A year older, better not think about it LOL!

Goodmorning everybody!

This morning we had some light wet-snow fall, but it wasn;t for long I think it was a lot more in the east of the country.
At the moment it looks dry outside, even some sunshine, but that will not stay for long They are expecting a stormy wind today at the coast with rainshowers, not nice weather and later next week it will become dryer but also colder. Well, cold with almost no wind and snow-or rainfall is to handle, as long as it doesn't stay on too long LOL.

Last weekend  had my birthday, yes, I made it and have become a year older. Better not to think too much about it.
It was a quiet day, I did get some phonecalls and cards and a birthdaypresent from my friend Edna. She had made me a bracelet with all kind of special beads on it, like a windmill, a Dutch flag, a little cat, a birthdaycake, a US heart shaped flag, and some beads with flowers. I should have taken a photo of it but I was lazy Shame on me, but it doesn;t mean I am less happy with the present. It will be very special to me, always
Jan and i already long ago agreed not to buy any presents for eachother for birthdays and such. It is hard to find something nice and at the moment we just cannot really afford it. I don;t mind, I did het a big hug and kiss from him and now he also is a happy man again for a few weeks! Why?? well, some of you may know and others don't, but Jan will have his birthday in 3 weeks time, so for now he is the youngest in the house(we have the same year of birth!).
We had however a nice meal and I bought us a little cake to eat with our after-dinner coffee.

This week i had to visit the internist for the result of the ultrasound and biopsy of the thyroid. She said all was well, not strange tissue or cells were found so I don;t have to come back anymore. Now that kind of news  like to hear, hoorray.

Jan is still having a kind of cold, that keeps going on. He still is coughin, although it is less than before, so it is getting better But because of that coughin, specially at night it is coming up, he didn't sleep very well, and still isn;t doing all to great on that point. So he is feeling rather tired. 
But as I say, it is going better slowly, so let's keep good hope.
Seems there is spooking a flu around at the moment that is quite persistent and takes a long time to heal. He may have caught a side virus of it.
The other evening on the news on tv they had an item about hospitals,that are coping with shortage of beds for all patients and also shortage of staff .Here  a part of the Dutch News.nl that i borrowed from the net:
 Several Dutch hospitals have stopped admitting new patients because of the flu epidemic, Dutch media said on Thursday. A surge in the number of elderly flu sufferers, in particular, is straining services in some parts of the country. Two hospitals in Brabant have introduced a patient stop while the Westfriesgasthuis hospital in Hoorn has sent some patients to other hospitals in Friesland.The Albert Schweitzer hospital in Dordrecht is also referring patients elsewhere. ‘People with flu are not usually admitted but vulnerable elderly people can become very ill indeed,’ a spokesman for the Hoorn hospital said.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: Hospitals stop admitting new patients as flu epidemic continues http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/01/99932-2/

Several Dutch hospitals have stopped admitting new patients because of the flu epidemic, Dutch media said on Thursday. A surge in the number of elderly flu sufferers, in particular, is straining services in some parts of the country. Two hospitals in Brabant have introduced a patient stop while the Westfriesgasthuis hospital in Hoorn has sent some patients to other hospitals in Friesland.The Albert Schweitzer hospital in Dordrecht is also referring patients elsewhere. ‘People with flu are not usually admitted but vulnerable elderly people can become very ill indeed,’ a spokesman for the Hoorn hospital said.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: Hospitals stop admitting new patients as flu epidemic continues http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/01/99932-2/

Several Dutch hospitals have stopped admitting new patients because of the flu epidemic, Dutch media said on Thursday. A surge in the number of elderly flu sufferers, in particular, is straining services in some parts of the country. Two hospitals in Brabant have introduced a patient stop while the Westfriesgasthuis hospital in Hoorn has sent some patients to other hospitals in Friesland.The Albert Schweitzer hospital in Dordrecht is also referring patients elsewhere. ‘People with flu are not usually admitted but vulnerable elderly people can become very ill indeed,’ a spokesman for the Hoorn hospital said.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: Hospitals stop admitting new patients as flu epidemic continues http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/01/99932-2/

May be part of trouble could be also that a lot of elderly homes were closed and a lot of nursing staff lost their jobs, because of the idea that older people should stay  home as long as possible. But then there had to be caretakers at home and there aren;t enough of them either
Perhaps the ground idea is good, but it wasn;t thought through enough and not prepared well enoigh in advance. And at the moment there is a dramatic need of nursing staff of all kind.
There is shortage in budget and in people. Oh, if we only could spend all the budget that is spent on weapons all over the world to helath care, and preservation of nature! That would make a difference.
Alas, this is only a dream though and probably never will happen

The last couple of weeks I didn;t do much designing There was a lot of other stuff to do, then there were the holidays and so I do have to get back into gear again.Still, you don;t have to worry,  have some kits "in stock" and by the time I posted them all, I will have made news ones LOL.
Today I have a kit named"Souvenir" ,well the title says it all. Scrap your dearest souvenirs and cherish them. I close in the clusters from Arlene, wonderful as ever.

Wishing you all a wonderful day and week ahead and stay safe.

Download   HERE

Download   HERE

Whoops, colder today!

Goodmorning everybody!

Just let me think, my last post was in the past year! So I better start with wishing you all a happy and healthy New Year.

Jan and I spent New Years Eve at home(always like to be home because of our Brodski. Cats and dogs and other pets don;t like fireworks!).
It was nice, there was some firework in the neighbourhood, which we could see from our windows. But we didn;t go out on the street
First day of the New year we first slept a bit longer, and then watched the New Years Cncert from Vienna. it has become a tradition to watch it. I must say I liked the conductor of this year very much.
Later in the afternoon I made a potatoe salad for the dinner. It had cucumber dices in it, as well as apple and capers and boiled peas and of course salt and pepper and some paprika and bit of mustard.
And on the plate i topped it off with slices of smoked salmon. It was yummie.

The rest of the week was rather quiet, only wednesday I had to go to heidi's house, to have a walk with the doggies in the afternoon. The family had to go somewhere and couldn;t take the dogs with them, so she asked me if i could let them out.
I was lucky that afternoon, that I could walk almost without any rain and also that the wind wasn;t blowing that strong anymore. Because at nigt we had some rainshowers and a very, very strong wind, so I already had my two little bricks ready to put in my jack, so that the wind couldn;t blow me away, but i didn;t need them LOL!

Last night we had frost. In our part at the coast not so much, about -3C, but in the east of the country there were places with -10C.
Now at daytime it will stay around 0, and we will have another night with some frost, but also rainfall or wet snow, so it could become rather dangerous on the roads tomorrow. At the weather news they warn for icing on the roads. So I better do a few errands today and stay in tomorrow.

As you probably noticed I changed the bloglayout again. New year, new layout, we cannot let the Christmas layout linger on.
But i still have the Christmas decorations in the room, today is the day that the 3 kings or wisemen visit the manger and bring presents to little Jesus. So I have put the statues in the manger and this evening will be the last time we will have all Christmaslights on.
Tomorrow will be a busy day then, to clear them all away.

Now time for me to soon get dressed and go out to the supermarket for the few errands and then get into my lounge wear and turn the central heating a bit higher to be all comfy and warm and then this weekend we can watch(among a lot of other things, busy weekend!) speed skating, the European Hampionships of sprint and of allround. ou know jan and i love to watch it, so I guess there also will be lots of programs to take on dvd to watch later(skating is part in afternoon and part evening).
I have today the clusters and quickpage from Arlene for you, made with the Winterday at the countryside.
Till next time, have a wonderful weekend.

Download    HERE

The year 2016 is almost over

Goodmorning everybody!

What a wonderful Christmas we had.
Christmasday in the afternoon I already started to prepare a bit for our dinner, the meat fondue Then Jan left for his volunteering and I dressed the little table and had everything ready
When he came home he first took something to drink and then we "attacked" the presents. And oh, we were spoiled and how lovely is that LOL!
My friend Enda sent us a box with all kind of lovely things, to mention some: a pair of lounge trousers for Jan, a very soft fleece waistcoat(I can wear it indoors when I am real cold, of wear it in Spring outside, when it is just a bit chilly still), her wonderful calendar with beautiful photos, coffeesticks, colouring book and pencils and toys for our Brodski.
We also had a gift from my friend Heidi and her Danny I am looking after her fish from Christmas till today and her house and mail of course And I found it on her table when i went there just before Christmas.
It is an insect hotel to put into the garden.
And I also sneeked in a fleece sweater for Jan between the presents. I went into city centre on Saturday and found it in a great sale for just a few euro's. He can wear it with his new lounge trousers.
After all the ahhh and ohh's and laughter we had our dinner, while looking a great show of a German performer, Helene Fischer.
It was fantastic.

Next day we didn;t do much, just lingered around, watched some tv, had another fondue(there was so much left over, so easy peasy for me).
Can't even remember all that I did this week, now that is funny!
well, I suppose then nothing realy important happened, which should be a good thing.
Then yesterdayI had to go to the hospital for another echo and also a punction on my thyroid The echo is no big deal, but the puntion wasn't pleasant. Oh, it wasn;t really hurting but not a nice feeling. They looked at it right away to see if there was anything disturbing and at first sight(also by looking at the echo) the doctor couldn;t see anything bad.
I will get the official reading of it in January, on the 10th from the internist. But I think, I will not have to worry about shocking news.
So I hope that it's done with too.

Now I am more worried about jan, who already started a bad cough at Christmas and it will not go away. Well, it is a tiny little bit better, but I am not totally happy about it. I wanted him to go to the doctor after a few days, but you know him by now. He isn;t going fast to a doctor
And then he was kind of "lucky"too, our own doctor was away this week.
So we always can go to a replacement doctor, but that is something Jan absolutely doesn;t want to do. So we agreed to see how it goes after New years's day and if still the same, he might make an appointment at our own doctor. Just to see if it is just a bad cold and then may be he can get some antibiotic that will help. Pffff, it is hard work sometimes with him LOL.

The last two, three days it is a bit cold here, even bit freezing at night and it is looking grey with at times misty, so no fun weather.
But it still stays dry, and I am already happy for that. Because rain at daytime and freezing at nnight is no good combination.

Good, time for me to finish the post now. I am running a bit late now, somehow I have no speed today in my body.
There are sometimes these days, that you look back on them and don´t know what exactly you achieved. LOL
I do have a kit for you, "Winterday at the countryside"
Wishing you all a happy New Year's eve and good start of the New year!

Download    HERE

Christmastime should be peaceful.

Goodmorning everybody!

Well, not only Christmastime should be peaceful, all over the world it should be peaceful all year round, but that is probably an utopia.
Still, Christmastime is kind of special and we were all shocked by the attack in Berlin, Germany at the Christmasfair this week.
12 people dead and 25 still heavy wounded, just because some nutcase thought it a wonderful idea to drive onto the fair with a big truck.
That truck was hijacked from a Polish driver, who seemed to have tried to fight the attacker, and tried to turn the wheel from the truck.
Sadly he didn;t succeed and then he was shot by the attacker.
My heart goes out to all  who lost a loved one, or have someone in the hospital and also to all who witnessed this aweful act of terrorism.
I every time wonder what the thoughts must be of an attacker of this kind, what crazy thought is driving them to such an act????

It is hard to jump now to "normal"life and writing after such things, but we have to go on and not let the fear freeze us.
Yesterday evening, just after dinner, our doorbel rang and there was a postman with a box from ......Santa! It always is fun to open it and then arrange the presents around our tree and manger. It looks so cosy and happy. Now the hard part is starting. Yes, waiting till Christmasday to open them LOL! But we will be good and wait.

I have a photo for you of our christmastree on the manger. I took those before there were the presents. I have two photos in fact, one I took with and one I took without flash. I am not really happy about any of them, but they'll do to give you an idea.

Monday Jan went again to the elderly home where he volunteers, because he received an invitation to be there. it was the day all staff but also all volunteers received an attention for their work.
This year it was a kind of sidetable, that you also could use as laundry basket for the dry laundry, or perhaps as basket to put toys in, very nice and filled with all kind of goodies for Christmas. There was a bottle of wine, some chips, cookies, cheese, chocolate, etc.
I think it is a very nice gesture of the organasation to do such thing also for the volunteers.

Last two days we had a bit of frost at night(only 1 or 2 degrees) and not real high temperatures at daytime. But although pretty chilly it still was nice weather yesterday, because the sun was shining.
Today will be a bit higher temperature, but greysh and then at Christmas they expect temps of about 10-11C. May be a bit of rain at times with it. But I am happy with those temperatures for december. Just hope that it will last and not that e.g. end of February and March we suddenly will have wintertime.

Well, I will finish now, it is running rather late, and i want to go to the market today, so I have to get dressed and something to eat before I go. But I better do it today, because I fear that on Friday and Saturday it will be terrible crowded there.
I have one more Christmaskit for you with clusters from Arlene.
I don;t think I will be blogging again before Christmas so I would like to wish you all a very Merry and Blessed Christmas, filled with joy and love and peace.

Download    Here

Download    Here

I am on track for our Christmas.

Goodmorning everybody!

Weather here still not too bad, although a bit greyish, but temperatures around 6-8 C and we still have no frost during the night, so we shouldn;t complain.

Monday Jan went to his doctor, the internist for regular check and result of the last MRI. That was okay, showed nothing to worry, which is great.
Then last time she gave him some iron tablets for his blood. Values now were good again, but she advised to take them for a bit longer time. And he has to look a bit better after the fluid control. He has medicins for that too, but sometimes he has a bit too much of it (mostly showing a more "rounded"belly)and has to be more careful with what he eats(the big trouble shooter for that are the quick Chinese soups he likes to take late evening. Lately he had almost one every ther evening/night and so he has to cut that back drasticaly. Those soups taste great but contain way too much salt).
Okay, if that's all, he can handle that LOL.

I already did some "Christmas-dinner"shopping this week, but I still need a few things more. Probably I will try to do that shopping later today. Then next week I only will have to think about the usual things, like bread, cat food, coffee and such.

Yesterday we had a visit from our friends Heidi and Danny. It was nice to see eachother again and have a little chat.
They will be away for a few days, so then we will have to look after the fish and the mail.


And that was about all that happened. In all we can say we had rather quiet days and oh, that's a blessing LOL!
I did make a couple of photos of the Christmas tree, but they didn;t turn out very great, so perhaps I will try again this weekend.
Possibly they will not turn out great either, LOL, but I will try.

Now it is getting rather late in the morning, time for me to get busy, so here is the next Christmas freebie, named "Christmas Days".
Have a wonderful day and week ahead.

 Download   HERE

Download   HERE

We have smart meters now in the house !

Goodmorning everybody!

It have been a few busy days.
Past weekend Jan went to volunteer work again. He was a bit tired after those 3 days, but happy to be back. So  think he has beaten the virus or whatever.
What did I do on Monday? Oh, I know, not all too much, but I went to the postoffice to send a Christmasbox and now I realize i forgot to write some Christmascards so I could take them too. Oh well,  will write them this weekend, nothing wrong with that.
Tuesday was a really busy day! Jan and i started the Christmas decorating. We were busy for several hours, with a little pause every now and then and we got most of it done. But I felt rather exhausted that evening. Then yesterday morning we couldn;t sleep very long in the morning because there would be a man coming from the gas and electricity company, to change our older meters into new and "smart"ones. Yes, everything these days seems to be "smart".
Smart phone, smart tv, smart car, smart whatever!!(and I have the feeling I am getting less smart or even dumber every time there is spoken about those "smart"things ROFL)
With those appointments they never can give you a fix time, so he would be there between 9;00 and 11.00 in the morning.
Okay, he came around 10.30 LOL. Have to say he did a quick job, and then we could put things at their place again that we had to remove to give him place to work. What it is exactly about the smart meters I don;t know, seems the company can "read"your meters at distance, so we don;t have to fill in a card once or twice a year with the readings.
Well, I suppose there will be more smart things about those meters, all fine with me.
After the fellow left and we had a coffee we finished the decorating of the room There wasn;t much left to do, just more the finishing touches, last things that had to be hanged or placed, but it took still an hour or two( and then we had to put the empty boxes away and then it was time for a good vacuum cleaning) But then all was done and I am very happy with the result.
Of course it is more or less the same as every year, although this year we did put the tree on the little manger(still the one my father once made, so already very old) and it looks real pretty. I will make some photos this weekend so I can show you.
And I did have a rather good sleep this night, how wonderfu. And the more wonderful because there was no need to wake up early. Nevertheless I woke up rather early, went quickly for a needed thing out of bed, looked at the clock and thought : "still too early to get active, I will go back and try to steal another hour or two". And I did get back to sleep for a little while. Wonderful!

Yes, I notice that i need more time to recuperate after I have been really busy and in "action". It is just a thing we have to get used to, all comed a bit with age. Still I can do a lot of things and we have to be grateful for that. Okay,  have to "dose"it a bit more and that is sometimes difficult. Because in the mind we still feel young(or most of the time) but then the body isn;t always cooperating as we might want ROFL..

More than time now to finish,  have to get moving and get dressed and then do some grocerie shopping, just a few things but needed.
And then I'll see what i do later today. Think  will take a more easy day, sounds like a good plan.
Kit for today is , of course, a Christmas kit and together with clusters and quickpage from Arlene.
This one is named "Under the Mistletoe".
Have a wonderful day.

 Download  HERE

Download   HERE

Worldwide Christmas scrapbooking blogtrain is starting!

Goodmorning everybody!

Oh, I am late again today. I slept so long, but I probably needed it.
Yesterday I had to get up rather early, because  had the appointment at the hospital for my throat, the goitre Well, it isn;t really that, but for years it is a kind of little ball.
The doctor I had was a femal doctor with a foreign name, she was from Island. So first  complimented her with her great sounding name, and then we had the chat She was a very nice person, asked me loads of questions, said also to me that the bloodtest showed that my thyrois was working good, so there no problem. The echo I had, showed that I had some fluid there and some calcified tissue, nothing to really worry about She said it had no use sucking out the fluid, it would come back after little time again. But she suggested to make another echo with a puntion into the tissue, just for security. Then i will come back to her after a week from that. Not that she really expected that it would show something strange.
Okay, we'll have that echo and puntion and hopefully that will be the last of this year's hospital and doctors visits, and hopefully next year will be more quite with that

Jan is doing also better, I am not sure if he is really already feeling up to 100%(you never can tell with him, he isn;t the talking kind of husband LOL), but he will go to his volunteerswork again this weekend. I think it will do him good, you know. He had one of the nurses at the phone yesterday(a male, from Portuguese origin, but living here already for some years, very nice guy) and he told Jan that he was missed, by the staff and by the people/patients.
I hope there will not be too much change in patients when he starts again. There were one or two very sweet ones, who were very sick(cancer) so it isn;t sure if they are still there. If not, I know it will touch Jan(specially one old lady), but he is capable to give it a place and keep a kind of distance. That is a good thing, because otherwise it is almost impossible to do the job there.

The last couple of days it was rather cold here, we had some frost( some more at the east past of the country), and at daytime it was not more as around 3-5C. But there was some sunshine so even kind of cold, it was nice to be outside for some shopping. With a shawl, and warm coat and trousers it wasn;t bad.
Think I'll spend today inside, must do some stuff in the house.
It is a bit better temperature wise today and tomorrow, so may be tomorrow I'll walk to the market. Not sure about it yet, we'll see.
The poor parakeet Japie is still around. But I fear the days that it really will be freezing, even if just for a 2 or 3 degrees. erhaps I am too soft hearted, because in the real wild world I think he wouldn;t have survived even this long. all I can do is making sure he has something to eat, and perhaps arrange for some kind of shelter, although I think he has his own hiding places somewhere and will not use a little house of some kind.

Well, for now anough chatted. I think it is time for the freebie of the Worldwide Christmas scrapbooking blogtrain of 2016.
Big thanks to Antoinette for organizing it again this year!
Just follow the above link(or the one with the logo in the sidebar) and you will see all the freebies that are offered.
Mine is named "Merry Season"(and it is the one I;ve made my bloglayout with) and of course Arlene contributed also with some fantastic clusters and quickpage and even an extra in her download.
If that all isnt yet enough, then take a look again at Arlene's shop,
she has added some lovely papers and clusters  for Christmas there.
(there is more than the preview here)

Have fun looking through the big list of freebies on the WWCS blog(don;t forget to they thanks to the designer if you download).
Have a wonderful day and lovely weekend

Download    HERE

Download   HERE