Young birds still alive!

Goodafternoon everybody!

We had about two days of real nice weather, today already is a changing day and next week we will drop temperature from ca. 20C to 15C! what a change! But then later it might creep up again. It would be so nice if we had some steady weather with nice temperatures from around 21C for a longer time you know!
May be it will happen later in June.

The crushing of Jan's left over stone has gone well, the guy even crushed at the same time a tiny little one in his kidney. Jan is feeling okay again, let's hope it will stay that way. The 4th of June he has a control appointment with the urologist to hear all about the crushing etc.
But, let's be happy. So far so good.

I showed you last week a photo of one of the young blackbirds living in or around our garden. well, both youngsters are still around they even can fly much more, still want to be fed by the parents, but that will not last for long anymore LOL. It is fun to watch those birds working so hard for their children!
So I give them some extra's like some bread and also small diced pieces of apple.
Then we have of course our parakeets around and also some great tits and a kind of small finches. Can you tell I love all the creatures that visit our garden??

During this week I didn't establish great things, but I found time to do some grocerie shopping each day at another place, and I didn;t have to rush, which is already a great thing. I found some good things for our stock for a nice discount price(I ALWAYS love discounts), also did buy some more plants for the garden(of which I must take still some photos).
Now our garden hose has a litle hole in it somewhere. We did find it and for now could close it with some tape but we could do with a new one.
But there are also other things that are needed and they should come first.
Like first Jan has to have a new denture. 75% of the price is covered by our health insurance, so we still have to pay perhaps between 300-400 euros ourselves.
Then I do need a new oven(I miss cooking in the oven, it is so handy and tasty too), at the same time we should replace the extractor above it(ours is really old and doesn;t work properly anymore). And our fridge is on for replacement too.
So there are quite some expenses to be made, and we a small amount of savings but we cannot do it all at the same time. Well, we will work it out in the months to come.
When all that will be done  surely will feel much more lighthearted, LOL.
And you know, it isn;t good to plan too much and certainly not too far ahead, because always there's something unexpected that will happen.

I also did take a little bit of time to make a new kit for you. It is just a very small one, but...... it is something.
I named it Springtime Sunshine, and  has lots of bright yellow in it.

And now I think it is time for me to make myself a cup of tea and perhaps do a bit of a solitaire game(on line) and I also have to keep an eye on a pan on the stove with some stew meat in it, it will be for this evening and is bubbling already for an hour or two(will need some more to get really tender).
We will have some potatoe salad with it that is leftover from yesterday evening and we have some strawberries for dessert. Good enough for Sunday dinner, don;t you agree?
Then tomorrow I will do some housework again, a laundry, some ironing, and some cleaning. I almost get tired by only thinking of it, hahahaha.
No, I certainly will do some of it, and if I feel energetic enough I could do it all.
We will see and cross fingers, okay?
Now I wish you all a lovely week to come.

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Young life of Spring

Goodafternoon everybody!

Short weather report: on and off weather, meaning days with temps of ca. 13C, little rain, sometimes a day with sunshine and suddenly temperatures around 20C, like yesterday, but today it is again greyish, less warm and next week will be a  bit of everything, some rain, mostly cloudy, temperatures not higher than may be 16C. Not the kind of weather I want for the second half of May.

I told you we have a pair of blackbirds with a nest in our garden. Last week we found a youngster in the garden, still little, perhaps fallen out of the nest. we tried to put it back in the ivy near the nest but that didn;t work. The parents however tried to feed it on the ground, but two days later Jan found it dead in the garden. Probably it was still to tiny and the nights were rather harsh.
But.... they had another and we found that one too in the garden a few days later. Yet this one was much fatter and was also fed by both parents, as far as we could see. It was going around in our garden, finding all the time great hiding places.
Unfortunately we lost track of it so we don;t know if it is still alive. I do hope so.
It is possible, because we see the two parents searching for food in our garden(I give them bread crumbs and some tiny apple pieces) and going somewhere with it. So may be this youngster will survive. I do have a photo of it, when it was sheltering near our patio where Jan was sitting.

Isn;t it sweet????


I also have some photos of our garden, specially of two new plants I bought.
First one is a Convulves, it will grow to about 60 cms. and it should flower all summer right to october!

Then I also bought us a bush or little tree, I think it will grow more into a amsll bush, it is named an Acer palmatum, and if all is well and it survives, in autumn it will color into orange or dark red color(the leaves, of course)
Now it is still very small, I hope you can see it well on this photo:

And as last I have a photo of a Petunia" Millionbells". I love the two colors on it.

So as you would think, I spend a bit of time in the garden, and yes, a little bit I did. Very relaxing, I must say.
But there were also the usual things that took my time, of course.
On the bright side I can tell that by natural way Jan already produced two tiny little stones, so he was wondering if it still would be necessary to go to hospital tomorrow for the crushing operation. Well, I told him we are going, and we can show the doctor the stones. Still I think they will do the crushing, I don;t think all bits are already gone from the uteris.
so tomorrow we will have to get up very early in the morning, because we have to be at the appointment at 08.45!! Gosh, it will be hard to wake up at may be 07.00 already! We aren;t used to that anymore LOL!

Yesterday I did a favour to my friend Heidi. Yes, In the afternoon I went to her house to take a walk with the little dog. The family was on a day out and she asked me if I could do the walking. I did so and the dog was happy and Heidi too. I was lucky that it was nice weather yesterday, and after I did the job, I walked to the city center(about 15 minutes walk from her house) and did visit a couple of stores and aftern an hour or so I went home with the tram.
and by then I was real happy to have a seat with a cup of tea!

Oh, did any of you by chance watched the Eurovision songcontest on Saturday?
We did, because we had a singer there representing our country, Duncan Laurence(I think I already posted a link to his song last week?????)
Anyway, he did win the contest! At first it didn;t seem to happen but he got a lot of votes of the televoting public! We didn;t win that contest for a very long time, the last one was, I believe in 1975!
So congratulations to Duncan.
(If you would like to hear some of the song it will be easy to find on the net)

Well, I think I take my leave now, not without presenting to you some lovely clusters from Arlene, made with the Cozy Home kit.
Then cross your fingers for Jan, that after tomorrow Jan will be without any little stones, and that it will stay that way too. (He will have his control appointment in two weeks time, then we will know more).
I wish everybody a very good week, with some real nice weather!

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My creativity is far away at the moment!

Goodafternoon everybody!

We have not really bad weather, although it is still too cool for the time of year.
Nevertheless we can sit in the garden at moments, because the sun is shining and doing its best! It is the wind that makes it colder.
But later this week temps will rise slowly but almost sure to around 17-18C, which is already a lot better. Wind is changing from direction, which is a good thing too.

How is it with Jan? Well, he has at least no painful cramps anymore, (as far as I know!), and he had to go to the urologist on Thursday. Unlucky there was no possibility for an appointment in "our"hospital, which is easy to reach with the tram and also near. He had to go to another hospital which is about half an hour ride with the tram. He didn;t like it , but hey, there was no other option.
They were so nice to plan taking a photo of the belly and so before the doctor's appointment, all in the same hospital.
And it came out that a little stone is still sitting in the uteris, and not coming out by natural way, so on the 20th of May Jan will have to go to hospital where they will crush the stone and then the crushed material will have to leave the body by natural way.
Hopefully it will go quick and after a little while all will be gone.
First however he will have to make a heart echo tomorrow, that because of the fluid he is retaining in his under legs. It isn;t that much but also not the way it should be.
Alltogether he isn;t having the best of time at the moment. I am already glad he hasn't the pains now, and all things that you do at the WC are going rather okay, so that is something good.

With all this going on I am not feeling very creative at the moment. I should do some designing, I guess, but nothing is coming out of my hands at the moment.
So I am very sorry to have to say to you that i don;t have a download for you today. This didn;t happen very often I think in the past years, anyway not for too long. And I do hope to have something ready for you next week, we'll see how things go. I do feel kind of guilty, you know. I have some lack of energy and if I have some I need to spend it on the daily stuff, like some grocerie shopping and a bit of caring for the house like dusting or cleaning or vacuum cleaning, well, all that.

But we do have lots of pleasure from our new tv. It is such a diffence with the old one! And how fantastic is it not having to worry about turning the tv on and out anymore(because we didn;t know if we could turn the old one on LOL).

It still is nice weather at the moment so I think I will have a moment in the garden with a cup of tea. And of course later I will make our dinner, I will make self made french fries(yummie), with chicken satay and some salad with cherry tomatoes, cucumber, salad and some apple.

Hopefully we will have a week without any stressing events, no sudden health issues for Jan especially.
If all goes as it should we might still have a good summer to come, ROFL.
Stay safe and take care of yourselves.

We had quite a week!

Goodafternoon everybody!

Weather report: not all too good weather, although there is some sunshine every now and then. But the temperatures aren;t great, just may be 10C-12C.
Could be that later next week we will have again some rise in temperature, to around 15C.
Not yet something to take a hoorray jump in the air, but already better than noww.

Gosh we had quite a week! The week started rather well, Jan feeling already much better, but somewhere Tuesday evening he started to have some trouble in the tummy again, again with some painful cramps and so (but no obstipation, like the other time). It hold on the next day so I didn;t hesitate too long and called for the doctor the next morning. It was a pity that our doctor was on a week;s holiday so we got the "replacement"doctor(seemed to be the same doctor of my friend Heidi and she told me he was a very good one, some luck you do need to have).
doctor came Thursday afternoon, examined Jan and said that we should call him right next morning if situation wasn;t any better. It wasn;t so I had to go over to his office to get a letter for first aid at the hospital.
We went there and Jan was scanned etc. and after being there from around 10.30 morning to 15.00 afternoon we heard that there wasn;t a twisting in the intestines or something else there, which already was a relief.
Then came the urologist and told us that Jan had two tiny little stones in the ureter causing that pain etc.
She gave him some medication for it to widen the ureter and hopefully the stones would comes out "naturally". He also got some pain medication in case the pain was too much. He will have an appointment next week for a new scan to look if the stones have gone and also an appointment for the urologist.
He also has to go to hospital a day earlier to give a bloodsample. 
All together not the best of weeks, you can imagine.!
On top of it all out tv died out. Well, almost. If we wanted to switch it on it wouldn't do that, we had to wait for an hour or so to try again and if we were lucky we would have again image on tv. 
This happened a bit too early in the year to be honest, we knew our tv was a very old one, but hoped it would hold on for a few months more. 
Well, it didn;t, I think it was a case of Murphy's law here.
So we decided to buy us a new one. we planned that for Saturday.
I already saw it would be very hard for Jan to go to the shop, so I asked help from a friend, asking if he could drive us to the shop and back and help us if necessary with carrying the tv. It was no problem.
On Saturday morning he came but Jan felt so awefull, that I went alone with our friend. He suggested to go to a shop where he often goes for a tv or kitchen stuff like an oven or so and he was very pleased about the queality and specially about their service. It was very close to our house, so of course we went there.
I found a good tv, may be a little over bidget but still not expensive, really.
But now we had to get it home and install it. Here comes the fantastic bit.
Our friend told the owner of the shop he advised me coming there because of their great service and he asked if there would be a possibility that the tv was delivered at my home and still that very day!!!
And guess what??? They did so!! So I payed the tv, we went home, had a cup of coffee(Jan also was up again, still not well, but a little better). We didn;t see that friend for a long time, so we had a nice catch up chat.
At 3 in the afternoon two men came to deliver the tv and installed it completely with new cables etc. and installed the programms and so on.
All done in about half an hour I guess. It were very nice guys and patient and they explained all very well too.
I gave them a cup of coffee and afterwards a little tip, because I was soooooo
happy about that whole thing, and having the tv home at the same day, that was amazing! 
Oh boy, that new tv is so much better than the old one. This one has the new screen of course(is it LED???) and the screen itself is a bit larger than the old one and real clear, and good speakers in it, so we are happy with that at least.
Now we will have to wait and see what happens next week. Jan is feeling somewhat better, it differs a bit every hour. I am already glad if the stool is going more or less good, we don;t want another obstipation, do we?
He still has moment of sudden cramps and they hurt quite a lot. Lucky they hold on only for a few seconds, still it isn;t nice. I feel so sorry for him and also aweful because I cannot help him.
We njust have to adjust a bit our food for the next few days, better to try to eat some light digestive food.

Despite of it all I had a few moments I could finish a new kit for you. I would have loved to make more, but  don't have the quiet feel in my system that I need for that. Probably you will understand what I mean.
Still I am happy I can offer you a new kit, named it Cozy Home.
Okay, that is all for now, hoefully next week there will be more happy news.
Take care of yourselves and your loved ones!

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