So quick came the last day of the year.

Goodmorning everybody!

Just one more day and then we will enter already into a new one. I say it every year, but it's unbelievable how quickly the year went by again.
Yesterday I first went out to do some shopping, just for a few things and came back home quickly.
Then I prepared all the ingredients for the traditional sweets and I was busy with them part of the afternoon. All went well and the result was fine. So now we have to plates on our table with the sweets and I already tasted one yesterday( had to check if they were good), and yeah they taste really good.

Today I think I will pop out for a moment to deliver some bills at the bank, and then I will make us a soup for dinner.
I must say it is rather quiet still with the fireworks in the nieghbourhood, but around midnight it will be much noisier of course. We always like to stay home on this evening, to keep an eye on our cat. Normally he is rather quiet during the firing of the fireworks, but sometimes there is such a hard BANG, that he startles and looks a bit frightened. Then it is good we are there, he feels safer that way.

Already soon we will have to transform our room again to "normal", meaning taking off the Christmas decorations. But we will wait till the day after the 6th of Janauary, because that is the holiday of the 3 kings, and their arrival at the manger. So we still have about one week to enjoy the cosy lights and all, but then it will be nice to have the the decorations removed again.

Hopefully we will see some great shows on tv this evening, if there aren;t any good ones, we still have some things recorded on dvd, so we will have a nice evening either way.
At midnoght we will be looking out of our window, to see some of the fireworks and then I am sure I will be happy to go to sleep again LOL.

Today I have a smaller freebie for you, containing two lovely clusters made by Florence, she used several kits of mine and I think she did awonderful job. Hope you can use them in a project.
Take care and be carefull if you light some fireworks. Happy New Year's Eve!

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Snow almost all disappeared again.

Goodmorning everybody!

We took it very easy this weekend, mostly watching tv(speedskating, for one) and catching up some sleep. the two days of Christmas were kind of exhausting in the way, we went to bed rather late, because there were some nice detectives to watch, but they only started just after midnoght! What a time to broadcast it!
Of course we could have taped them on dvd, but it was so nice and cosy and why not watch them right away?
Saturday I went out for a moment, it then was snowing.rianing a bit, and the streets were covered with that aweful mix of melting snow. But it wasn;t still too bad, and the temperature was quite good.
Yesterday it was still there, but this morning almost all was gone already, only in the garden some of it is still there, but will be gone soon enough. with temperatures a few degrees higher.
I am glad it is almost gone again, for me this was winter enough LOL.

I should be nmore energetic today, doing some jobs in the house and probably tomorrow I will be in the kitchen for a while, baking our traditional "oliebollen"and "appelflappen", something like this:

Above is the  appelflap", obvious made with apple and cinnaomon.

And here the "oliebol"filled with raisins, but you can also put in whatever you want, small dices of apple, or banana, or dried fruit. But I like them best the "old"way, only lots of raisins in them.
And best of it is to eat them with LOADS of icing sugar LOL!

And then the year 2014 is almost done with already. Cannot believe it went by so quickly, lots of things happened in our life this year, and it wasn't always the bst but we hope next year will give us some more good things and it will be more "relaxed". For all that health is looking good upon us, that is a very important thing.

Not much more to tell, so better i give you the freebie for today, two clusters and a quickpage made by Arlene, so pretty, made with the Precious Winter Green kit.
Have a lovely day.

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First snow this morning!

Goodmorning everybody!

Oh, what a wonderful relaxed Christmas we had. And it was made ever so special with the gifts sent to us.
We managed to wait with opening them till Christmas day in the late afternoon!
and what fun we had, doing that. Santa was good to us this year again.
I've made you a picture of the gifts, but one was just the best for me, I will show you later in the post.
On Christmasday, I didn;t have to do much about the cooking, because we had a meat fondue and it was ever so yummie, and there was so much left, that we had it the second day too.
For desert, to squeeze into the last bit of space we had left in our belly, I;ve made two apples in the oven, filled with sugar, cinnamon and raisins, and a bunch of whipped cream. Next day I had stewed pears.
First will show you another part of our Christmasroom, I think I've made that on Christmas eve, so can still see the gifts under the tree, and if you look well at the left you see a little part of Jan, sitting on the couch and doing one of his crosswords.

Now here I've spread out a bit our gifts, with the stunning undress, all of soft fleece and it came at such a good time, cause my old one had become really old. On the right you see a blue sweater Jan got, and he even got two, all so comfy. Even Brodski got his little gift, oh yeah, Santa thought about all of us LOL!

And this was the best, this T-shirt, look at it, with the picture of my  blogprofilephoto! How amazing is that??????????? Oh golly, it really brought a big l;augh unto my face, and on Jan's too!

And of course I couldn;t resist taking some photos of Brodski in and on "his Christmaschair"

Then this morning I got a little shock. When I wake up, first direction is into the kitchen, to put on the coffee and  took a look into the garden and it was white!!! Over night or early in the morning it snowed. I must say it has a charm, but I like for an hour or so and then I want it to disappear again LOL.
But it will stay colder the next few days with even some frost during the nights, not much, but it demands a bit of adaption from us. We were so blessed with rather high temperatures even in this moth, so this is a sudden change.
We will survive, don;t worry, but I hope it will be done with in a few days again.
Can you believe we are almost at the end of the year again? Much has happened, not always the best things, but we keep hope that perhaps next year we will have a little change for the better. Despite of some more difficult times, we still can be thankful for all we have, there are a lot of people around this world who have real difficult times and poor circumstances, far away as well as in our own country. So we shouldn;t complain too much( but to do it sometimes, it relieves the soul LOL).

Now soon I will have to get dressed and be brave and get out for a few things, like some bread, newspaper, and such.Brrrrr, I will dress warm, and have warm boots on  and although it might be colder, it will do good to sniff some air again.
I have a little kit for you, named it Precious Winter Green.

Before leaving you, I want to thank all people, who left us such warm wishes here on the blog or by mail. They are really appreciated, and added to a really good Christmas feeling.Thank you, from all the heart.

Goodbye for now, till Monday again!

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One more day and it will be Christmas!

Goodmorning everybody!

Let me start first with a Christmaswish to you all, may Christmas be merry and blessed and full of love and light.

Yesterday I did the last bits of shopping for things I still needed and I am all settled now.
Gosh, what a good feeling is that. Now I only have to vacuum clean, to have the illusion all is cleared up and clean, and then we can have a quiet day and I am looking forward to some tv watching this evening and then tomorrow......................... yeah, Christmasday!!!
Oh, it will be wonderful, we then can open the presents Santa sent us and I am sooo curious. LOL.
and then in the afternoon I will prepare all for the fondue we will have for dinner, yummie.
And in the evening we will watch a show on German tv, the Helen Fisher show, I believe it lasts for about 3 hours, and we watched it for several years now and always is amazing.!
But I am sure I will start the day waking up rather early, all quiet and dark still, but i will light the Christmastree and then put up a cd with old-fashioned Christmassongs and then it will be really Christmas for me.
I just have to hear some Christmassongs, it makes the holiday the way it is. Yes, sometimes just little things can make you feel happy.

Just like yesterday when just by accident I looked into the garden and had a nice surprise. Jan has placed his bird feeder in the garden, but we couldn;t spot any birds yet. Untill yesterday, there was a blackbird(I think. I am not good in bird-recognizing), enjoying the food under the little roof and two Great Tits were waiting nearby on a branch of a bush. Because so many people pave their garden and don;t have many bushes and such, there aren't too many birds in our neighbourhood. But there are still some and I am glad we can give them a little spot where they feel safe and can live. Just as the frogs and toads we have in our garden.

That's about all for today, just remians to wish you again a wonderful Christmas, may be I will not post on Friday, I am not sure yet. For today I have a great add-on from Arlene made with the Wonderful Christmas kit. She has made you a cluster and a lovely quickpage. I would very much appreciate it if you took a moment to go to her blog HERE, and leave her a Christmas wish, as a kind of thank you for all her wonderful contributions throughout the year!!!

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Sleeping marathon this weekend LOL.

Goodmorning everybody!

Not much happened this weekend around here.
Only strange thing was that Jan did sleep a lot, and with "a lot"I mean hours and hours.
Normally i am the one to go to bed first, but Saturday during the day he had several naps already and in the evening around 21.00 a.m. he said he would go to bed, he couldn't keep his eyes open.
Okay, no problem, but i thought that after perhaps 3 hours he would be up again. No way! I think he slept till early morning.
Yesterday after he got finally awake, he took his coffee, had  a sandwich and early afternoon went to Heidi's to feed the fish.
Then he cleaned the floor in the hallway and after it was was dry, gave it a coat with special oil.
We had dinner and again at about 21.30 he said he would go to bed already. Gosh, that was strange.
And when I woke up this morning he was up already but he told me he woke up at about 6.30 p.m.
So you could say he had a sleep-maratho this weekend. Probably his body needed it( he didn;t sleep very well or long the last months already). But I surely hope this is over, it isn;t all too normal, he feels just so tired. But we aren;t worrying really, I will just keep an eye on it and if this happens too much, we should mention it to his doctor when we go there on the 8th of Janauary.

I wasn;t very active neither these days, did some things around the house, not much, did a bit of designing but that was all.
Oh got a ohonecall from heidi, telling us all was rather okay, only nasty thing was she had a cold and the rest of the family was starting with one too. Not nise, now that they have their holiday week in a little house in the south of Holland. But she told me they went to Antwerp in Belgium and it was a nicde trip. Very cosy in the town centre there, with all kind of little Christmas markets and all the shops decorated for Christmas. I hope they will get rid of their cold quickly.

Today it is the 21st of December and Jan pointed out to me that from now on the days will get longer daylight again, yeah! I can't wait till the day it will be light again in the morning when we wake up.

I promised you a Christmaskit today and so will be it. It is named "Wonderful Christmas", hope you will find use for it.
Have a happy day.

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Kind of crisis in government!!!

Goodmorning everybody!

The last couple of days were filled with watching tv a lot, but mainly the parliament channel or news items.
There is a crisis going on. Government has made a new law concerning the health security and it has to pass the parliament and then the senat. Well, it stopped in the senat, 3 senators of the government parties voted against it and that means trouble, there is no majority now for that law.
There was intenseive talk for about 3 days to find a slolution, and yesterday night there was a debat about it in parliament which didn;t went all too well I think, most becaused government announced that they would carry on anyway with that law, there misght be a "trick"to work around parliament and senat, That could be done by a "general administrative measure", which is less heavy than a law, but important things agreed about the law could be still cariied out. Only that isn;t very democratic and not the way it should be done. This "measurement"is supposed to be used only in emergencies of a special kind. I have an article of reuters here for you, about the situation, and it is a very important law, because it would give health insurances lots of power and patients less. Now they say in the changed foramt, patients still would be able to choose, but that isn;t all the way true. You can have two insurances, one of restitution and one of natura. But if you want to have free choice, you will have to pay extra, so lots of people will not be able to afford that. And there will be a bigger gap between rich and less fortunate people.

By Anthony Deutsch

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in a letter to parliament late Thursday that his party would revise a health bill that was blocked in the senate, potentially staving off the collapse of his fragile center-right coalition government.

Earlier on Thursday Rutte was forced to pull out of an EU summit to deal with a mounting political crisis over the bill, which has highlighted a deep divide between his Liberal party and the left-of-center Labour, with which he shares power.

Emergency talks throughout the day in The Hague failed to resolve a deadlock triggered by the blocking by coalition allies of a health bill that was submitted by Rutte's party.

The bill, a core healthcare reform pushed by the Liberals to reduce government spending, was voted against on Tuesday by three senators in the Labour Party, the other coalition partner, leaving Rutte scrabbling to find a compromise.

A debate was scheduled to run into the early hours of Friday morning, but Rutte said in a letter his party would "alter and resubmit the legislation taking into consideration arguments and concerns" raised by the dissident Labour senators.
The bill was aimed at saving the government, midway through a four-year term, 1 billion euros ($1.23 billion) from 2016 by restricting where patients can seek medical treatment.
Patients can now go to hospitals or clinics of their own choice and the insurer reimburses the costs. Under the new law, patients would be limited to medical suppliers with which the insurer has negotiated contracts.
Rutte said in the revised bill would maintain the free choice of doctors and would seek to create a balance between 7patients and insurers.

Health Minister Edith Schippers, from the prime minister's Liberal VVD party, said the bill would create better, more affordable, healthcare. However, opponents say it will limit the freedom of patients to pick their own doctors.

Rutte's government has been in power for just over two years after winning snap elections triggered by failed talks with anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders about forming a minority government with his support.

(Editing by Alison Williams and Steve Orlofsky)

Last thing we know about the whole thing is, that on next Tuesday the government will present the slightly changed law again to parliament and then senat. We'll see how that will be received there.

It all has a time limit, because normally the government and all would go on a "Christmas Break", and all things should be dealt with before. and the new agreement with the health insurance companies and other parties is already signed and should go working in January. 

Do we have still some brighter news? Yes, we have.

yesterday evening, after dinner, the door bell rang and a package arrived. It was again all the way from America, containing a present for my birthday. Now that is still a few weeks away, but it doesn;t matter. I placed the gift, wrapped and all, under the tree, and I will wait with opening till my birthday, yes, I will!

What else did I, apart from following the debat and news on tv?  went for some shopping, trying to get me already all things for our Christmas dinner, to be ahead of any crowds. I think, I have about all now, yippee!

And Monday I still was a bit a busy bee, with in the afternoon first preparing a plate for dinner with some fish, making stew pears too for dessert, than attacked some dust bunnies, even gave the room a sweep with the vacuum cleaner. In the mean time Jan went out, and I asked him to take home some freezer bags, if he should be in a dollar shop(I try to buy them there, cheaper and even better than others LOL). Well, never send your husband for some shopping of that kind, hahahaha, oh he came back with bags, in fact quite good ones, they even a kind of zip, but it weren't the ordinary ones I wanted. Okay, I didn;t made too many problems about it, he did his best isn;t it? No big deal.

Weather here still hass good temperatures, around 52 F, which is extra ordinary for this time of year. Only thing is, that we have some more rain, and every now and then hard blowing winds. Still that we can handle, I like the temperatures, not looking forward to snow and freezing at all!

I have today tow sets of clusters from.....Florence. Yes, that sweet lady sent me more and I made two little files with them. I am sure you will like them. Next week I will have another Christmaskit for you.

This has been a long post, don;t you think, so it has become time to get a bit more active, it will be in the house, no special eed for me to go out today, hoorray, that is good sometimes too. I'll just "jump"into my jogging pants and a warm fleece sweater, and it will be good enough for now.

Hope you are not into too much stress these last days before Christmas, and wish you a wonderful weekend.

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I'm still not quite good about myself, completely

Goodmorning everybody!

Perhaps a puzzling posttitle, but it is hard to explain. I am getting back slowly into usual behaviour and feeling and doing things, but still feeling kind of restless, as long as our situation is not settled yet. It is the uncertainty that bothers.
Oh, I try to put it into the back of my mind, as do the usual things and try to keep up a certain rythm in them, but as long as we don;t have a decision of the disability commision, we don;t really know what to do and when to do it. So it still are insecure times, somehow.
Never mind, time will come up with a solution for all things, well, we hope so.
Some day, all will be more clear and it will give us more peace of mind.

Enough of that now, let's see what I did the last couple of days. Really hard to remember all, probably because not all is so important, LOL, but it kept rather busy, that I still know.
Oh yes, Monday I did the bedsheets, and some cleaning in the house, and I felt good about it. Jan went out for a little walk in the afternoon, but was back quite soon, but the "why"I didn;t know till much later in the evening. That awesome husband of mine suddenly had trouble with his belly, it became hard and painful( and he must pay attention to that because of his umbilical hernia). So he took a long nap, and late evening told me what happened. He even felt so bad he said, he almost wanted to go to hospital, to his doctor.
But slowly it became better and "soft"again, but I always get so angry with him, when he is suffering from something and is not telling it to me. I know, he doesn;t want to do that, cause I would worry and such, but sometimes I really want to know sooner. I cannot change his character in that, but it is at times difficult to handle LOL.
Yesterday the weather looked a bit better, so I decided to do some shopping fro grocerie, perhaps even get me some things already for Christmas. Lots of things easily can be kept good in the fridge, and better to get some of it now, as long as there isn;t yet the big crowd in the shops.
Just made it back before some rain fell down, and first prepared some stew for dinner, which always takes more time than you think, most of all because the cutting of all ingredients takes time.
But I always have company with that, our Brodski, probably only because he hopes, something will fall down at the floor for him, hahahaha. Okay, i admit, sometimes a little piece of meat is cut for him, but just a scrap! It seems he is already happy with that.

Later I did a bit of this and that, and suddenly felt sooooooo sleepy I took a little nap(as Jan too). And I woke up a bit late early evening. Almost missed our soap we always watch , and I was glad I already had the stew ready, now I only had to cook a few potatoes and that was done quick enough.

Slowly the Christmas cards are coming in now, which makes a happy display on the mantlepiece near the tree. But the last years cards become less and less with the internet and email and such. In a way pity, but also understandable, because the prices of posting get higher and higher, even for a simple letter.

In the evenings I am still knitting on a new afghan/blanket for our bed. Perhaps not the best one, but for now I think it will look nice, and if not, we always can "dismantle"it and start again with the wool, LOL.
It's not so important, I just like to keep busy with my hands in the evening. And when it is an easy pattern, watching tv at the same time is no problem.

Oh, you know that cats every now and then change for sleeping/resting place? Our Brodski does. For some time he occupied one of the chairs at the dining table, before he occupied my chair at the computer, but now he has found another great place. On top of the chair near our couch. It's on a high spot, he can keep an eye on us and it is warm(because of the Christmas fleece blanket I have on it). Only disadvantage of this place is, that it isn't too wide, so every now and then, when he really is in cat's dreamland we hear a "BOING" and he fells off LOL! hen he sits for a while, looking a bit dazed, goes to the kitchen for a bite, comes back and jumps back on the top of the backrest of that chair.Lucky that cats almost always land on their paws!

Okay. that's all for today, except for the freebie, which are clusters from Arlene for the Country-like Christmas kit.
If you need more for Christmas scrapbooking try her Etsy shop, link at the side bar, under Bloglayout!
I often forget to mention her sites, but you should take a look. She also has a deviantart place.
Only thing to do now is to wish you a fantastic day!

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