All more or less quiet around here.

Goodafternoon everybody!

Very late today, first  slept longer than normal, then I first prepaired dinner stuff for this evening, all in very slow pace, so finally here  I am.
Weather isn;t the finest here, too cold for me, although not yet freezing. But a bit grey and temperatures around 3-5C, lucky wth not much wind.
But.... later this week there were brighter forecasts of the weather, we night reach spme temperatures of 8 or even 11 C again. Whoooooo, that would be nice.


This week all was kind of allright, only thing was that I had stomach troubles almost every day. Sometimes during evening, sometimes at night, and no, it isn;t pleasant at all. I know it can happen at times, but this is going on for too long time, so I am afraid I will have to make an appointment for my doctor tomorrow. I donlt know what he will be able to do, I think he will send me to hospital and may be they will  do an endoscopy. I had one several years ago, so I know what it is, they only will have to give me a light  anesthesia. But we'll see after I had my visit at the doctor.
Jan had the control appointment with his internist at the hospital and all was going quite well, the values looked good so happy news there.

I did some more designing this week, and guess what????? I even already made 1 Christmaskit!! And am halfway on a second. Wow. I don;t know where the energy or inspiration came from, but I am happy with it.
In about 1 1/2 week lots of children will be excited and happy too, because then there will be the Sinterklaas holiday. It is on the 5th o december. And if all is well here, Jan and  will start decorating the day after for Christmas. Unbelievable that it is alreday so near!
I think I already know what I will make for dinner at Christmas. But I will tell you another day about that.

Now I will finish this post, not much for you to read, but at least you kniow I am still alive LOL.
I have for you the clusters from Arlene, she made with the Just Imagine that kit.
Hope you are all safe and healthy, take care of yourselves!Till next week.

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Getting colder and colder

Goodafternoon everybody!

Yes, it definately is getting colder here. Today temperature isn;t much more as around 6-7C, and later this week it will drop even more to just 4C and and at night here and there there already is some frost at the ground. Brrrrr, I don'tlike it, the more because we have an Eastern wind blowing, which makes it feel even colder. To have a positive note on this weather report, we still have some sunshine, so it looks somewhat friendly. But...... we may have some snowfall around the middle of the week. Perhaps it will be only wet snow, but still..... the white stuff is trying to make some kind of invasion LOL!

Yesterday a lot of children were all excited because Sinterklaas was coming to the Netherlands on his boat from Spain, with a lot of presents for all the good children!

It is tradition that during his stay here the children are allowed to put their shoe in front of the chimney( or near a door, because not many people have a real fire place anymore, and normally the Black Peters came through the chimney) and the next morning they might find some sweets in it.
I remember it well from my childhood and it is a wonderful time.
A bit the same as Santa Claus in a lot of countries.

In our life it is rather quiet at the moment. We do our daily things, it fills the time always more than you think.
I wrapped up the Christmas presents I need to send away in a box, and I am proud of myself, hahaha. The box is standing near to me and I will bring it to the post this week. I know, it is rather early, but I really want it to arrive on time, last year it took such a long time, it only arrived after Christmas! Now that isn;t what we want, is it?
And you will see, that it will arrive within may be two weeks, so much too early, but better this than the alternative!

Today I already prepared our meal for this evening, well, I did cut up all the things needed for it. I will make a stew with onion and carrot. I don;t know if you have ever eaten it or even heard of it. It is a very known winter meal here in Holland, and best is it with a piece of smoked sausace(it is a raw one that you have to warm up(not boil) in hot water for around 20-30 minutes.

I have the recipe for you(one of the many variations LOL), if you might want to try it . It is for 4 persons, so easy to make more or less.
Ingredients
1 kg of winter carrots
1 kg of potatoes
500 grams of onions
1 block of beef broth
Smoked sausage(but you also can have a meat ball, or beef stew with it, or whatever is to your liking)
pepper
salt

 Preparation

     Cook the potatoes for 15 - 20 minutes, cut the onions into pieces and the winter carrots into strips.
     Boil the carrots and onions together with the block of beef broth for about 20 minutes.
     Drain the potatoes and vegetables together in a pan and coarsely mash. Then make the smoked sausage warm.
     Then season the stew with salt and pepper. The smoked sausage can be served separately or in small pieces through the mash.
Also very nice with it are small smoked bacon strips(we can buy them raw here and then we fry them ourselves in a frying pan for some minutes). Then you have to be careful with the salt, because the bacon already is really salty!
Have a bit of nice thick gravy with it and ..... enjoy your meal.

That was it for this week.  I think I will sit down on the couch and watch a bit of sport. May be I will be brave enough this week to start on a Christmas kit. I should start early on it, because I am rather slow in designing at the moment.For today I have a fresh finished kit(just finished and uploaded it yesterday!), named Just Imagine that.......


Wishing you a lovely week, stay safe and healthy!

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Hopefully one day the world will learn!

Goodafternoon everybody!

Not much happened here. Weather is okay, with mostly temperatures around 12-14C, one day a bit more filled with sunshine than another, but still not bad for the time of year.

Today in many countries there was 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I.! I watched some bits of it on tv, and it was very impressive.
This was a terrible war, with so many people killed, as well soldiers as civilians, and then you will have to count all the wounded, of which some survived, and many died after a short time.

World War One was one of the deadliest conflicts in the history of the human race, in which over 16 million people died. The total number of both civilian and military casualties is estimated at around 37 million people. The war killed almost 7 million civilians and 10 million military personnel.
 Many people died, not from combat, but from diseases caused by the war, a figure estimated at around 2 million deaths. 6 million people went missing during the war and were presumed dead. Two out of three soldiers died in battle, the rest died due to infections or disease.

When you take time for a minute just to think about it, it is shocking.
And it is true that we never should forget.
It is also necessary to understand a little bit about WW1, to understand why there was so soon the WW2!. But we never should forget and we also must tell about it to our children.

After such hard times, you might expect that finally people would have learned from it, but no, there still if war going on on our planet, and you wonder why it is so hard to live next to eachother in peace.
Leave everyone in his or her dignity, respect eachother, 
accept that every person can have a different opinion, but that this should not be a hindrance to simply interact and live together!

Gosh, this is quite a "heavy"start of my blogpost. But we have to continue to spread this peaceful message, otherwise mankind will be lost totally.

On a lighter note though, I received an email of my niece in France. All is going well there, and she will be moving from the north of France to the south(lucky girl!). We don't have much contact, but every now and then we send eachother a little email, and that is a nice thing.
She is about the only family that I have(well, there are some distant nieces and nephews and so on somewhere on this world,) but she is about the closest.

I received some papers this week from my pension fund, I have to fill in a few forms, nothing much, so they can start paying my pension(it's the one I build up during the time I had a job) and that will be around the middle of next year. That done, another step is done towards the life of a pensionado LOL.

Oh, I also made a step towards Christmas package sending. I did wrap already a lot of presents, still have to look for one or two more and then I will have to find the right box.The one i have now I think will be just a little bit too large. I will find a right one, I am sure. Not far from our house there is a toy shop, and towards our Sinterklaas and also Christmas, they often put a lot of boxes in a small container. That all are boxes that came in filled with all kind of toys and they normally fold them flat, but during this time of year they are so kind to put out a lot of boxes of all formats outside the shop. So soon I will be able to search for the "right"box LOL.

Good, this is all there is to tell, I have for you a set of clusters from Arlene, made with the "In the Library "kit. hopefully next weekend I will have a new kit for you.
I wish you a wonderful day and week.

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Oh luxury! I can tap water again!

Goodafternoon everybody!

Today is my friend Edna is having her birthday, so from here I wish you a Happy Birthday and that you will have an awesome day!

The weather here is quiet, not bad at all, last few days we had temperature around 10C, it might creep up this week a bit to 13-14C.
We have sunshine with some clouds, not much wind, so I am not disappointed about this weather.

You know i had trouble with the tap at the sink in the kitchen.
Well, Monday morning I called my plumber and he was so nice to come that very same day. He fixed the tap(he put in a new one), without having to remove the sink, he could reach the tap with some gymnastic movements LOL.
At the same time he cleaned the central heating kettle, so all was done on the same day and for a very nice price. It was a lot cheaper as I thought it would be.
I am sooo happy with the new tap, with this one it is als easier to put a bucket under it than with the old one.
I believe that also Jan was happy with the fact, that our plumber did the job, bought the new tap etc.

The rest of the week was quiet, filled with all kind of little jobs done in the house, nothing really exciting, but I had enough excitement with the tap not working last week and all the commotion, so for me it was more than okay.

I didn;t do much work at the computer, I hope  will have more inspiration this week to finish a kit and then slowly to start with some Christmas themed ones. I should make at least 2. I must say I am a bit lazy this year with designing, perhaps it has somewhat to do withthe trouble we had end of last year and also start of this one, I don;t really know.
Also it might have to do with the fact that my laptop is so very slow, I hope it will hold on for about another 6 months or so, by then we will be in a slightly better financial position (having state pension and a small supplementary pension, no more social security stuff, that will be giving a lot of peace of mind, I hope) and I could buy me a new one, or good second hand one. But.... we must wait for that still about 6 months, because at the moment state pension isn't anymore at 65 years but in our case 66 + 4 months. (We sould have been born one or two years earlier, then we still would have had the old regulation of 65 years. Yes, the government in all its wisdon(hahaha) decided some years ago that start of year of pension should be at a higher age. we are still kind of lucky, because it is now at 67 years. 

This week i think I should make some time for wrapping up Christmas presents, that I have to send away in a package. I want to send it early, because last year it took an terrible long time to arrive at destination, so I want to bring it to the post office around perhaps the 3rd week of November. Better it arrives may be one or two weeks before Christmas than too late again.

Must take a look in the kitchen, because I have a stew on the stove bubbling. Just a minute.......................okay, that is ready. Easy cooking that is, now I only have to boil a couple of potatoes to go with that and done. When i finished this post I want to make a small pan with stew pears, it is the season again for them and I love to have them as dessert.

Today I have for you some fantastic clusters made by Arlene, made with the Halloween kit of last week. 
Have a wonderful day and week, take care of yourselves!
 

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