Come sweet Spring, my door is open

Goodmorning everybody!

As on Sunday we still walked in snow, now it's all gone and temps are creeping up. Not that we can say it's warm, but at daytime we have no frost and even at night in our part it stays just on 0 or a degree higher.
I should take a look in the garden to see if some spring bulbs are showing their heads already, like the snowbell and crocus.
I surely hope that winter is truly gone now, but untill April you are never safe here.
Yesterday I went out to do shopping, it still was real fresh but I am not complaining. After I was back, I kicked myself in the bottom and took the vacuum cleaner, after dusting the room. In the meanwhile the laundry was turning in the washing machine, and I changed the bedsheets.
Wile I was busy in the room Jan took all his plants into the kitchen and re-potted them into fresh soil. Seeing him busy with them, he sure looks a bit like a mama duck ROFL.

May be today I will make another quick tour to the supermarket, didn;t get all I needed yesterday. They sometimes are out of stock of a few things, which is very annoying.
Then I will prepare already a bit our dinner, I saw a nice recipee on tv lately for a chili con carne. Hope it will turn out well, and I think I will give some rice with it.
It's also time to go to the market again, we need some fresh fruit again, have to think about our vitamines!
If it stays dry today, there may be a chance for the visit, or may be Jan will go alone and I will stay home, and take a bit of computertime.

The kit for today is "Days to Cherish". Found some great illustrations in old children's books and used them here.
Have a fantastic day!

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It looks as if real winter is over.

Goodmorning everybody!

On Saturday is was still real cold and I just made a very quick walk to the shop for the newspaper and was rather glad to be at home again. Yesterday it was already less cold, but..... we had some snowfall. All day long it was on and off, but it wasn;t snowing very hard, and sometimes it was just between snow and rain.
I was happy it wasn;t too cold yesterday, cause we had to go to Séverine's birthday party. Well, the real party with her friends she had on her birthday, yesterday it was more for grandparents and family and some friends. It was nice, but it's not one of my favourite visits to make LOL. I like it much better when I make a visit to Heidi when she's alone, then we have time to chat about all kind of things. During a "party"visit it is almost impossible.

That's about all I can tell you about our weekend activities. Not much hey? But oh so good. Specially Saturday I had time to do some designing, nice and cosy, while Jan was reading his newspaper and we listened to some music. Oh, yesterday evening we saw a part of anregistration of a concert of Adèle in the Royal Albert Hall. I liked her from the beginning she was getting a bit famous, but she is really good! I especially love the songs "Make you feel my love" and "Someone like you".
There are a lot of nice or even good popsingers around but she is more than excellant.

I think, I will spend some time at the computer today too. Well, first will do some more boring stuff, you know, house stuff, but in the afternoon I want to finish a new started kit.Seems like a good idea to me LOL.
As it soon will be Valentine's Day, I thought you might like another Valentine kit. But you can easily use it for other kind of layouts too. I named it "Endless Love".
Have a great day!

Download    HERE

May be soon frost is gone!

Goodmorning everybody!

We still have to endure a few days with considerable frost, specially during the night, but it seems that after the weekend we will have temperatures above zero again. Can't wait! LOL.
It's a pity for the organizers of the Elfstedentoch in the north of the Netherlands, in Friesland, but for now they decided it will not take place, because at some parts of the route the ice isn't yet thick enough. It's a good thing they are careful, because when this event takes place there are hundreds of contestants on the ice plus a few thousand people to watch it. And they can;t take any risk with the strength of the ice. It could end in an disaster, if an accident happens, just because the ice breaks.!

I did get a few errands done in the last two days, (defreezing my freezer,it was necessary, cause there was too much ice there. So with the cold outside, I could place all the stuff in the garden, of course well protected, and oh my, lots of ice came down from the freezer. Now it's all clean and well sorted again). Today I must go into town to search for a present for Séverine. At the moment the weather looks rather well, although it's still cold, the sun is shining, so it might be nice to be outside for a while.

I don;t know what has happened with our cats, but suddenly they like to play a bit with a little ball and mouse again. Brodski always was the most "playful"of the two, but we really got a shock when Dikkie Dik suddenly started to play too! In the past years he hardly moved when he was inside! Of course after tossing around the mousie a few times, he HAD to take a rest again LOL!

I have a nice kit in blue for you today, named "Dreamtime". I was rather productive again and even have another Valentines kit forr you. Well, you could use it for that day, but will also be nice for other kind of layouts. That will be on Monday I think.
Have a wonderful weekend!

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Still cold, but that's winter

Goodmorning everybody!

Woops, I had to go out yesterday, but I was glad I tucked myself good and warm. It wasn;t so much about the temperature, few degrees below zero, but the wind made it feel a lot colder. Had to walk a bit careful, cuase there were some tricky spots on the streets. But I managed to stay on the feet and let's be happy about that.
Oh boy, on some net on tv, I saw a very strange commercial. Remember we are in winter time, with now even some snow and severe frost sometimes, for about 2 weeks now.

But only now some company( I think it was a gas company) had a smashing(this is meant ironical LOL) commercial, with at the end the question: "Did you prepare and checked your central heating installation for winter time?"
Don;t you think they are a bit LATE with that? It's something to consider and do in October or may be even November, but not now anymore. If the installation is causing you trouble, it's because there was no check on it earlier. I found it a very STRANGE commercial!!!

Today I must not forget to make a phonecall, to wish Séverine a happy birthday. She already is 10 years old today! On coming Sunday there is the "party"for family and friends, LOL! I already have found her some present, but have to go to town one of these days, to get her another one.
At the moment she is doing judo-calasses and it seems she is doing very well. So we have to be aware of that, LOL, soon she will be able to throw us on the ground, hahahahaha.

Hmmmm, today I can stay in, so good moment to do some errands here, and think about what I will make for dinner today. Sometimes it's very hard to think of something, you know! Well, I want to try to have some variation every day, but pfffff, it's hard at times. LOL. I have some chicken breast filet, I can fill that with some ham and cheese, yeah, good idea. Perhaps some roasted potatoes with it, now I only must think of some veggies to go with that. Okay, menu almost done, hoorray!

Freebie time. It's the second part of the Birthday flowers.
Have a wonderful day, if you HAVE to go out in wintery weather: be careful, when driving or walking and stay warm!

Download     part 2 HERE

I walked in snow!

Goodmorning everybody!

I didn;t make it on Friday to outrun the snowfall. Just about when I prepared to go out, I looked out of the window and......oops, it was snowing. The snowfall was rather dense, it lasted for about 2 or 3 hours and then it was over again. Still it was enough to whiten the world and there still is lying snow on the streets.
I've made a picture from a part of the street where I do a lot of my "daily"shopping and you can see it was snowing rather hard.

But as it was fresh snow it wasn't yet too difficult to walk.
It was nice for a moment but now it can go away again grin grin!
So you can imagine we didn;t go anywhere during the weekend, but stayed home. So not much to tell about those days.

Oh, a few days ago I couldn't resist taking a picture just after dinner. Jan likes to take a short nap then and our cats too, specially Dikkie Dik, and that one always likes company. How small a spot may be, it doesn;t matter to him, he wriggles himself into it. Here the result:

Isn't he adorable? LOL!

Well, today I should be a bit more active than in the weekend, (sigh sigh!), for example there is a load of laundry waiting in the machine to get clean, and still some dry one to be ironed. I will spit into my hands and get it done quickly.

I have for you the first part of a kit, in bragbook page size, named Birthday flowers. The idea was given by a sweet visitor and this is the outcome. There are in total 12 pages, one for each month and some elements and frames for an extra decoration. I'll show you one of the pages, so you can get a better idea of it.

It might make a sweet birthday book, and if you have more birthdays in on month just use that month page more times. Could even make a sweet heritage book, make a little journaling page for each person, and then the page with the picture. Next post I will post the second part.
Hope somebody can do something with this.
Have a fantastic day!

Download    part 1 HERE

Clean curtains, yes!

Goodmorning everybody!

I finally washed the curtains yesterday afternoon. Oh my, they looked terrible. Now they are all bright and white again. Oh, can tell you about a little stupidity of mine LOL!
As I washed the curtains, by hand(much quicker) I always hang them wet on a line to drip off a bit first and when they are still a bit moist I hang them on their rod again, result, almost no crinkles whoopie!
So yesterday too. And it was such nice weather I though: "Why not hang them outside for a moment, in a soft wind, will dry quick". So I did, but............here comes the stupidity.............................. I just forgot that it was freezing outside, just a few degrees! Can you picture what happened???????????? To my luck I looked out of the window after a minute or 5 or ten, to see if they were still dripping off or not. They definately weren;t. I just saw some small icicles at the bottom of the curtains. OHHHH< HELP! I rushed out to the garden and touched the curtains. They were almost stiff, like a piece of moist cardboard! I managed to get them off the line, I was fearing I might break them LOL! I think I was just in time. Then I quickly hanged them cautiously in the bathroom, to thaw them. Pffffffff, all ended well.
That's me, I suppose. Meaning well, but just not using my brains, ROFL!!!!!

At the moment it looks still well outside, some sunshine, still a whee bit freezing, but during the afternoon they announced it might snow perhaps even a couple of centimeters thick! Oh gosh, I hope it will not happen, but I am afraid it will be otherwise. Probably it will only snow today, lets hope so.
A lot of people in Holland are now crossing their fingers and hoping, that it will stay freezing the next week too. And why? Because every year they hope there will be another "Elfstedentocht"again, a tour on skates over 200 kms in the north of the Netherlands. It's like a fever that is spreading fast. I have a link for you, which explains rather well, what this "elfstedentocht"(Eleven Cities tour) is all about and a link to a YouTube video of a tour of 1985. One of the toughest in the history of it was the tour of 1963, won by Reinier Paping in a time of almost 11 hours!
I always admire the enormous will power and strength of everybody who completes the tour.
Here are your links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfstedentocht
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNM0rZoAP0U

Oh, some good news to tell! Remeber the article I posted a few days ago about Mr. Abdul, who lives and workes here for about 15 years, after having to leave Afghanistan? And that he probably would be sent back? It doesn't happen. He can stay and receives his permanent residence permit! YEAH! He was sooooo happy, he couldn;t stop smiling when he was interviewed. Now suddenly the minister and government could make an exception. Hmmmm, I wonder why???? Let's not speculate about that and just be happy for him and his children.

Time to finish the post, if I want to go out for a moment, I better do it soon, before the snowing might start!
 I promised you to post my Valentine's kit today and well, here it is, named "Being with You".
 Have a wonderful weekend!!!

Download    HERE

Prolem?? I thought so, but it was easy to solve

Goodmorning everybody!

This morning I started up the computer, no problem. Then I saw my internet icon didn;t jump to the "blue arrow". Okay, that sometimes happens, even sometimes internet works well even when it seems not connected. Other times I just have to unplug and plug in my internet connection and okidoki again.
Not this morning. I went looking to the little box for the internet connection, with also the telephone line on it and the box had no lights at all. Mostly there are some of the lights orange instead of green, and unplug and plug in is the solution. Not today! No lights at all! That was strange. On the same powerpoint we also have a lamp connected, so I thought: let's try the lamp. Oops, no light!!! OMG!! What now. I immediately had the idea that the powerpoint didn't work for some reason. Already saw in front of my eyes the change of the extension box they were connected to.  Or perhaps worse. But..... I got the brilliant idea to check the connection of the plug. Hmmmmmm, it was a bit loose. So I plugged it in well and tadaaaaaaaaa............................ there was power and all worked as it should!!!!!!!! I suppose the plug had been disconnected just a bit because Dikkie Dik is making his jump to the window seat from there, using a little side table that is there. (he seems to hate to move too much if not necessary, although he easily could jump on the windowseat from the floor!!!)
Anyway, I had heartbounces for nothing LOL!
It really is getting wintery overhere! Even during daytime it's a bit freezing, in the easter part of Holland a bit more severe, and it might get even colder during the week. Hmmmmm, no real harm till now, at daytime sun is shining, so okay, it's colder, but dressed well in coat and cap and gloves it even isn;t too bad going outside.
As long as there is no snowfall, or hail or whatever I can digg it.

I was out for a moment yesterday and it wasn;t bad. Got some things done in the house, like preparing the veggies from the market for the freezer, ironed some laundry, dusted the room, cleaned the little windows from one of the cupboards, Jan did the sweep with the vacuum cleaner, so all together a rather well spend day.
Today I really want to take care of the curtains, I saw them from the outside yesterday and oh Lord, they look aweful! And to be honest, infact it is done rather quickly, but it's just the stuff around it that holds me back a little. Have to take the ladder out, clime it and take the curtains off. That should also be a good time to wash the window at the inside, you know. While doing that, the curtains are in the water and when ready cleaning the window, I'll have to take the curtains out, hang them for a while in the bathroom to get rid of most of the water and after some time take them still a bit moist to the room and hang them again. It's best to do it this way, then they don;t wrinkle, you know. Then put the ladder away and such, this always takes more time than you think. But... have to be brave!ROFL.

Oh, about a week ago Jan already planted some tomatoe seeds and the sprouts are aleady coming up. It might be a little early, but they can grow strong and healthy indoors for a while and when the weather will be much more spring like we can harden them during daytime outside and after a bit of time let them stay outside.  I hope they will do it well, Jan is like a mother hen to them ROFL!

Well, that's it for today. Today I have, after a long time, again a fantasy kit for you, "Happy Fairy". And I think this Friday I will have my Valentine kit for you. After all, it will be soon Valentine's Day.
Have a wonderful day!

Download    HERE