Freezing Adventures

Holland can be beautiful, did I already mention it? This is a picture taken in Nootdoorp, a suburb of the Hague in the Netherlands, Where me and Bas were walking, more like freezing on the way back to the metro...

The cow is actually not real. It's a statue, but we did notice a couple of real ones, and also some sheep with blue behinds... yes it was weird to me too, but it turns out that they were marked,  this marks that the sheep are impregnated. Odd...

This weekend we went to the market again, this time it was a smaller market and we actually went with our friends Hans and Lisa.
The guys had to ,unfortunately, carry the bags

Oh, mentioning the blue butted sheep, we went past the butt store , maybe that's where the sheep got the blue paint hahaha :)

 Hans and Lisa were very happy to share some of the vegetables and fruit from the market with us. How else are you going to divide a bag with 20 apples, 5 kg's worth of potatoes, and half a kilo of Endive? We decided to make a habit of it... It saves a lot of money and it's always nice and fresh...

Here is what we got back with this time, and look how much of a mess it
made of Lisa's beautiful new kitchen :)

So many berries. We had some wonderful pancakes from this berries. it was delicious.

We got a lot of Kohlrabi , carrots and some red onions, so I made a very tasty root oven vegetables dish, with some olive oil and some wonderful Italian herbs. My man loved it. and he made the most tasty meat ever (like always) to go along with it.
It really looked like Gourmet food :)

Have a I mentioned it is freezing over here?

Tonight it is - -5 °C . It is going to get to -11 on Thursday. Unbelievably cold. 

Here is me, with my earmuffs. I love them. they are always with me in my bag, but today, I actually had to use them. I hope it snows tomorrow, I love Holland in the snow.

Signing off, the red nose, cold mad scientist ;) 

Second hand and furry friends

To me if you ask what love is

This picture says it all

I remind you guys that my indiegogo project 2 hearts in one house,  is still ongoing, please share this :) 

Here is the direct link:

http://www.indiegogo.com/2-hearts-living-in-one-house?a=32306

I already told you how much I love the second hand shop in Rotterdam which I go and visit every now and then. That sensation of finding treasures and vintage items for almost no money is amazing to me. 

I think that here in Holland people keep their stuff in really good stuff. Some as good as new, and that is why it is always so nice for me to find things I can re-use.

This time I took you with me. The kringloop winkel is a relatively large store where all the second hand items are brought in by donations usually and treated with so much respect... 

The staff arranges all the items by departments, you can see here that these are baskets, and decorative stuff.

I saw these 2 beautiful vintage sewing machines, which I thought were wonderful

How about this "Disco table"? self made I guess ...

It's the second time I see this organ, it doesn't play very well , but is so beautiful in my eyes. what do you think? 

When we walked back home, we met a furry friend, who wanted to say hi:

He was all covered with his rain coat and everything ;)

Of course he brought his friends. The big one was protecting the small one all the time, as we approached. It was just beautiful. Mother Nature is remarkable sometimes... 

And my man also made a new friend :) 

While we were waiting for the bus, I saw them again, they are everywhere these days 

And so , this time, I had a lot of loot and found some really cool stuff:

 * A Cookie box, vintage with English bears on it. To be later used as a cracker box.
* A Sesame Street box, I already have the Elmo one, so my man found another one for me. I thought it was very nice. I put stamps in it.
* A English Dutch dictionary.
* A World Atlas in Dutch.
* A Cookie monster towel kitchen hanger. you will see later how useful it was.
* 2 tin boxes for sugar and for gravies.
* 1 m&m's doll to join his friend on my window.
* 4 stamps with a stamp pad of forever friends bears. For my book scraping.
* A huge box which in I put all my pasta and noodles.
* A stencil of Holland, which I thought was cute with cows ,houses and windmills.

That all cost 5 Euros. How about that?
Later on we had dinner , chicken medallions, with sweet pepper from our market visit, and some bami , which is Chinese noodles. Yum, my man cooks so good ...

The next day I started putting my loot into place , so here is my gravy box reasting nice next to my spices box.

Underneath it in our rack, there are now 2 beautiful boxes, instead of a huge mess.

And my favorite item, the cookie monster, needed some cleaning , but now is holding my towels

Amd can also hold a spoon on his head. How cute is he?

And the m&m's fire brigade now is resting next to his friend on my window

Here is a close up on my new vintage stamp set

And of course the beautiful box in where I keep them. Did I mention I L-O-V-E Sesame street?

Then my man went into our bedroom with a hammer and a few nails and a few minutes later, I saw a wonderful decoration he did for it , 3 hearts on a rope, in 3 sizes. I love the assymetry in which he hung the hearts in, he has a true sense of decorating and style too 

With this beautiful view of my window I sign off tonight, have a wonderful day 

The mad scientist :) 

Muppets and other nonsense

I am the biggest fan of the Muppets. They rock. Kermit, Miss Pigi, Gonzo, Fozi, and my ultimate favorite : Rowlf .
You know who he is,
He is the dog with the big fluffy ears behind the piano, always serious and a wonerful player...

Some may ask why him of all the muppets?
Is it the fact that he is (like me) a pianist?
Maybe it's cause he  likes gothic candle lights on his piano and while he is playing, and maybe since he always has a silly smile on his face and wears a suit?
To be honest I don't really know ... maybe you guys have got an idea?

Well, guess what... I was walking in then supermarket yesterday when I came across this:

Ahhhh... heaven...

It turns out that you spare some points for every purchase above 15 Euros, and if you got 6 you add 1 Euro and you get a Muppet... that is so nice :)

If any of you dutch people have them and don't need them, please leave a comment , I would really love to have them.

So, at the Cashier , I noticed this is given out for free :

What better use then placements? I thought to myself, smiling all the way home... This rocks.





Later I had a dutch lesson with my best friend Lisa. She is so sweet, and really is trying hard to teach me Dutch. I think she is awesome.

I got back home, and my man offered to play some Wii with me.
I immediately knew that I would lose, since he always beats me in every game, but apparently , he can't jump over obstacles .
Guess what? I won (Yay!)

Notice how he looks up to me hehe ;)

Then he blamed the controller, so we did a re match, and guess what?

It wasn't the controller (notice how he grumps in the screen, that was so cool , cause he was actually standing like that in real life while I was doing the victory dance)

I know I am gloating , but come on, he A-L-W-A-Y-S wins and it's nice that this time it was me to do the victory dance...

Signing off,
the (Victorius) muppet piano playing mad scientist :)

One big crafty mess

Sometimes If I see a big mess I get the urge to tidy everything. It is the nicest thing in the world to see how neat and organized your home after all that effort you put in. 

So this morning, after my man washed a pile of dishes, and did all the vacuuming, 

(kudos for him) , I started organizing my closets. 

It used to look like this , so it wasn't quite the order I like 

And now, it looks like this:

Then, I went upstairs , and find out this is how my hall closet looked like:

And this is how it looked like after me charging it:

During my cleaning I found out this scarf that I knitted last winter as a gift to my man. What do you think?

 

Then I took over my man's closet too, and this is what it looks like now:

 Since I was in a creative mood and I saw this empty shoe box

And since I had this beautiful wrapping paper with Dutch old commercials from the 50's:

I thought I would make something useful, a craft box , and so it was:

And this is how it looks from the inside :

Then I could just let my crafting material just rest neatly in their new house ;)

And here it is on it's new place, by my window:

Then, being still creative, I remembered, I still have 3 packages of Mushroom from my Market visit 2 days ago. 

That is so me sometimes (Btw this is a wonderful postcard my friend gave me from England, and it is so true)

So, I just made a mushroom pie, and since I was so blonde, I forgot to take pictures and so I could only take one, of what was left as half a Mushroom pie, so next time I make it I'll post pictures and the recipe, since it was self made and Delicious...

Off to study for my Dutch lessons... The mad scientist :)