Oh, that easily sidetracked mind!!!

Goodafternoon everybody!

First things first, which is the weather. Well, not much to tell about it, about the whole week not more then 12-14 C(with difficulty)(53-57F), with sometimes, although rather rare, a bit of sun, then also some rain, mostly clouded. All together not the very best spring weather.

Talking about the mind that gets so easily sidetracked. It happened to me again this week. I knew I put on the stove a little pan with some potatoes to boil, then got sidetracked by something on tv if I remember well. Then Jan came into the room with the message: "You can forget about the potatoes and may be even about the pan."
Oh my God. I took a look and yes, nothing to do about the potatoes and the pan.................hopeless.  I quickly put both in the bin and bought a new little pan. I was so very angry with myself, how could I forget about it. But... it happens sometimes. I usually don;t watch tv when cooking and certainly don;t do anything at the computer, because I know I forget about time. Still it sometimes happens.
Better make a reminder about it in my mind, so that I'll be even more careful in future.

This friday we had our King's day and it is already for 5 years we have our King, how fast time passes.
The Royal family visited a city in the north of the Netherlands, Groningen(we have a provincew called that way but also the capital of the province is called Groningen.) It is a place where for many years now they extract nautral gas out of the ground, and it has consequences! I have a link for you where you can read about it, because it has a very big impact on the inhabitants and their homes!
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/01/groningen-hit-by-strongest-earthquake-in-five-years/

But most of the time it was a happy visit of the Royals there, to celibrate the 51st birthday of our King. I have a few photos from the net from that day of the Royals, but also a link to some  official portraits
https://www.koninklijkhuis.nl/actueel/nieuws/2018/04/26/nieuwe-staatsiefoto%E2%80%99s-koning-willem-alexander-en-koningin-maxima-en-foto%E2%80%99s-van-het-gezin.
Here from King's day itself:

The 3 princesses

 The whole family:

Jan and I went out on that day for a moment, we were even a bit lucky with the weather. It was dry(as we left home!)and even a little bit of sun. We went to town centre, visited the flower market. So many beautiful plants, although not too cheap, so we managed to leave them there, LOL. We also visited the fair, just to see what new attractions there were. Oh gosh, a lot and a lot of them were those things of great speed, altitude, quick movements and so, nothing for me!
But it always is fun to look at the people. We even played a little bit on a casino machine, just for a few bucks. We do that every year, just for the fun of it and Jan was a bit lucky, he got enough points to pick out a asmall price and we went home with a soooo cute little bear and a blue smurf ROFL!!!!
They have a lovely place now in our room, with the other bears.
By the end of our walk it suddenly started to rain, but it didn;t last very long. Then we took the tram home and it was good we went out for a while and sniffed up some fresh air.

I think you have enough to read and watch, so better i finish this post now, with a little download of clusters of Arlene, made with the Sparks of Memory kit.
Have a wonderful day and week to come, take care of yourselves.

Download   HERE

We had some awesome summery days.

Goodmorning everybody!

Yes, in the middle of this week we suddenly had summer here. Temperatures of around 23-25C or something like that here on the coast.
It started all on wednesday and it felt soooooooooo good!!!!
With some of those days, you really see the garden spring into life.
It is a pity though that today is the last of those wonderful days.
From tomorrow on temperatures will suddenly drop for about 10C, to just 13 or 14C.For time of year it is rather normal, but now that we are spoiled some days with that awesome weather it is hard to swallow, LOL!
But at least we had some good moments in the garden, had even take out the parasol to have a bit of shade.

We did go to my friend Heidi on Wednesday and it was a nice visit. She is doing more or less allright, but it seems that now she might have some trouble with her thyroid. So she will have some examinations, but it seems difficult to get an early appointment. I will phone her tomorrow or so to hear about it.
We planned to may be take a little walk after our visit, but just that day Jan had trouble with his back so we just go home and he could take a tablet for it an lie down for a moment.
Never mind, we will do that on another day(hopefully also with some temperatures in the twenties!).

Rest of the week was rather quiet, which is good.
I must say, that my energy level isn't at the highest lately, so  don;t get as many things done as I sometimes want. But on the other hand, it is good to be able to take some easy time now, after all the stress there was in the past half year or so.
And there is always tomorrow to do a little job, that I didn;t do today(or am I acting like an ostrich now, hmmmm????????)

I better make this a shorter post now and sit a little while in the garden, because i can see that weather already is changing, and we might get some rain later, perhaps even with some thunderstorm.
It could pass us and just happen more in the south and east of the country. I rather have that kind of weather passing by, that thunderstorms with rain and who knows some hail and hard gusts of wind suddenly coming over).

Yes time to put on the coffe for Jan and me and put a new kit on for download. It is named Sparks of Memory, and hopefully you can use it for some lovely layouts.
Have a fantastic week and stay safe!

Download   HERE

Spring is creeping in!

Goodafternoon everybody!

Yes, slowly spring is getting here. Today we don;t have yet too high temperatures, but it is not bad. Specially when the sun is coming through, it is good to work in the garden(for a little while).
But... if all will come true this week we could have some great temperatures by Wednesday, meaning from 20-22C daytime! Now that would be fantastic. I am sure all the plants and seedlings would love it, because by now I think they almost develloped some swimming membranes in between their little roots LOL!
still some of the seedlings do come up, specially the different species of tomatoes. They are still very small,  okay, but they grow! And if they all become adult plants, we could have a fine harvest of them in summer.
As by now the garden still looks very bare, with large areas of just soil and nothing else, but hopefully in about a month time we will have some growing plants there. They are in the soil, but now have to start to grow and come above the soil with their new leaves and later lots of buds and flowers.

I don;t think I achieved a lot of things this week, apart from a few of the ususal house things, like vacuum cleaning, some dusting, the laundry and so, plus of course cooking our dinners and some shopping. Also took some me-time at the computer LOL, and I have a few still unfinished kits, but next week they should be ready to be uploaded.

I phoned Heidi, just to inform how she was doing. She seems to be doing okay, but I urged her to be careful and not do too much too soon. Somewhere this week I think Jan and I will pay her a little visit, and  we can take a little present too, I have two smaller pots with some tomatoe seedlings for her. If they will grow well, she will have to replant them in some bigger pots, but she can place them on her balcony.

It feels good to be able to spend, although little time, some time in the garden. For now Jan is doing the most of the work, well, I let him, although keeping an eye on it at times hahaha. 
Sometimes he is so enthousiastic with cleaning up the soil, making it look nice again that I fear he removed some little plants(without really noticing it). At the moment I am missing a few smaller ones, anyway.
Oh, it is a pity but on the other hand it gives opportunity to put something new there, isn;t it? In about two weeks we will have our King's day and I hope it will be good weather, so we can go out to visit one or two fairs, where they also have a kind of carbootsales. And there is a little plantmarket in town centre also that day. Which of course if kind of dangerous, but also so lovely to see and it might be we find one or two little plants for the garden then. 

Well, I rambled enough now, about time for me to post the clusters for the Cosy at Home kit and then wish you a very good week ahead.
Till next week!

Download    HERE

Spring is finally here.

Goodafternoon everybody!

Oh yes, the last two days we have nice weather, with temperatures around 17-19 even 20C(if the sun is shining. What a miracle!
It is good weather to be in the garden, and Jan is doing that as much as he can. I am still not the biggest help for him, still have to be careful with the knee.
But.... we have the start of tomatoes, if they all will grow well we might have several different sorts of tomatoes in summer. That would be fantastic. Some other seeds already come up now, and with the suddenly rather warm temperatures it helps a lot.
Now I am crossing fingers that the seeds Jan threw out in the garden in full soil, will come up too. If only half of it will do weel, we already will have lots of flowers and color this summer.

We had a very quiet week, which is a very good thing.
The operation of my friend Heidi went well, she came home the same day she went to hospital for it. She had to be there real early morning and could go home early evening. Now she has to take a lot of rest, to give all the wounds opportunity to heal well. I hope she will have the patience to give it enough time.

We will have about the whole week those nice temperatures, may be later it will drop to 16C, but that is still nice for now. Not tyoo much rain is expected, which is a good thing too, soil needs to dry a bit.
Oh, I really hope this kind of weather will stay on for some longer time, and if possible that we will have such nice temperatures on the 27th of April, when we will have our Kingsday. On that day the king will visit one or two twons in the Netherlands, together with the whole family, and in the whole country there will be fairs and all kind of activities. And good weather helps a lot to have a fun day.

I have a new kit for you today, named it Cozy at Home. Next week I will have the clusters for you, hope that is okay.
About time now I take a sandwich and perhaps take a look around the garden)only if the sun is shining LOL).
Take care, and till next week.

Download   HERE

Happy Easter to you all!

Goodafternoon everybody!

Easter wseather isn;t completly cooperating. Yesterday started rather good, with some sunshine, but later on we got rain and the temps dropped. Today it is rainy weather too and not all too nice temperature.
May be later in the afternoon it will get dry and then later this week we seem to be getting at least two days of around 15-16C!!! Awesome.
Then they say temperature will drop again, but okay, that still can change.
We really do need some warmer days with sunshine, so that all plants can really start growing and will have a good start .
Jan has sown a lot fo seeds( yeah he is turning into a real gardener LOL) and if all comes up well and do it's job, we should have a lot of lovely flowers and lots of tomatoes(all different species) this year.
He also planted some bulbs, so it will be always a surprise what is growing in our garden(Jan often forgets to place plantlabels).

That knee of mine is bothering me when I want to do something in the garden, still needs more time to heal completely. But every few days it is going a whee bit better so we don;t loose hope.

Next week my friend Heidi has to undergo an operation, to replace the central venous infusion catheter for the medicin she needs . She has a form of Pulmonary hypertension, but don;t ask me exactly which form, cause I don;t know(she explained it once but it was so complicated I just cannot remember and she doesn;t like to talk too much about it.) But she has a heavy form of it and it cannot be healed and normally people who have this disease don;t tend to have a very long life.So she walks around with a little pump that is connected to the catheter in her chest, that administers her medicin directly into a vien.
She had not long ago a replacement of the catheter, but it wasn;t done too well, as it seems. So now they need to place a new one and take out the older. The older is now in her right chest and the new one will be place in her left side. She cannot undergo complete anesthesia, because there is great risc she doesn;t comes out of it, her heartbeat will go too low. So she will have local anesthesia, which isnt the happiest of things! Hope all will go well and that she will be home soon. If operation goes well it might be she will be send home the same day again, which I find really too soon, but nowadays it is done this way. 
There is onely one hospital in The Netherlands where they do and treat this disease and it is in Amsterdam. Lucky for her it isnt too far away, but still every time she has a control of whatever she has to take that trip and it takes quite some time.
Let's cross fingers for her that all goes well and smooth.

Well, let's move on to something happier. We have to, because if we linger too long in all that heavy stuff, it makes us depressed and that isn't doing any good for anybody. Life just isn;t always very fair to people, and some have it more difficult than others. we just have to accept that and make the best of it.

I did do a bit of designing this week again. It is fun and distracting.
 have a kit for you today and I will give you Arlene's clusters at the same time. Hope you will like this one, it is named A World away.
I think I will finish this post now. I have a stew on the stove that should be ready by now, time to check it and then I might spend a bit of time on a new kit I started this week.
Have an awesome and blessed Easter and wonderful week ahead.!

Download   HERE

Download   HERE