Day to Day Life

The other day while I was in the city center, I took some photos of the skaters at the man made ice skating rink by the city hall.   One thing that caught my attention was the orange rental skates everyone was wearing. If you’ve ever been to the Netherlands, especially on Koninginnedag, you may have wondered why the Dutch clad …

Have you ever seen such amazing big brown eyes?  This is Tiana, the daughter of a new expat friend of mine from the UK. Thank god I’m over my baby fever because I’m surrounded with them at the moment!  Almost very woman I know is either pregnant or recently popped.  A few years ago this would have been extremely difficult …

Every year my husband and I decide what we are going to get for Christmas.  One year we tried doing the surprise gift thing and we didn’t like it much, we prefer our method of just saying what we want and going to get it.   That way we are 100% sure we will like what we get.   I guess some …

That sounds so glamorous doesn’t it?   You’d never think it means that I spent new years day playing in the dirt!  Did you really think it meant I was off getting a facial or something?  Eish, you don’t know me at all! I spent most of the day yesterday washing out 25 kilos (55 pounds) of sand for my 360 …

Last night I took some wicked videos of the fireworks, with commentary and everything!   For some reason when I uploaded my photos, it didn’t upload the videos… but I didn’t notice.  So this morning I deleted all the photos to make room for some morning after pics and deleted the videos. GODVERDOMME!!  (That’s me swearing in Dutch, it’s part of …

Ben je slimmer dan een kind? is the Dutch version of the American TV show Are you smarter than a 5th grader? and is my latest discovery for a fun way to learn more of the language. I’m not sure what it is I like so much about this show but I’m pretty sure that it’s the fact that I …

If I didn’t know better I’d think there was a war taking place in Rotterdam these past few days.   As we get closer to the New Year, more and more fireworks are being sold in the city, and more people are setting them off early.   It starts in the early morning with the firecrackers and once it gets dark you …

It’s hard to believe that Christmas is over already!  I spent ages counting the days until it got here, and now it’s passed.   Isn’t that always the way? It was sort of weird on Christmas Eve because it didn’t really seem like Christmas at all.   We ordered some Chinese food and I spent a while making these rat hammocks for …

Today I saw the first snow of the year.  YAAAY!!  I’m a happy Canadian!  Well, I did see snow when I was in Canada but that’s different, you expect snow in Canada.  Sometimes entire winters go by without us seeing any snow at all here in Holland,  so when we do get it, we make the most of it because …

For the last few weeks things have been really tight here financially.  With our trip to Canada and our end of year bills, we were so broke we squeaked.  Thankfully things turned around the other day when money we were waiting for had come in.    I’ve been on a huge cross stitching kick lately and wanted some new new threads, …

I got a mail yesterday from Faela’s proud mommy showing me how adorable she looks in the blanket I made for her.   She also gave me permission to post a photo so I can show her (and the blanket) off a little! I need to learn to knit more because I’ve seen soooo many cute patterns for things I would …