The back is feeling much better

Goodmorning everybody!

Pffff, glad to say, I am almost rid of the trouble in my back, I still can feel the place where it started, but it is more a tired feeling.
Have still to watch it and be careful for another day or two,

Oh my, poor Arlene has lots more to worry about. Poor girl mailed me the other day telling me that her new computer is back at the plce where she got it from. When buying it, it was agreed that it would be installed completely ready for use and all her files would be transferred to it. But home she was missing a lot of things on it, so her husband brought it back and was able to get a refund.
He cleaned up her old computer and for the time being it is working okay, now she waits till her husband comes back from his job again (I think in 2 weeks) and they will look for another one again.
If that wasn;t already bad enough she suffers now from an infection and on top of that a bad flu!!
Despite of this she managed to make a couple of clusters, that sweetie.
I told her to first take care of herself and get better, and that the clusters could wait a bit. Health is always most important, isn't it?

as you can imagine I didn;t get much done around here with that wicked back of mine. Did a little bit of shopping, the walking seemed to be good for me, although I didn;t stay out long.
But the weather wasn;t all too nice, suddenly it felt colder(because of the wind) and we had more rian.
Well, the upcoming days temperatures will dropp just 1 or2 degrees above zero(at night), but at daytime it still will be a bit higher than normal. Next week temps will rise a little bit again, so still no winter in sight and I don;t want it to come either!!
Jan already looked into the pot where I keep all the seedpackets, bought a big sack of soil and is about all ready to start sowing again. It's about time, today we have the last day of February!

Also I made a ohonecall to Heidi, to hear about the result of some test she had to undergo for her foot/ ankle she hurt in January, falling of the ladder. It still isn't all too much better, she still has pain and at times is swollen too. Now she has to take lots of rest and got advice give that foot/ankle the least possible burden.
I know she walked far too much on it the last couple of weeks, well, she is a busy mom, but I warned her earlier not too walk on it so it could heal as quick as possible. Hmmm, the girl knows that but is a bit stubborn LOL.
Well, I will visit her next week so we can have a proper chat( yesterday her husband was home when we talked on the phone, and then we NEVER can talk about all we want, do you recognize that?????LOL).

Today's kit has quites some color int it and is named "A bit of Bohemian". I am a little bit experimenting lately, it is nice to make something different from the "usual". Still I like mostly the more romantic or vintage style kits. Still I think it can do no harm to try at times something different.
I hope you will like this kit, and yes, Arlene made some great clusters and a page border for you, although she has that flu and infection. What a brave girl!
Times to leave you now, wishing you all a wonderful weekend and stay well and safe!

Download    part 1 HERE

                    part 2 HERE

Download    HERE

I am a not too happy person at the moment!

Goodmorning everybody!

Quick update of our weather, it's not all too bad, it's some rain, some sunshine, sometimes a bit too much wind, temps around 48-50C, all together we cannot complain.

Monday I suddenly had the spirit! Gosh, in the morning I first did my post on this blog, then did some designing, and then got dressed.
Took a bucket, filled it with water and cleaning liquid, and started in the toilet/bathroom.
Took out the things like a matt, littlelitter bin,etc. and gave all a real thourough clean!
Before putting back all, that had to undergo some cleaning too, and as I still was in "the mood" also gave the hallway a sweep with the mob. IAnd after that was done I felt myself a happy person!Yeah, it felt good.
So I took a little break, and saw the sitting room coffeetable could do with a cleaning too, so I did that too, but when I put back the bottle the glass cleaning product, suddenly felt in my back  a "PING", and yes, probably stretched a muscle, and oh my, hardly could come up straight again. Damm!!
Just when I was so happy I did a good job, and even was in the mood to do a bit more, THIS happens again!
So the rest of the day, as you can imagine, I took it real easy. as long as i sat on the couch, in almost 90 degree postion, as straigh as I could, I had not too much trouble. But standing up or bowing forward to take my cup of coffe, eeeeeeeekh, not nice!
Okay, went to bed, hoping it would be better next day.
And was it? Not very much. I did have to do some shopping, so slowly got dressed, and then went out. I thought that may be being straight up and walking a bit, could be a good thing for my back.
Well, I survived the shopping, it went rather well, only the hard part was, taking the products out of the shelves when they were placed on the lower ones LOL!
Home again I started out in the kitchen, preparing for dinner already( we had a hotchpotch of onion and carrot, all mixed with potatoe mash(Jan likes it a lot, it's not my favourite one, but okay).
after that I sat down, pffff, that was good!
Still the back didn;t coorporate a lot.
But when I got up this morning, it still was a bit difficult, but... it feels somewhat better. Still have to move very careful, cause sometimes get such a nice "pang" in the back.
I think it will take a couple of days more, to get rid of it completely(well, I hope so).

So here we have a wonderful couple, both with back trouble. Life is full of surprises ROFL.

Somewhere spring is just around the corner. I can tell by our cat Brodski. He is going out a bit more and for a little longer time. Still a very lazy cat, who likes to settle himself down on a chair and sleep for hours!
I can forget about doing some work in the garden now that it's not too cold anymore, with that damned back of mine. But we really should go out there and do some cleaning and pruning and re=potting soon, cause with that very soft, almost no-winter, weather all is going so fast there!
Perhaps next week all is better and may be there will be some days, or moments of them, that with a coat or thick sweater it will be possible to stay out for a while and take up gardening again.

That's about all for now. I have a kit for you, and with clusters from Arlene( didn;t hear from her yet, after her message about her new computer, understandable, because it always is a lot of work, even when all goes smoothly), and it is named Enjoy Little Things.
 I tried my hand on a bit of art journal digiscrap design, I came across a very great website, where there is a lot of explaining and tutorials about digital art journaling and scrapping and also about using mixed media. It isn't as simple as it looks, and I don;t always like all I see, but there are some wonderful things done with it! Most difficult about it, I think, is forgetting all about "traditional scrapping and designing". Well I give you the link to that website and I am sure it will be interesting. Just hop over and take a bit of time to read and look, perhaps it will inspire you in your scrapping!
http://www.captivatedvisions.co.uk/index.php/blog/category/artful-digi-scrapping

Have a blast trying out some of the ideas that will pop up in your mind and I am sure you will surprise yourself LOL!
Have a wonderful day.

Download    HERE

Download    HERE

Olympics over, lots of great sport seen again.

Goodmorning everybody!

well, we will have to get used to it, that there isn;t an Olympic broadcast anymore.
But it was wonderful to see it all, and yes, I am proud to say we did extremely well this time.
All together we won 24 medals, and it will be hard to beat that amount of medals at the next winter Olympics.
I will boar you just once more with a couple of photos of our skaters, who won gold in the teamspursuit both men and women! And even they skated a new Olympic record.

Couldn;t find a photo of the women podium, it was nr.1 The Netherlands,
nr.2 Poland and nr. 3 Russia. You see here 4 women of our team, although they only skate with 3. But there also is a reserve, in case of a calamity, and she also skated in one of the races, so also has right to a medal.

Did you see the closing ceremony of the Games? I think it was beautiful done. Now all the medal winners will have a very busy time as soon as they arrive home, and of course they deserve it, but I pity them a bit too, they almost don;t have time to relax and recover a bit, the coming days they have a very filled schedule.

You can imagine that the last couple of days I wasn;t all too active here, although I still managed to get some things done I had on the to-do list.
I must say Jan was even more active than I was LOL! And I must admit that the extension room slowly is getting an organized look. Yes, he is doing a great job there, still a lot of things have to be sorted out and stashed away , but eh seems to like it, being busy there building some smaller closets and racks, and it goes well as long as I am not showing my face there ROFL.
So I let him do whatever he does, hoping that I will be able to track some things, he stashed away,
and I give him a little compliment every now and then( he deserves that, really).

Oh, just got an email from Arlene, in which she told me she had to install a new computer, and is very busy with it, to get all things up and working, so it might be, that later this week I wil not have an add-on for a kit, yet. Well, I can imagine what a terrible job it must be to re-install and upload all things from an old computer, so I told her to take her time, and all will be well.

Okay, we will have to get back to "normal"routine as from today, I have a few things on my to-do list, that I really want to get done, so I will not talkl too much anymore and present you the new freebie.
I have the kit "Fanny"for you. Rather romantic and vintage looking one and oh my,Arlene made a beautiful quickpage for you as well as two clusters.
Before I leave have to tell you to take another look on Linda's blog. She has made some gorgeous quickpages again. And perhaps you want to see some beautiful photos that Sharon of ALl Things Precious has made, then go to this link

https://www.facebook.com/pages/All-Things-Precious-Photography/156882014379944

And if you could do with some new textures, Sharon has them too, on her Deviant art site.
http://allthingsprecious.deviantart.com/

Hope I didn;t forget anything, and if so there always is another day to write it down LOL!
Have a fantastic day.

Download   HERE

Download    HERE

Only one more week and we;ll have March!

Goodmorning everybody!

This morning it is raining, yak, and not just a couple of drops, no, serious rain. Okay, it should stop somewhere in the afternoon, and then we are supposed to have some rather nice days, with even temps of ca. 10-12 C (50-53 F). Way too high temps for this time of year, but I don't complain! And looking at the calendar I realized we just have one week to go in February and that's it, March will be knocking at the door!

We had some nice, quiet days here, although I did manage to do a bit of housework( and must do today too), but also had time to watch a bit more of the Olympics.
Oh my, did you see perhaps figure skating of the women? There were sooo much beautiful performances! I watch that sport already for years, and still cannot believe that they do this on thin blades and very slippery ice.
More succes for in the the speedskating. Oh my, this year we are really succesfull LOL!

We are very proud of our silver and bronze medal winners! And Sablikova, the gold medal winner completely deserved it!

Another not bad result to mention, and that's really great, is of our 2 women bobsled team. we came at the 4 th place!!! Wow, it is amazing!
What else did we see? Oh, ice hockey, and curling! Love to watch the curling and some competitions are really getting to the nerves LOL!

Oh and I am happy to say that the taxstuff is on its way to the accountant!Yippee, I got all the necessary papers together yesterday,and copied it and send it. Pffff, hope I didn't forget anything.
Did some more paperwork, not much but something I needed to do, so for now I am about done.

Perhaps, when next week we will have those rather nice days, I should put on a warm sweather and take a look into the garden! With all those relative high temperatures  lots of things are already showing new life, and it needs some pruning. If I get to it, we should cross fingers that the weather will not change too much and suddenly some freezing will arrive, because that could do a lot of damage to the plants.

Okay, we'll see if we can gather up enough energy to dive into the garden then LOL!

For now, it is about all, so on the to the freebie. This time one with a theme, that perhaps isn;t to everyone's liking, but every now and then I love to do such a kit.
It's a Stempunk one, named "Steampunk All Over". Made you 2 previews, and splitted it into two downloads. Arlene made you a great quickpage and a cluster for it and I hope you can do something with the kit. I think a kit like this always can be useful  for some layouts for men.
You have a wonderful weekend and try to stay safe and sound!!

Download   part 1  HERE
Download   part 2  HERE

Download     HERE

Sochi medals again!

Goodmorning everybody!

As I wanted, I went on Monday for some shopping, to be "free"on Tuesday for the skating again.
But there is something to tell, although no world news, not at all.
No, Monday afternoon I just felt soooo sleepy( didn;t catch too many hours at night), so I made a little nap.
As I woke up, at about 4.30 am no Jan in the room. That's nothing special, I thought he might be in the extension room, busy a bit with the closet.So I first woke up a bit and then went into the kitchen to prepare for dinner. When all was about ready, had to simmer and cook still for perhaps 10 minutes or so, I went into the extension room to tell Jan dinner almost was ready. But...............no Jan!
Well, may be he went into the bedroom, perhaps also for a nap??? No Jan.
So that was a bit strange, but I looked around everywhere, even in the garden, found nobody!
Okay, I came to the conclusion he went out for a stroll, but it was a bit funny he wasn;t home yet. Normally he comes home then around 4 or 4.30, when it's late may be even 5.00 am.
I checked if he took his mobile, so I could ask where he was. Mobile still at the table.
Gosh, I turned down the gas, and got a little bit anxious now. Probably no reason for it, but you never know, can you? LOL/
So I started looking out of the window if I saw somebody familiar coming. (I also can see the stop of the tram). Finally I saw him walking towards our front door. By then it was already 5.30 am.
Gosh, I was glad he was home, and I told him I have no trouble with the fact he goes out, of course not, but that it was a bit late and that next time it would be nice if he took his mobile with him!
Jan looked at the clock and said": Gosh I thought it was around 4.30, sorry, had no idea it was already that late ".
Husbands.............. they are nice to have, but......................ROLF!
(but I worry sometimes to quickly, for nothing)

Okay, yesterday was another speedskating event, 10 km. for men. Pity some skaters didn;t start, like a ouple of Norwegians and a Russian.
But never mind, there were 3 Dutch skaters to follow. And they did very well( okay, we expected it a bit).
So we gathered again some medals there.

Also watched some great other sports, like ice-hockey and bobsled too! And we have teams there too! No, they not yet compete with the real great ones, but we do compete. We even are not bad at all with the two-women bob, after two heats we are at 6th place!
Now today again speedskating, 500 mtrs women(we hope for some medals there too), and also figure skating for women, yes!

Enough of sport. Want to give you a link to a spot on Deviant art, where Arlene has started to post some of her textures, she makes, and she has some lovely ones! Would be nice if you could visit, do;t know if everybody just can leave a comment or not, perhaps you first must have an account there? Anyway, take a look!
 http://babybear782.deviantart.com/


She also wants to start a blog, to show more of her work, but is not too confident about it to put one together. If there is anybody who is a bit handy in putting up a blog and would be able to help her out, oh please do so. You can always send me a mail and I will send it to her, and then you two can sort it out together.

Time for me now to get busy, well, almost. First the freebie, of course and then a cup of coffee and after that I will be able to get busy here LOL!
Today's kit is a dreamy one, named Rêves Silencieux ( meaning silent dreams), and some beautiful clusters from Arlene.
 You have a nice day and take care!

 Download   HERE

Download    HERE

More good news from the Olympics.

Goodmorning everybody!

Friday I managed to go out for some shopping without having to put extra weight in the pockets of my coat LOL! There still was a rather fierce wind, but I went out in time.
Also Saturday the wind was blowing hard, but it calmed down later and it looks to be much more quiet now looking out of the window.
When I came home on Friday afternoon Jan just went out, for a little trip into town centre. Not for anything special, but good thing he got out of the house for a while.

Gosh, soon in March there will be a Nuclear Security Summit, taking place in The Hague. What a mess it will be during and around that time! Parts of The hague will be almost not reachable for "normal"people, for security reasons, areas around The Hague a traffic mess, etc.!
It will be something like this
On Monday, 24 March and Tuesday, 25 March 2014 The Hague will be welcoming delegations from more than 50 countries who will be attending the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS). In total 58 world leaders, 5,000 delegates and 3,000 journalists will be coming to the summit at the World Forum. This means that extra traffic measures will be needed in the city.

The NSS is the largest summit ever to be organised in the Netherlands. In order to ensure that it runs smoothly, special traffic and security measures will be in force from Saturday, 22 March up to and including Tuesday, 25 March. The measures are designed to achieve the right balance between security and access. Nonetheless, however, you may find that traffic is seriously disrupted: the roads in and around The Hague will be very busy before and especially during the NSS. Parking will be prohibited in certain streets. It will still be possible to reach The Hague, but you are strongly advised to use public transportation.
Traffic measures subject to change

Certain roads and lanes in and around The Hague will be closed temporarily while the delegations travel from one place to another. All traffic measures are subject to change – this applies up to and including the days of the summit itself.
Area around the World Forum

A number of streets in the area around the World Forum will be closed from Saturday, 22 March until Tuesday, 25 March:

If anybody is interested about the why's hows and more of this summit I have a link for you
https://www.nss2014.com/en

But in all we will have a period then that it will be hard to travel around in our city, and not metioning the money that will spend to have this summit, all the security etc. etc.
I don;t think a lot of people will be very happy with the event LOL!

It will be next month so first things first. Some great news about the Olympics again for us Dutchies LOL! We won the first olympic medal EVER on a shorttrack skating event!
Now short track isn;t a real favourite of mine, I do admire the skaters and their skills, but i think also a big part of luck is playing in it. Okay, lots of people will not agree with me, perhaps, then sorry, but it.s the way I feel about it. Nevertheless it's wonderful that finally we are doing better and better in this sport.

Gold medallist Russia's Victor An (C), silver medallist Russia's Vladimir Grigorev (L) and bronze medallist Sjinkie Knegt of the Netherlands
celebrate during the victory ceremony for the men's 1,000 metres short track speed skating finals at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics February 15, 2014.

Then there was speedskating 1500 mtrs. for men, and the result was great but terrible.

Poland's Zbigniew Brodka captured gold in the men's 1,500-meter race, posting a time that was just three-thousandths of a second better than the Netherlands' Koen Verweij.
It was just that close.
Verweij was forced to settle for silver.
Canada's Denny Morrison captured bronze, his second medal of the Sochi Games.

But yesterday we had the 1500 mtrs. for women and the result of that was completely amazing!

And you know what? Our 4th skater on this event Marit Leenstra, came on the 4th place. Complete overrule here I guess.
Tomorrow will be a big day for us again, then the 10 km. men will take place, with our all over favourite Sven Kramer. I hope he will do well and get his gold medal.

Also watched yesterday the short programme of ice dancing. Oh my God, how beautiful is that! Today they will skate their long program and it will be a great competition!
I already am looking forward to that.

So tomorrow will be filled for a part with watching the speed skating I better do some work around here today! May be I even can give Jan a very needed haircut.
First the freebie for today.
What about a kind of fantasy kit after a long time? It's named Dreamland, with fairies and sparkles and such. With a very "dreamy"add-on from Arlene!
Have a wonderful day.

Download    HERE

Download    HERE

Wonderful Olympics!

Goodmorning everybody!

Today is Valentine's day, so time to have some special moments with your loved one, or re-view in your mind some special moments you had with your loved one.
I always burn a little candel in front of my icaon, because this is the day my mother passed away( already 22 years ago, I cannot imagine it is so long ago). May be you think it is a sad day for me, but it isn;t really. Well, for a part yes, of course, but on the other hand it was such a good day for her to leave the earth, and a perfect day to join with her husband and all that passed away before her!

I just heard on the news that the weather in mostly the east part of the US is still terrible, so cold and with lots of snow, people are in trouble because of it. Gosh, I truly hope this kind of weather will go away and that much better weather circumstances will arrive!
Same in Great Britain, where large parts still have to cope with floods and rain and storm, and it isn;t over there yet!
Then I think we are still the lucky ones, with temperatures around 7C( around 45 F) even now and then sunshine, but also some rain showers, and a bit too much wind to my liking. But all over we should be very happy!

The last two days were again a party for us Dutchies at the Olympics. Sorry, I talk so much about it, but it's really an amazing Olympics for the skaters. And yes, I know, it's about the only sport we are really good at, although slowly we also ahev some shorttrackers, who do well, but not yet for the medals till now. And imagine, we have even bobsleigh teams that will compete LOL!
But back to the counries pride, the speed skaters. Last two days there were the competitions of the 100 mtrs. sprint for men and women. And we gathered again some great medals there.

Specially we were very happy for our gold medallist here, he had to overcome really difficult times, in sport as well in private, but he fought himself back and he won the highest prize!
Congrats to the Canadian too, and what about the 3rd place of one of our twin brothers?

And we are all happy with our ladies too! The Chinese, Zang Hong was awesome and deserved winner, but congrats too to our silver and bronze medals. It were two days of cheering and feeling proud LOL!

Also watched some figure skating, they don't give much of it on our channels, but on some other foreign channels there is more to see, so we do a lot of zapping around on tv these days, hahaha.
I even felt a bit proud for the two Russian couples who won the figure skating, can you imagine?? Well, part of my blood and heart has Russian genes, so that must be the reason, ROFL.
But you have to admit they are awesome!

I think today I will have to do a bit of shopping, not too much needed, but I like to keep up the reserves, and a couple of things are running out, as always. I should do that a bit early in the afternoon, because some rain might come later. Better try to keep it dry.!
And after I have done that, probably must do a laundry and then I might do a bit of computer time.
No speedskating today, that will be again in the weekend, but lots of other wonderful sports we like to too, like curling, icehockey, figure skating ( men's long program) etc.
So on to the freebie then.
Perhaps this kit will give you kind of a spring feeling, it's named Birdie's Song.
It was fun to make this one( always fun to make a kit, but some just a bit more LOL).
Very sweet clusters from Arlene to make a perfect layout.
You have a wonderful Valentine's day and even so wonderful weekend!

Download    HERE

Download   HERE

P.S. Almost forgot! Linda has made again two wonderful quickpages, for Valentine's day.
        You can download them on her blog ( and leave a smile when you do)

All that glitters is gold LOL

Goodmorning everybody!

It's looking to be a rather nice day today, for the moment I see some sunshine and not too much wind, so may be a good day to pop over to the bank to leave there a bill to pay(such a pity for the money LOL), and sniff some air.
Last two days I did some little things in the house, also had to do some shopping( had no more coffee and cat food, for one), on the way I bought Jan some metal angles he needed to finish a closet, I am such a nice person, ain't I grin grin!

The of course also a lot of Olympics to watch, naturally most o it was the speedskating. Well, there was a big surprise. On the 500 mtr. sprint for men we hoped to win a medal, because normally competition from other countries is huge, but we did win all three of them!!
Oh gosh, it was sooooo exciting and not clear till the last moment who would win the medals!
I am really proud of our guys!

An extra nice thing"the gold and bronze medal were won by two twin brothers!!!!

Then yesterday there was the 500 mtr. sprint for women, and we didn;t really count on a medal there, but the miracle did happen! We did win a bronze medal, done by Margot Boer.
We were so happy for her, she's aiming for it already several years, and finally she did the trick, at the Olympics. Of course also congratulations to the other medal winners. Great job!

Finally we even did get to see a summary of the figure skating, oh my God, how beautiful is that!
I surely hope we will get to see more of it and not just a short summery!

All those sporters deserve a great respect, no matter on wich place of a ranking they end up.
Did you know by the way that this Olympics there also is ski jumping for women for the first time?
I did see a bit of it and it's fantastic!

With all that chit chat about the Olympics you can tell by now we LOVE to watch all kind of sports, and yes, some more than other, but in general we do watch it with pleasure.
Now today another important speedskating event, at the least, for us. 1000 mtr. sprint for men is on the programme and we do have some very good skaters for it. But again, competition is high, from Norway, the U.S, Russia, and more. So it will be exciting again.

In between all this we do watch some other things on tv too LOL1 And even do some things that have nothing to do with tv. Life is going on and bills have to be payed as well as soon tax-office will knock on the door, and the house sometimes is crying out that it needs a cleaning etc,etc.
Our politics go on too, there was another crisis going on in the government and parliament, but the minister who wa "under fire"survived it and still has his position. Now why isn;t that a big surprise to us???????????? The goernment supported him, although he made some big mistakes, because otherwise a good chance was there that the government had fallen. And no, of course they don;t that to happen. We know it already for a long time, but you have to admit, again, that politics often is a rather dirty game!
No, I will not continue on this subject, it will spoil my day and yours too!

Better I post now your freebie, don;t you think? Soon Valentine's Day will be there, but I didn;t make a specific kit for it this year. But I think this one might have possibility to use it for a nice Valentine's day layout. I named it "A Lady in Red". Together with Arlene's lovely clusters, you could end up with a wonderful layout.
Have a lovely day and till Friday!

Download    HERE

Download    HERE

WOW, we did good in speedskating this weekend

Goodmorning everybody!

It was a good filled weekend I can say.
First Friday I did all shopping that was necessary so I was "free"on Saturday. Weather wasn;t all too bad, although it was rainy, most annoying was( and still will be this week) the hard wind. But till now it keeps winter away, LOL.

We did go to Séverine's birthday party on Saturday, of course, but not till a bit later in the afternoon. We first wanted to see the olympic speedskating competition of the 5000 mtr. for men. And oh my, it was a GREAT day for us. The 3 medals were all for our Dutch skaters! We hoped ( and counted a bit on it) that our best skater, Sven Kramer, would win the gold, but you never know till it's done, is it?
He was amazing, (even skated a new Olympic time)but then also to win the silver and bronze, was fantastic.
Wonderful for our skaters was that our king handed over the medals, it makes it even a bit more special!

Gold for Sven Kramer, silver for Jan Blokhuijsen, bronze for Jorrit Bergsma.

Of course we also watched some of the other sports taking place, but I was a bit disppointed that there wasn;t a too long coverage of the figure skating. I love to see that, and there were some amazing performances already. I can understand that it is difficult to give a good coverage of all that is taking place in one day, but I truly hope we will see a bit more of the figure skating.

Sunday also there was a speedskating event to watch, the 3000 mtr. for women. There it wouldn;t be obvious if our best skater would win the gold, strong competition to deal with. But Ireen Wüst was soooo strong, she did beat all and won the gold in a terrific race.
Former gold winner Martina Sablikova, got the silver, and 3rd place was for a Russian lady, Olga Graf. And it is always wonderful to see the happiness and joy on the faces. And really understandable, it takes a lot of hard work of many years, and if all comes together just on the moment it is needed, you can be proud of yourself!
I have a photo of the 3 winner, not yet with the medals, because they will receive it today.

Do I sound a bit excited and proud????? LOL! Well, we know our skaters are good, but we also know the trouble they sometimes had to achieve this, and how difficult it is and then I think we are allowed to be happy for them and with them.

Again there will be, among other events of course, some speedskating today to watch, it is the 500 mtr. sprint for men. Oh my, that will be a very exciting competition! We have some real good sprinters, that could go for a medal, but it isn;t obvious that they will win one. Just one little mistake made and all illusions could be gone! And there is a strong field, so we will see what happens.

But in between all that wintersport and some other programs on tv, and some housework even done, I even managed to do some designing. Not too much, but I finished a kit, which I will have to upload, after making the preview and I even started a new one.
I will have to do somewhere this week a bit of more serious work, I guess, like getting together all needed for the taxes again(yak), have to deal with some more paper stuff, not all of my favourite time spending. But it has to be done and better do it all at once, if possible, so I can forget about it again for a longer time ROFL!

Okay, have to get busy a bit, must think also of something for dinner this evening( sometimes it is hard to keep a good variety in it, to come up every day with something different, which isn;t taking too uch time and still is tasty, it's the curse of almost all of us I think , hahaha).
What about a bit of Nostalgic looking kit? I have this one for you, named Temps Perdu( Lost time), and you will have a fantastic add[on from Arlene again, with a great quickpage!
Have a wonderful day and stay safe!

Download    HERE

Download   HERE

Olympics starting today!

Goodmorning everybody!

Had two fruitfull days, LOL! Wednesday I did some small shopping stuff, needed to find a birthday card for Séverine, among a few other things, and home again I first started making preparations for dinner already, I found a recipe that I wanted to try out. And yes, it was a success, tasted real good.
I share it with, I hope google translate did a good job of the translation!

ingredients

    4 chicken breasts
    6 large onions ( not the mega - onions)
    800 g potatoes (waxy )
    5 dl chicken stock
    1 cup sherry
    1 dl cream
    small sprigs of thyme
    3 bay leaves
    1/2 bunch tarragon
    knob of butter
    pepper
    saltpreparationPreparation time: 90 minutes (including cooking times oven)

    Thaw and heat the necessary amount of chicken stock . You can also make fresh broth .
   
    Preheat oven to 180 ° C.
   
    Peel the onions and cut the ass ( where the roots were ) a bit , so that each ui can be put down stable.
   
    Cut parallel also one third of the top of each onion away . Place them in a baking dish and season the bulbs with ground pepper and salt.
   
    Peel the waxy potatoes and cut them into large chunks. Arrange them around the onions . Put bay leaves and thyme sprigs between .
   
    Pour a third of the hot chicken broth over the onions and potatoes and spread some butter lumps . Cover the baking dish with a sheet of aluminum foil .
   
    Push the onions with potatoes in the oven at 180 ° C. Accounting for this one hour , until tender , but as yet sufficiently strong . Keep then the oven temperature to cook . The chicken breasts
   
    Season the chicken breasts with pepper mill and salt. Those interested can also use some chicken seasoning .
   
    Melt a knob of butter in a frying pan over medium heat . Sear the chicken in the hot butter until they have a golden brown crust .
   
    TIP : If you threaten to burn butter, turn off the heat and add a softer  extra knob of butter.
   
    Put the colored chicken breasts in a bowl and slide them into the oven at 180 ° C. Cook them for another 15 minutes. Check afterwards that the succulent meat is cooked to the core .
   
    Pour the fat from the pan and pour a splash of sherry . Flambé pan , and let the alcohol evaporate .    
    Pour the rest of the chicken broth to the pan and stir the remaining bits of the baked filets frequently loose.
   
    Throw already some sprigs of tarragon in the sauce so that they give taste . Pour the cream and let the sauce simmer for a few minutes over low heat .
   
    Take the lukewarm onions from the baking dish and gently remove the inner part , until they are eroded , but still have a solid edge at a time .
   
    Chop the onion pieces you've cut finely and place in a bowl . Spoon the cooked potatoes in there and crush both with a potato masher . Spoon  also some of the cooking liquid to the onion puree . Taste the mixture and season if necessary with additional salt and pepper .
   
    Fill the onions with a portion of the crushed potatoes with onion. The rest of the onion puree you serve  later separately .
   
    Put on each stuffed onion a small knob of butter and give them heat in the oven . (150 ° C ) Place the rest of the onion puree on that hot spot .
   
    Strain the sauce with sherry and tarragon . Cut cold butter into cubes and stir  This will give the sauce extra bond and a silky shine .
   
    Pluck - shortly before serving - tarragon leaves loose and cut the herb. Stir the green into the sauce . Do not do this too far in advance because the  dragon will discolor .
   
    Taste the tarragon sauce and season to taste with salt and pepper from the mill .
   
    Cut the chicken breasts into tender slices wide . Serve on plates in the company of a stuffed onion and a spoonful of sauce . Put the rest of the tarragon sauce and mash with onion on the table .

Rather long recipe, but it;s really worth the try! 

I wanted to do some ironing yesterday, but I didn;t! Instead I had a nice nap in the afternoon. Naughty girl! So I really want to do it today, then i will feel good again, having it done before the weekend, grin grin.

It is looking rather wet today, for now. Hmmmm, perhaps I need to go out for a short time, may be it will get dry later. We'll see if tha happens. I might need to go out for a moment, but I'll think it over again if the rain keeps on.

So today we will have the grand opening of the Winter Olympics. I think a lot of sporters will be happy it finally arrived. Already tomorrow there will be a great event to watch, if you like speed skating. There will be the 5000 mtrs. to skate and we have several real candidates for the medals. Of course a lot of Dutchies will be watching it and crossing their fingers that our men will do the trick!
Busy times ahead with all that sport on tv, so I think our videao and dvd will have to register a lot of things, that we can watch at a lter time.
Tomorrow we also have to go to Séverine's birthday party, but it will be later in the afternoon. 
Okay, I have enough to do so I better finish this post now.

 A lot of you have more than enough of all that winter weather, I think, so I have a kit for you that will bring you a bit of Spring, named simply"Can't wait till Spring".
You are really getting a treat from arlene, because she made you two magnificent quickpages!
Have a wonderful weekend, and till Monday!

Download    HERE

Download    HERE




 

Some well spent days.

Goodmorning everybody!

We've had two rather nice days, which is also a bit due to the weather. Although it still is fresh and sometimes feeling colder because of the wind, we cannot complain at all. There are some periods with rain, but also long periods with just sunshine and lots of blue spots in the sky!
So we did go to the market on Monday and came back with a good filled shopping trolly.
We bought some delicious grapes( with no seeds  in it, wonderful), potatoes, onions, garlic, and two big lumps of cheese.
Yesterday I had to go out for some food shopping, specially for the cat, LOL), but the weather was even a bit better than the day before, so I enjoyed the walk.
As I was home in the early afternoon, I thought I could do a laundry, so put on the machine.
Cleared away some cups and dishes, took a moment rest with a sandwich and a cup of coffee,
made already preparations for dinner, hanged out the laundry, and di some more things, but cannot really rememebr what it was LOL! Surely those little things that need to be done in a house, and then I thought I could relax and take a moment at the computer where I finished a new kit.

Today I also have to go out, for some little things, as for a birthday card for Séverine, and a new tv program magazine for next week, (the old ones is till Saturday), and I should buy us some chicken filet, so that I have some in the freezer too.

Jan still busy with the extension room, but he is making progress. He dismanteled a part of a real big closet, took those parts together and made a smaller closet of it. He isn;t the most handy handy-man, but give him time and let him struggle alone and somehow he succeeds LOL.
He also re-organized a small cabinet we had, first filled with a lot of books for one, he now has turned it into a storage place for tools and accessories like the jars with screws and nails and such.
Much better to have them out of sight. We cannot have the tools in our shed, cause it's not an isolated one and is somewhat moist, which brings only rust to saws and screwdrivers and all those tools.

Okay, so today i will go out later for a moment, and if I am not too late back againI want to do some ironing, there isn;t all too much so perhaps it only will take half an hour. I can do that, watching tv at the same time, not a bad idea.

Before I post the freebie I want to give you again the link to Linda's blog (Random thoughts at Linda's place), because she made some beauties of quickpages from some of my kits, all ready for you to download.
And Sharon from All Things precious has made some beautiful new textures, you can download them at her Deviant art account.
Want to see some really beautiful photos she has made then go to her account at Facebook or her blog!

Freebie kit of today is named Peacock's Pride, A visitor suggested to make a kit with peacocks, she was looking for something like that, so I hope it ended up in a kit she could use for her project and hopefully you will have some use also for it. I really enjoyed making it, love the colors, LOL!

I've made the download in two parts, because it was kind of heavy kit, then two previes, one of the papers and one of the complete kit, and you also will have 3 lovely clusters from Arlene for your layouts.
Have fun and a wonderful day!

Download    part 1 HERE 
Download    part 2 HERE

Download   clusters  HERE

Till now so lucky with the weather.

Goodmorning everybody!

Writing this post in a quiet room(Jan is still asleep) and looking out of the window I see an almost blue sky and sunshine! Some days we have some rain too, but on the whole we still are lucky with the weather and it appears to become even a bit better this week.
From what I saw on the weather channel, the whole week we will have temperatures around 6-7C( ca. 42-44F) and later this week even one or two degrees higher, with a bit of rain but also lots of sunshine and the only thing which will be spoiling this, could be the wind. Just a bit to strong blowing, but if that is all, we shouldn;t complain.

We had a nice weekend, in which we even did some little jobs in the house, but I also had some computer time, of course, and could finish a kit.

Received an email yesterday in which an invitation for the birthday of Séverine (my friend Heidi's daughter). Can you believe it that the girl already will have her 12th birthday???
She will celebrate it on Saturday, so we will go there somewhere in the afternoon.

Jan is slowly making progress with the extension room, we even can walk there again, without having to jump over all kind of things and stuff LOL!
Oh no, it's not ready yet, but not too far away we can see light in the tunnel. We still will have to go through a lot of things in the closets and boxes that are there and really must sort out the lot, and get rid of many things. Unbelievable how much stuff you can gather over the years, and hang on to it, although many things you never use anymore. We also have way too many books standing all over the house, we will have to sort them out thouroughly also and find a way to get rid of them.

I think today will be a good day to hop over to the market, we could do with some veggies and at the same time we can buy us some cheese. It will do us good to be outside for a while, and weather looks to be perfect for it today.

It's going to itch somewhat with us, that this week already there are the Winter Olympics!
It's only a pity that there is always politics involved. In a way those events are a good thing to let the world know, that lots of things aren;t well yet in the world and need to be changed, but on the other hand I don;t think  the sporters should mingle in that. They are there to perform the best they can in their sport and they need to concentrate on that only, and shouldn;t  be forced in anyway to deal with political issues.
Wherever Olympics are taking place (winter or summer Olympics) in every country there are things not going well, it may be in human rights, or democracy or whatever you can think of, that are things for politicians and all kind of organizations to deal with and perhaps make an effort to better them. But sporters just should think of their sport for which they trained years and years.

Okay, before I get carried away completely, I better stop now LOL!
Let's go to the freebie for today. It's named "Souvenir d'Enfance" ( Childhood memory), and has a real vintage feeling over it. I've made a preview of both the papers and kit for you, plus that you get some awesome clusters made by Arlene.
Going to make me some fresh coffee now, do a bit more bloghopping, I think, and then it will be time to get ready for the market.
Have a wonderful day!

Download    HERE

Download    HERE

Quick extra post

Goodmorning everybody

Just popping in to give you another cluster from Arlene, she made with the Mélodies d'antan (kit from yesterday). I somehow missed this cluster and it's such a beautyful one, you just mst have it with the other ones.
Have a wonderful weekend!

Download    HERE