 HERE

Today probably a shorter post LOL!

Goodmorning everybody!

After our joined walk over the past two days, no pictures today. You'll have to wait for that till may be we make another city tour.
We spent our anniversairy yesterday very normal and quiet, we didn't do anything special. By the way, thanks everyone for their wishes, very sweet!
Now let me think how can I fill this posting? There isn;t much to share however there is some news to tell.
My friend Snowy decided to start selling her beautiful kits again via her blog
http://snowravensdesigns.blogspot.com/
Now I think that is great news. She already has one kit there and she even made you a freebie, that you can download there! So hop over and perhaps buy the kit, or download the freebie(and do not forget a little thank you, you hear!)
Still lots of people seem not to bother to leave a little thanks on a designers blog when they download a freebie, that is so generously offered to you! But it's so nice to receive a little token of appreciation, and it keeps us designer inspired!


Yesterday afternoon I went out for a quick shopping, I needed to buy me a small casserole. Oh I have lots of pots and pans and so, and casseroles too, but not a handy smaller one. Now I have and I used it right away to make a stew of porc meat. Cut the meat in rather small dices, add pepper and salt, give it a quick stir and then add water to it till it's all covered. Then also add rings of onion, some garlic and let it bubble for an hour or three, so the porc will become real tender. When almost ready, I add a package of cheese sauce(the dried one, you know) and stirr it well. Let it on the small fire for another 15 minutes and you;ll have a delicious plate. Today I have still some left over, but not enough for two portions, so I will add dices of cooked potatoe, look in my fridge what I have as vegetable(perhaps some peas, collyflower, may be even carrots) a nice fantasy mix and we'll have a very nutricious dinner this evening.

Yesterday we girls of the forum had some vivid emailing to discuss a bit the progress of the new forum and I can say it will come to real life in September, we also will have the daily downloads there, but all will be properly announced somewhere this week I hope. We are just getting all the details sorted out. So keep your eyes open this last week of August so you will not miss anything!

And here I have the freebie of the day for you. It's my contribution to the forum's colour challenge of July, named it Violetta. I'll show you the colourscheme we had to work with

The kit, in an Victorian atmosphere:

Download     HERE

And now I am gone, wishing you all a fantastic day!

An anniversairy

Goodmorning everybody!

I just posted the DD on the forum and looking at the date(day) for posting I realized I have a kind of special day today! Today 3 years ago I had my marriage! It's awesome how quick time passes. So I must not forget to congratulate Jan when he wakes up, and as usual he will make a funny remark! Probably something like"I must have been kind of mad that I did it" and producing then a sneeky smile. Well, it's only 3 years, but all together we know eachother 18 years. Amazing!!!!

As promised I will take you with me on another part of our walk on Saturday. We left the tour at the point I showed you the beautiful roundish building. After our peeking in we went on and followed a path with trees on all sides and I passed this one, I think it was an oak and tried to catch in a picture the immense height and beauty of it. It doesn't show the tree in full glory, but perhaps you get the idea. The trunk was BIG, it must be a tree that has a respectable age.

A bit further we passed a more open spot, I just loved the play of the sunlight through the leaves and on the grass, and it gives a tree so many different colours of green.

Walking slowly towards the passage out of the wood direction town we followed this path and look how funny it looks with line of trees, suggesting there are two footpaths. And of course my hubby had his remark ready! Standing on the large path he said to me : "You will have to take the small path". I wondered why and asked him so(already had the feeling I was pulled a leg LOL).He replied; "It's obvious, the small path is for gnomes, and that fits you!" I laughed of course and said he probably should walk there too. But as many times he had his answer back:"No, I am just not answering to the maximun height, I am just a bit taller, so I walk the big one and you the other one". And why not, LOL so we did!

Leaving the wood there was standing this lovely house, so I had to take a picture of it. And this one really is a kind I would love to live in. But it's far beyond our means, if ever it would be for sale! It's already in an expensive neighbourhood and counting extra the location, almost in the wood and across the street near towncentre, having shops on 5 minutes walk you can imagine the price!!!

So we crossed the street and came in a lovely street, with lots of nice houses and lots of shops(expensive ones too!) but walking there you can find almost hidden treasures. When you see an almost ugle small passage between some house, just go there and you'll have a lovely surprise. In that neughbourhood they have some small court yards, with little houses(where in old times most of the time lived single ladies) and about 40 years ago the houses wheren't very expensive there but now they are worth a fortune! Look how fantastic this looks.

  

I just love those court yards. We walked along the street and came along the entrance of one of the biggest court yards there is in The Hague. I made a picture of the wall-sign, so you see the date of the yard and of course made a few pics from the court yard.

Leaving the court yard again we saw a fantastic car and I made a picture of it because Jan said:"Hey, look at that car! They must have parked it there for me, it should be mine, look at the license plate with my intitials"

What a coincidence, isn't it?

Crossing another bridge I made this pic, not the most beautiful, but just for showing you a bit of this neighbourhood, you can guess that it's a bit of classy one.

And again we passed a passage that just called to me: "Come on in, you will not regret it!"LOL And we saw this

And now we almost reached town centre, so walking on we came to the government buildings. I already once showed you a similair picture, but I took this because I wanted to show you how it looks and at the back of the pond perhaps you can see a building with red-white hatches and a little green tower? That's the old prison, dating from the middle ages. I believe you can visit this again, it was closed for some time because they were restauring it. It's not so big, but still interesting to see.

Just a bit further you come to a square, nice to sit down to have a drink, but the city authorities destroyed the beauty of it, because they thought it had to have a bit more space and the most ugly thing is the sky line you see. The buildings are in general of the 1800's and then they build those monstrous new buildings behind it! Just because there was the need of some new government buildings. I think it is a shame.

Well, we are almost to the end of our tour. Just some minutes later we took the tram home, but first I took a portion of French fried potatoes with mayonnaise, yummie!
And I made a picture of this bicycle, may be something to think of to have one for Jan and me to make even larger tours around???? LOL!

Okay, I bored you enough now, hahahaha, and think it's time for your reward in bearing with me, so here's the freebie. A kit in nice teal colourscheme, and the name is suiting to the small wedding anniversairy I have today, it's "Sempre"(Italian for Always).
Have a wonderful day you all!

Download      HERE

I invite you to join me in a walk LOL!

Goodmorning everybody!

Just was hopping a few blogs before starting this post and you'll have to see the new bloglayout from Minky, it's looking so lovely! I suppose you know the link but to make it easy here it is
http://minkythings.blogspot.com/
I wrote in her comment box it gives me itchies to perhaps make another layout for my blog too, LOL. But first let's have a little talk about the weekend.
Although Friday it was nice weather I hadn't the courage for a long walk, so I stayed a bit around the house, did some small tasks, had a bit of reading and so on and Jan went out alone to have his walkie, he was at the market for a while.
But Saturday it was the day, LOL! Great temperature, only a a bit too much wind. So the other day I said Jan we perhaps could go to the seaside, not to Scheveningen but another part of Den Haag called Kijkduin, much smaller as Scheveningen, but very nice there. Looking at the wind blowing Jan said it perhaps wasn't such a good idea, we might be blown into the sea or into the dunes, hahaha.
So I came up with another idea, to go to another area where there was a lot of green, even woods, and as I like walking among the trees, hop, we had a plan and goal. We however were sensible and first took a busride towards the area, as it isn't really in our neighbourhood.
It's a neighbourhood with a lot of beautiful houses, also not too far lots of offices, you could say not the cheapest part of our town!
Arriving at the start of our wood walk I saw this house, whee, how beautiful, so I took a picture of it.

A bit further we passed a little bridge and look the view you get:

Walking along(and it was sooooo peaceful and quiet there, almost no people there, sometimes another person, just walking like we and ejoying the weather and oh so nice temperature) we arrived at a pond and my eye catched  weird specious in the water. In fact, I never knew we had ducks that looked like this(hey a bit kidding, never forget the humour).First pic isn;t really clear, but it was hard to get it real sharp, moving all the time.

It's an ideal place to have a walk with your dog there, as you can see!
In these woods there still are some bunkers from the war, all closed off, which is a pity actually, but in a way I can understand it. Here Jan is standing near, what we thought, must have been achimney or air channel. Picture is a bit blurry, but I still wanted you to see it.

And we arrived a bit at the edge of the wood, nice path to walk, and on the right side you see a bit of the houses. They have their gardens on the side of the path and the front is in town, as you might say. Isn't it great to live with one foot almost in the wood and the other into town?

We made a little turn and went back into the wood and between all the green trees of a tremendous variety, but stil green, we arrived at a little more open spot, more cultivated, and boom! I stood in front of a magnolia tree! Amazing, but true so I took a shot, not the best, but you can see the flowers.

And near that tree was a building, making part of the estate we were walking, a bit further away is the big house, this could have been the guest house or may be the house of the game keeper, for the hunt, whatever, but it looked beautiful (if they offered it to me to live in, I wouldn't really mind, only to go shopping for every day things, is a bit far without a car LOL). I took two pics of it, because at the first one I missed a bit the nice roof.

Wre both(curious as we are, yeah!) took a peep through a window, and it's rather big inside, you easily make a mistake in calculating the real living space. !

That's it folks, for today I mean. I have still lots more to show you, but that will be for tomorrow.
I must admit, The Hague still has it's beautiful parts, although it's a rather big town, and it also has it's less beautiful neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, we still have some green to enjoy.

Yesterday we really took it easy and we had a wonderful meal, without much effort to make it. How come?
Saturday evening a bit later, Jan went for a beer and visit to the cafe, and perhaps have a game of billiard. That he did but when he came home he had a plastic bag with him. Inside were about 8 herring, we love them, specially when they are from the new catch this year( perhaps you know them, they are a bit salty, because they are cleaned and layed into pickle, still raw) and about 300 grams of Scottish smoked salmon!
The owner of the cafe gave it to jan, it were sort of left overs from that day(they often have something to eat for the visitors!) and as he himself would be away the next day, he thought it was best that somebody took it home and eat it! What a treat!
So yesterday evening I put  some French bread in the oven and we had a delicious meal with all the fish!
As desert some strawberries, oh boy, what a feast!

I gather this is a rather long post, LOL, so I'll keep the rest for tomorrow and skip to your freebie.
It's a very small one, but it's the result of a challenge we had, take a picture you made, extract a part and make some elements with it. So I took a poppy picture and made these. perhaps it will give a nice touch to one of your layouts.
All left to say is: till tomorrow and have a great day!

Download     HERE