Glad I am sitting now.

 Goodafternoon everybody!

Weather isn;t fantastic, today just around 13-14C, some drops of rain, for now again sunshine. Last week it was a tiny bit better, but stilll some degrees too cold for the time of year. Never mind, next week about from wednesday temps will go up againand it looks nice.

Gosh, I am happy to sit now for a while. I had a very quiet morning, watch some detective , had a sandwich, a visit from Muppet, all great. Then around noon I had a coffee with Jan, watched the news on tv than finally put on some clothes, hahaha. Then I decided to change the duvet covers, saw that there was a lot of dust under the bed, and took the vacuum cleaner to really give it a good cleaning. When that all was ready I went into the garden to fasten a small trellis better to the garden wall. Then with Jan we filled two small hanging planters I bought yesterday. I will make a foto next week of them with the plants in it. did some more stuff in the garde and now I thought it enough for a Sunday. Lalter i still have to prepare dinner.

Jan received this week an appoinment for an endoscopy, it should be next week Thursday, but just that day there is announced a strike of the trams an busses in our city! Well, I didn;t want to bother a friend to bring us with the car and a taxi is rather expensive, so I right away called the hospital, explained the situation and asked if there was a possibility to change the appointment. Well, there was, it will be now the 23rd of June late afternoon. Okay by us, and I think it is rather quick.

What more did I do this week? Well, usual stuff, of course, but I also went out for some special shopping stuff and had to go to a specialty shop. Pity at the moment they didn;t have the things I wanted, may be I can find it in a bigger department of them another day. But.... I also did buy us an airfryer. After long thinking and deliberating with Jan, we have one now. We don;t eat a lot of fried things, but did it till now still in a simple pan with some oil.  It's okay, of course, but a little bit dangerous too and the most annoying is always to change the oil after some time and clean that pan, terrible. Now we have a simple airfryer, they say it is even healthier to prepare the fries in it, or some savory snacks or whatever. Perhaps we will try it out next week. This could be delivered home with no costs, so I didn;t have to carry the big box. It was aready delivered next day, perfect!

This is a small one, very simple one, enough for preparing for us two, or even 3 persons. Well, I am curious how it will work and taste. I saw on the web that there are already a lot of sites with recipes and tips etc. So you can gues what I will doing when I sit at the computer this week........

Okay, time to drink my chocolate, it has cooled down just enough to be drinkable.

Wishing you all a wonderful week, with lots of smiles!

A quiz where you can learn something from

 Goodafternoon everybody!

Still good weather here, although this week there was some rain, and even heavy one in the south of the country and strong wind, looking like a hurricane. But in general here we have a little bit less warmer temperatures, but still sunshine most of the time, so may be next week temperatures will let us down somewhat, and later on it will go up.

It was a quiet week, as usual, but I kind of like it that way. Still there are happening things, of course, but some of them I forget and some of them aren;t really interesting to tell, hahaha. Oh yes, kind of a shock was our anual sttlement of gas and electricity. Pffffffff, we still have some money back, but the monthly payment has gone up drastically, saying it is all due to the was in Ukrain and the sanctions we have made on Russia. Well, I believe a little bit of it, but to raise the gas that much, is kind of brutal, really. Lots of people will have trouble paying it every month. The more that costs of living has gone up a lot too, I notice it every week when I go grocerie shopping. I wonder how long the energy prices will stay at this level, because it will be almost impossible to pay. And to change the kind of heating(here we have it mostly by gas) into different ones is still very, very expensive, not to do for large part of the population. So it will be interesting to see how all this will evolve.

Well, let's put economy at the side for now, and talk about some art. We have a quiz here "2 for 12", where there is a team of two that will have to answer 12 questions about all kind of subjects. They have the possibility to search in books or on part of the web, but the time one of the two is searching it costs money. At the end, if they have twelve letters(if they did find or knew everything) they will have to make a word with them. Then a second team gets about the same sort of questions(but the the very same) and it counts who has the most money left. It is a difficult quiz but real interesting, because you learn something from it. As it was last Friday evening, one of the question was about a name of a female painter of the Renaissance.  It was about Sofonisba Anquissola. I never heard of her, but I saw some work of her during the quix and it was beautiful so I looked her up on the web and found more of her paintings. Beautiful, in my opinion.I have two links for you where you can read and look about her life and work, if you are interested.

 

https://www.europeana.eu/en/exhibitions/pioneers/sofonisba-anguissola#ve-anchor-intro_15078-js

 
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/anguissola-sofonisba/

I found it very interesting to learn about this artists and there are lots more women artists of that period and a bit later too, that are almost not known and made beautiful work. Here is a Dutch women panter of the Golden age, with beautiful flower paintings:

https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/our-collection/artworks/151-vase-with-flowers/

Good I have given you something to look at, if you want to of course, but if you have a spare 5 minutes why not take a look?

Now I think i will go and prepare a little bit already for our dinner, I will make a pasta with fresh made vegetable "sauce". like dice of aubergine(egg plants), small cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic, some tomatoe puree added with a bit of the cooking water of the pasta, some other veggies I have bought already cut small, and oh yes, also some chorizo and another spicy small sausage and i think we will have a good meal, with strawberries as desert or may be soft cheese with fresh cut orange slices(I have bought some oranges and they are sweet and juicy, real yummie).

Wishing you all a wonderful week in safety and good health.

Nice encounter, lovely weather, oh wow.

 Goodafternoon everybody!

Today it is really fantastic weather, lots of sunshine, temperature around 23C, may be pity the wind is just slightly too blowing, but hey, nervertheless no complaining. It feels like it is already summertime!

It was a rather quiet week I think although I did some necessary shopping etc. and that always takes time. If I remember well it was on Tuesday that I went to a shopping street somewhat further so I took the tram. It was already nice weather so good to be out and I found what I was looking for. We needed to have a smoke alarm(from July this year it is legally required to have them im the house. Of course it is good to have them anyway, but we didn;t till now. so I bought two, that have a battery for 10 years in it and attachable with magnets. Wonderful. And even for not a very hugh price and good quality. I also bought us new cheese, we do eat that a lot you know. And I found Jan a pair of garden "working shoes" like these

They even were in sale, now how about that! He is happy with them they fit well, are comfortable. 

And when I was looking for them in that shop someone adressed me, with the words"No, I cannot belive it but it is you!"I looked up and had to grab deep into my memory but I found the name with the face, hahaha. It was a daughter from an acquaintance from long ago. Jan always liked her, even sometimes was v=baby sitting her when she was very young!

It was nice to see her, she looked well and how about that, she even had a child, about half a year old. Gosh it was nice chatting to her for a little while, I gave her our phonenumbers, (stupid me didn't write hers down), but I am sure one of these days she will phone us or whatsapp us.

I had an appoinment with my doctor this for evaluation of the stomach problems. Well, I almost don;t have them anymore, so he gave me a new prescription for the small tablets and I am happy.

In between some grocerie shopping and house keeping(must admit I did very little, hahaha), I also spend some time gardening and even sitting in the sun for short times and it felt great.

Today I have an easy job for our dinner, because I made yesterday a big pan of soup and there is left more than enough for today too. When we might have some appetite later in the evening, I have some French cheese, a bit of Italian sausage for sandwiches, so we will not starve, LOL.

Good, the sun is on the patio again(disappears for a little while because there are some high trees), but around this time we have the sun shining on it again. So I think I will sit there for a while, may be read a bit or crochet a bit.

Wishing you a wonderful week, safe and well.

Weather that makes me happy.

 Goodafternoon everybody!

Yes, we have quite good weather, with a lot of sunshine and not much wind, temperatures around 15-16 today, earlier this week higher, and next two days we might have even over 20C and then later in the week it might rain a little bit with temperatures of around 18-19C.

This week Jan already had to water the garden, because it  isn;t raining, and if.... well, just so little that it isnt enough for the soil and the plants.

At last I went to the haridresser and oh, it feels so good to have my hair cur really short. It is a lot easier to handle too.

Not much happened this week, I did my things as usual, and also spent quite some time in the garden. To do some gardening, of course, but also just sitting on the patio in the sun, with a cup of tea and sometimes do some crocheting. I am now still in full swing with making the pillow covers, it is a nice project, doesn;t take too long. I first make a few covers and then sew them together.

My friend Heidi says it is going a little bit better with her, tis week she got again some aniti biotics and they seem to help. Still she will need some time to recover completely I think.

I don;t have much to tell so I better finish this post and will try to have some more interesting to tell next week, hahaha. 

It looks nice in the garden now, so I will sit there for a while, with some crocheting,  Will be good to get some color on the face and the arms.

Wishing you all a wonderful week, and hoping everybody is safe and well.

New plants, King's day, so a week with variation.

 Goodafternoon everybody!

The whole week we have temperatures of around 12-13C, sometimes a whee bit more when sun is shining. It is at the moment colder than it should be this time of the year, but hope never fails, may be end next week the temperatures will go up slightly. It is although very dry , I think yesterday night we had some rain, but we will have to keep an eye on the garden, and sometimes water it.

This week we had our king's day, celebration of our King's birthday, the whole family visited a town in the south of the Netherlands, Maastricht, they were lucky with the weather, it was dry and even sunny. After two years of Covid and all kind of restrictions, finally it could be celebtrated as usual. It was nice to see it on tv.  I have a photo of the Royal family for you:

From left to right: Princess Ariane, Princess Alexia, Queen Maxima, King Willem-Alexander, and eldest daughter Princess Amalia.

Tuesday Jan had to go to hospital for an echo, just control, seemed to be all okay, it was for Jan a bit of an effort, but all went well. He also had to go to blooddraw, but now it seems to be necessary to make an apointment by phone! It never was. You could always go there, take a number and wait. So often it didn;t take long waiting time. Well, at the end he could have it done, but had to wait on the ones that had an appointment(but not always were already present on time!). Bonkers. Okay, now we know for next time, but still I find it strange.

Good, in the mean time Jan was doing all that I did some shopping, came home, prepared dinner( I think I made it for two days).

Wednesday was King's Day, so I was really lazy, and didn;t do anything! Whooooo!

Thursday I went for the last grocerie shopping bit, also bought some soil and three new bigger planters. even turned on the washingmachine in between and managed to make a phonecall to Heidi. Gosh, where did I find the energy?? Now that we had three new planters, yeah, you can guess already.......... we had to have some new plants to fill them. We still are waiting for some seedlings to grow and a few summer bulbs to come, but you can ALWAYS have a few plants more, LOL! So Jan had something to do for a day or two, I almost didn;t interfere when he did the planting. The plants I bought on Friday, found some nice ones and I was in such a good shape that I even used the vacuum cleaner and.... hey, mopped the floor of the kitchen, the sitting room and the hallway. Specially the sitting room could do with a good cleaning of the floor, and it feels good to have it done.

You can imagine that during this weekend I took it easy on myself, just made a quick soup for dinner(and we took a sandwich later in the evening). Today I still have the soup and I will make us two roast chicken legs. That should be enough for the evening. Easy, peasy and also tasty.

I've made a few photos of the garden, some of the new plants, and some of oldies.But slowly we are getting some color in the garden which is nice to see.

I just love pansies, can you tell?

Here some pending small petuni"s, they bloom all summer long, if you just do some deadheading every now and then.

This is a "Choysia", I took a small cutting some years ago, and this year it is blooming for the first time. Isn;t that great?

This is the Digitalis(Foxglove) I bought last week, I hpe it will grow much taller, should reach something like 90cms.

One of he new planters with some of the newly bought plants.

And as every year our azalea is showing off, and on the right a daisy plant, also newly bought.

And some more color in the border.

Well, I hope I gave you a bit of spring feeling, and now it is time to finish. I wish you all a wonderful week, stay safe.